Desert Smuggling in Pakistan

Chapter 13 - Hand to Mouth to India

Fed up with bus scenarios I resolved to try hitchhiking the remaining 400km to Zahedan, the last town before the Pakistan border. Travel is so cheap in Iran there's no real concept of flagging lifts and when a motorcyclist stopped at my wave, he imagined I must be in trouble. Fortunately, he was an English teacher and I was eventually able to communicate my intentions. He proposed to take me to the next police checkpoint.

When we arrived, it took about an hour for the guys in uniform to understand how they could help me. Only after I performed a whole series of clownish actions did they get the idea that I wanted them to stop a truck and suggest that I travel with him. Once on the case, it took only a few minutes to find a lorry bound for Zahedan and I clambered into the cabin. The driver was a wheezing old man who fought a strange daily existence of moving this ten ton life-buoy through the vacuous wastes of the desert.

The motor engine transformed all such wayfaring in these barren lands. In the past it would have been nigh impossible for an individual to cross these lifeless lands alone. The necessary amounts of water, food and warm clothing for the night required the organisational support of a whole caravan. The desert once lay as a vast, subtle barrier to journeys in this area of the world, an obstacle that is now surmounted by the time it takes to buy a bus ticket, take a few valiums and doze through the drive.

We were soon back in the monotone landscape, flat and yellow on all sides. I returned to the images on my inner eyelids and recalled the dreams of Goa that had come to me the night before. I could picture the rocking palm trees hanging loose with the soft blue sky, beneath which lapped the rippling waves around my feet; with coconut in hand and- hold on! It was unbearable to even think about it.

My reverie was interrupted by the grabbing hand of the truck driver, squeezing my pocket to see if I really didn't have any money. My indignant response led to a moody silence that prevailed until we reached the mountains that began as just a tiny blip on the horizon.

The engine spluttered and coughed as we crept uphill into the domain of these rocky creatures. Here were a thousand faces all screwed up and scrawnched from a million years of ferocious, distorting heat and the countering viciousness of the icy nights.

But these immobile beasts let us pass. An hour or two later we were back into non-distinct plains again and the driver pulled up into a lay-by in the middle of nowhere. This was it-he was going to either shoot me and leave my remains to the dust mites or else strand me as I walked off to take a piss. As I urinated I kept looking nervously back over my shoulder and saw the driver move around to a side compartment on the other side of the truck-probably where he kept his guns. But he put my paranoia to shame by pulling out a lunch of chickpeas and nan which he shared with me.

We squatted in the shadow of his great vehicle in the most surreal meal setting in my life. We were in the middle of the desert, the horizons swallowed the view on all sides and the heat chew up the air. Apart from the occasional roar of another passing lorry, all was silent save for the rustle of the breeze and our own sounds as we munched and swallowed. If I had spent my life braving these kind of obliterating perspectives on infinity, I'm certain that I'd be praying to some stern God in the sky too.

Zahedan is reputed to be a dark and dangerous place, where the smuggling of arms and drugs is rife. It certainly didn't seem to have much spark or life from the general vibe as I walked through the main road. I don't see anything romantic about contraband trade. Other than the risk, increased heart-rates and higher profit, it's ultimately just about making money like any other business.

I filled my water-bottle and wasted a bunch of money on a taxi to the border-an occasional and unfortunate necessity on these roads to nowhere.

The taxi left me at the border gates but they were locked and so I joined twenty others with their heaps of piled-up luggage. We waited in the howling wind that threw sand into our eyes and forced us to wrap cloth around our heads. Some huddled together for warmth and others squatted low and alone, meditating on the emptiness all around-save for the meshed gates and border buildings on the other side. We resembled a rag-tailed tattle of refugees, anonymous before barbed wire and guns that held utter control over our future. It was not a good time to need the toilet.

The gates finally opened and we all shuffled in. We waited another half an hour for a temperamental bus to shuttle us to the next processing block. I took the opportunity to hassle my companions for a few words in Urdu, my language cortex kicking back into gear after a period of complete indolence in Iran.

Two Bosnian guys turned up shortly afterwards and we waited for the customs officers to let us through. He snapped for my passport and examined it studiously, whilst holding it upside-down.

"Japan?" He asked. I nodded vaguely and he waved me through. The Bosnian guys came next. I heard the voice behind me demand:

"Japan?"

"No. We are from Bosnia"

"Open your bags!"

I squinted my eyes and tried to look like a noodle and sushi eater as I waddled through to the Pakistan desk, leaving behind the other guys with their luggage splayed across the floor. I whispered a sincere 'salaam aleikum' in goodbye to Iran, which had been bloody good to me.

The Pakistan admission counter was in a dark back room. It held the feeling of a place where any transgression against the human spirit or body could occur-my body and spirit, to be precise. I smiled and told them how happy I was to come to their country. They let me through after a brief check.

Skipping out into Pakistan, my view was immediately obscured by a crowd of money-changers who scrambled to rip off the new arrival. I proudly presented all of my money and received 62 and a half rupees. Their pulses quickened as they waited for the big money.

"I have good rate for dollar-45.3!" They told me.

"I don't have any dollars."

"Pounds! Pounds!" They cried.

"I don't have any pounds."

"Marks? Francs? Lire?" They asked with increasing incredulity.

"Nothing." It took a while for this to sink in before they finally understood-I was clearly just holding out for a better rate.

Once the mob dispersed a little, I had a look around. I was supposed to come to the town of Taftan-the only settlement before the next desert. I had to blink twice before I realised I was already there. The last leg into the Third-World had been accomplished in a single step and the paved streets of Iran faded into memory. I gazed at the shambly rows of shacks that seemed like a village lost in time, derelict and adrift, with its inhabitants clinging on by their fingertips to life and existence itself. There must be people who were born here and had never left-what would their perspective be on the world?

No concrete was in sight and that made for a pleasant rarity. Wooden structures accommodated all the needs for shelter of the community; here there was a chai shop with paraffin burners cooking up sweet, milky froth; and there was a stall with shelves of miserable-looking vegetables, aging a day closer to the manure heap. Where did all the produce come from anyway-surely nothing could grow here?

Good as it was to be back in Asia with all of its grass-roots charm, I still had to find somewhere to sleep that night. The sun sank lower and I began to drift down the street, slowly out of town to find a friendly-looking wall to bed down behind. I was hoping a voice would call out and save me but no one took any notice. I was coming to the very edge of the bazaar when I was hailed and beckoned to the last shop-front. Two brothers who sold cassettes of pop music invited me to join them for some chai. It was subsequently agreed that I could sleep inside.

A wobbling gurgle in my intestines sent me fleeing for the toilet, which turned out to be a small, stone hut with a hole in the ground. It was crawling with cockroaches that split at the intrusion of daylight as I entered and then crept slowly back as I squatted. I stamped my feet in feeble attempts to disperse them.

The sub-continent with all of its delights was upon me again and I spent a happy evening of watching satellite television with my new friends, staring at the pin-ups of female Indian pop stars that adorned the walls. Even the sight of bare necks and arms seemed pornographic after the complete censorship of Iran.

We picked communally at a meat dish and pile of nan and I was hit with the first rush of hot chilli since Budapest. India seemed to be just a hot fart away. They pulled the metal screen down over the front of the shop-locking me in and I just hoped that my bladder could hold out for the night.

In the morning, I tried to hitch for a while but traffic was thin. I went off in search of the truck drivers who would hopefully be crossing the distance to Quetta, the capital of South-West Pakistan. They were not hard to find for Pakistani lorries are really something else. The immediate impression is that that the vehicles must have driven through the middle of a supermarket with their exterior covered in glue to pick up each and every piece of shiny packaging. Not a speck of the original coat of paint could be seen on these trucks, as every colour of the rainbow found expression on each side and these were printed with hearts, Urdu lettering, spirals and slogans reading:

’God is Great' and 'I Love Pakistan!'

Bells on chains hung from the rear to emit an incessant tinkling sound in transit and all kinds of hanging, bobbling paraphernalia could be seen in the cabins.

I approached a few of the drivers who squatted in small conferences in the shade of their wagons. I asked in my one-day-old Urdu if there was any chance of a ride to Quetta. I was taken around, introduced, sized up, given chai and talked about for an hour or so. Eventually some kind of conclusion was reached and an older driver with a fuzzy dark beard, gestured for me to follow him through a twisting path of half-built walls and led me up to a rickety-looking old bus. He paid the driver for my fare and stuffed another 50 rupees in my hand, all having been gathered in a whip-around of the truckies. I would have preferred to save them the expense by squeezing in with them but to dissent would have been to cause offence. I submitted meekly, finding myself a broken seat in the near-empty bus. Only 7 or 8 others came for the ride.

As we prepared to set off, I heard a voice outside ask in English the price of the trip to Quetta. Jumping to the front, I reached out my arm to haul in my Slovenian friend Peter, whom I'd met on the way to Yazd in Iran. He'd had to wait around in Zahedan to get his Pakistan visa, which he'd got for just a dollar (compared to the £40 I'd paid in England), by virtue that Slovenia wasn't even listed in the directories of the consulate. The baffled bureaucrat set the arbitrary fee to banish this incongruity as fast as possible.

After a few hours of the drive, I began to realise how ridiculous I must have looked trying to hitch a lift by the side of the road. A flat, shadowless desert vanquished memories of things green and pleasant. Nice as it was to meet up again, Peter and I exchanged little more than an apple and some biscuits during the day, both absorbed in our own unreachable thoughts. A silence prevailed within the bus. It was as though none of us dared risk the wrath of Infinity, hoping to cross the unseen and unknown without incident. Small insects crawling across the forehead of God.

At times the road seemed to disappear altogether and then the driver and his assistants held worried conferences that left us wondering how much water we had in the bus. They would then attempt to trundle the bus through scratchy trails and dust in the desert. Each time that we refound the road the relief inside the bus could be felt like a breeze.

As we came towards sunset the vanquishing flatness was broken by an approaching cluster of small buildings-our driver had his schedule smooth enough that we had reached a lonely roadside mosque in time for men to dismount and make their evening prayers. How long before the first drive-thru place of worship? I now had more confidence in the capacities of our driver and reckoned we might all be safely delivered to our destination after all.

But there was no indication that we were any closer to Quetta and it was into the night before we stopped at a roadside eating place. However time didn't seem to matter any more once we looked up and saw the most amazing sky of our lives. With no artificial lights to pollute the twinkling black canopy, the heavens held full fiesta for us poor desert stragglers and I began to contemplate a solitary life in the middle of the Sahara or somewhere, just to have the visual bliss each night of the swirling Milky Way. The crystalline constellations weaved strange and undecipherable inscriptions across the nocturnal fabric that surely held the secrets to the yearnings of a traveller's heart. Fucking cold though and so I said goodnight to the stars, abandoning my desert dream to stumble back into the bus in search of my blankets.

The cold began to bite harder and harder with unrelenting teeth of ice, as the bus strove bravely on and through the dim haze of half-sleep, I became aware that we seemed to be climbing through some mountain roads. I abandoned the attempt to close the defective windows, standard to these kind of buses and instead pulled my blankets over my head, crouching low on the cushions that had long ago detached themselves from the seat.

Sometime later, the bus came to a halt in some town or the other and the driver told us we had stopped for sleep. A few hours afterwards, I woke up to find that we'd actually arrived in Quetta and I bounced out into the street ready for new Asian adventures. Peter lagged behind to continue the argument about his bus fare (that had been going on for the past 24 hours!), convinced that he was being ripped off.

I wondered if he might be one of the production line tourists churned out by the guidebooks, one of the backpackers who have no interest in actually sharing anything with the people in whose country he travels. These are the people who talk about 'doing' a country and I often wonder what they're doing there in the first place. The guidebooks seem to end up describing a country solely in terms of how much it will cost and it seems sad to me that so many people sign up to this kind of consumer travel.

Happily, Peter turned out to be very cool and just had one or two preconceived ideas about bargaining in Asia. No one wants to feel a fool by being cheated, either. We strolled in to Quetta together and as he still had no local currency I bought us each a paratha (the chappatti fried on the thin black pan of a street stall). We breakfasted on the starch and cheap fat in the same manner as hundreds of millions across the Indian sub-continent.

Peter was due to meet the French guy, Jaurice, at a hotel in town and I came along to see our witty chum, without any clear plan in my head as to what I was going to do next. Peter solved that by renting a double room for us both in a totally unexpected gesture of generosity, that proved to be typical of the stoic young guy. He was as economical with his words as he was talented with his observations and not a minute went by when he wasn't studying all that went on aorund him.

Jaurice wasn't in his room so we took a more leisured walk through the streets. My friend, Nik, had told me that I'd be on home ground once I got to Pakistan and everything certainly seemed like India; from the looks of the people to the chaos of the infrastructure and though it isn't quite accurate to speak of the two countries in the same breath, I'll refer to them both as 'India' from time to time in its wider sense-this land once being part of the many and varied domains which, until just fifty years ago, was within the imperial borders of India itself.

Were it not for our exhilaration of the culture change, Peter and I would never have survived the dense clouds of dust that weeped our eyes, the maniacal driving of the autorickshaws, the unceasing din and the stench from the vegetable matter left to rot in various decaying heaps. It was like I'd never been away.

After about an hour of aimless drifting, Peter suddenly exclaimed:

"Where are the women?" It was a valid question. Looking around, not a single female form could be seen, veiled or otherwise. At last, we caught sight of one or two scurrying figures dressed to the eyeballs in drab gowns. It seemed that most of the fairer sex stayed indoors and did not venture out into the world of men.

The rites and practices of Islam are stuffed with esoteric symbolism and are practised with an enchanting fervour but there's always the sense that something is missing-the women. It's the men who attend the congregational prayers in the mosque; the men who study the Qur'an; it's the men who enforce the communal Muslim rules and it's even the men who thrust swords through their sides.

True, women have a clearly identified and supposedly respected role as wives, mothers and hearth-builders. But many Muslims seem to use the umbrella of Islamic statements to back up their cultural chauvinism. It's got to be remembered that until the 20th century ago women had far more respect and rights under the flag of Islam than in any Christian country. Check out the witch hunts.

I thik that what's often forgotten too is that Muslim men suffer from the exclusion of women too. Like James Brown sang, "It's a man's world but it aint nothing without the little girl". For the large part the young men were immature, frustrated and bored. Life would be a lot more interesting for everyone if the women were at least allowed to go out into the street without sullying their 'good name'.

Jaurice was amazed to see me that evening, thinking I'd not be able to keep pace with the more wealthy voyagers and bought me dinner in affection for my novelty value. His small, round face was lit up even more than usual, now that he'd reunited with his girlfriend, who had flown over Iran in distaste for the enforced modesty of women's dress. In his slightly domineering showman style, Jaurice stole the conversation with the admittedly good story of his journey from Taftan that made our's seem like a luxury tour. He had spent two days coming from the border by train and had received an involuntary education in the workings of illicit trade in Asia.

They had left Taftan okay and were just settling down, when they came to a halt after only a kilometre. Smugglers (the most popular profession in that border town) came on board and started to load their produce onto the train with an endless succession of boxes, crates and sacks. They stuffed, squeezed and stashed it all into any and every conceivable hiding-place in the wagons, undercarriage and compartments especially designed for the purpose.

Three hours later when all was aboard, the train got under way again at a good speed, if a little heavier now, until they came to a police checkpoint further down. The customs men then proceeded to storm through every section of the train, searching each passenger and compartment, discovering much of the hidden booty-there was a delay of about 4 or 5 hours whilst all of the boxes found were removed by a less industrious policeforce, taking their cut.

Then, after a couple of breakdowns, the train came within 50km of Quetta when it was stopped yet again. The receiving crew of smugglers began to offload the produce that had somehow gone undetected. Boxes and crates came out of nowhere to be despatched at high profit. Another three hours of this and they were finally permitted to roll in to the city. Perhaps this business was why none of the truck drivers wanted to take me themselves.

Peter was off to Afghanistan of all places, having acquired an unlikely visa simply by writing to the embassy and asking for one before he left Europe. He gave me his green foam sleeping-mat, weighing just 300 grams with the insistence that I'd probably have more use for it than he. His beard wasn't all that fully grown and I feared for him a little in Taliban country-but we knew we'd both be okay as we'd convinced ourselves that we had Angels on our side. (He made it, too, according to an E-mail that he sent me and had an amazing time-proving that almost nowhere is out of bounds to the truly intrepid.)

We shared a last breakfast and a farewell hug before I allowed myself to be dragged into a bus, jumping out once I saw a truck. I hopped in through the open space where the passenger door should have been and exchanged grins with the driver. I gibbered something in Urdu that I hoped said that I was going North and he yelled back in a tongue that I could barely hear let alone understand. We both laughed at the obvious joke-no one was going anywhere fast in the thick traffic curry that simmered outside. Donkey traps thrusted and hustled to each side in an ongoing clash of the eras with the tiny three-wheeled autorickshaws, that could scoot through gaps impassable to the multicoloured trucks and buses.

To the sides, fruit stalls paraded bright and vivid fruits that only just resisted the yellow dust and exhaust fumes, increasing the number of collisions surely never to be heard above the din of horns of varying hellish pitches, general aimless shouting and drivers with their heads stuck out of the window, cussing for all they were worth.

The market stalls made bantering sales pitches and flies buzzed erratically close to the ear. My driver then slid in a tape of some obnoxious Indian film music and I leant back in the ludicrous drama of it all. This was the intensity of life I dreamed about in the lifeless streets of Europe, where this kind of anarchic scene would throw most of the population into a nervous collapse, the overload of sensory stimulus streaming through the air as thick as soup.

If I could survive this then I could surely survive anything, I told myself. Relaxing in the commonplace Asian insanity, the world became mine. If I'd had longer hair then maybe I'd have stolen a donkey from somewhere to ride into my long-awaited kingdom; somewhere down the trail, they were surely growing my crown of thorns. Probably sharpening the nails too.