In Xanadu (40 page)

The evening got better and better. Not only did the bungalow have an attentive staff which rivalled that of Mozaffar's palace, but it turned out that the mountain on the other side of the Indus was Pir Sar. According to a framed notice hung on the wall, this was the site of Aornus, the last citadel captured by Alexander the Great before he turned back westwards to die in Babylon. Alexander was a childhood hero of mine and the previous year on the route of the First Crusade, I had slept a night in an excavation trench on the hill of Pella. Alexander's birthplace. This was like completing a circle.

For two hours I sat inside and wrote up the logbook. Then
I
showered, drank a pot of tea brought to me by a bearer, and went out into the garden. Beyond the lawn of the bungalow was the riverbank and then the river. The bank was littered with smooth round boulders. The evening light played on the eddies on the surface of the river, and the sound of the running water echoed around the valley. As the sun sank behind the peaks a mullah came and prostrated himself on a stone on the riverbank. He touched his head against the stone and through the roar of the river you could hear the sound of the Kalimeh:
'Li Allah illa Allah, Mahommet Resul-allah.'

I found Lou perched on the lower branches of a tree on the riverbank, putting the finishing touches to a sketch of the Indus. She had spent the evening reading
Lolita.

'It's a filthy, dirty book,' she said.

'You're not enjoying it?' I asked.

'No, I'm loving it.'

Sitting bird-like on her branch, Louisa looked even more alluring than she normally did. The sun had begun to darken her skin, emphasizing the blueness of her eyes and the fairness of her hair. Despite the rigours of our journey she was still immaculately turned out, and her art-nouveau bracelets glinted in the light. As I talked to her I took in her neat figure. She had such intelligent curves.

"What are you thinking about?' she asked, presumably noticing the glazed look in my eyes.

Oh. Nothing.'

Would you mind if I drew you?' No, go ahead.'

I struck an attitude on the riverside, with my legs dangling becomingly in the river. While Louisa sketched she talked, largely about Edward and his many fine qualities.

I think I'm in love, Willy.'

Who with?'

Edward, of course.'

Oh:

You don't mind me telling you all this, do you?' No,' I lied. 'Why should I?'

I just thought you might be a little jealous, or something.'

Me? Jealous?'

It was just a thought.'

Jealous? Not at all.'

I
got up. 'Come on. Let's go in and get some supper.' 'Wait. I want to tell you more about Edward.'

'Go on. Tell me.' (About the little bastard.)

"Well,' she began. 'For a start he's absolutely gorgeous. You have no conception of what handsome means until you meet Edward.'

'I've met him.'

'So you have. But not properly.' 'No.'

'And ... well, he's very well dressed.'
'Very
important,' I said. 'Does he talk?' 'You
are
jealous.' 'Just interested.'

'Well, to be honest he doesn't say much. But he's very kind, very loving. I think you would really like him if you got to know him.'

'Sounds just up my street. Come on. Supper.'

We ate a meagre curry, then, while Lou finished a letter, I sat outside on my own on the verandah, and sought solace in the
Baburnama.

The tribesmen who live on the slopes of Pir Sar are not Pathans. They are Gujars, relations of the Kaffirs of Nuristan. They are high-spirited and warlike. They have fair skin and their hair is sometimes blond. The Pathans dislike them intensely. Partly the enmity may originate in the Gujars' animism - they were only recently converted to Islam, and their allegiance to the faith is shaky. But mostly the Pathans resent the Gujars' height, strength, and good looks. Victorian explorers in this area thought the Gujars were descended from the stragglers of Alexander's army (did they not wear a woollen headdress similar to the
kausia
of the Macedonians?), but the Pathans have other theories. They trace the Gujars' descent from the irregular copulation of a Pathan witch and an excitable Indus water buffalo. The Indus still forms the frontier between the two tribes.

When, at breakfast the next morning, I mooted the idea of crossing the river into Gujar territory and climbing Pir Sar.

Louisa
was less than enthusiastic. She had found Pakistan hard going and said she was feeling tired and frail. She did not fed quite up to climbing mountains.

'Don't come then,'
I
said eventually. 'Anyway the Gujars developed a taste for memsahibs during the Raj. You wouldn't be safe.'

'What about you?'

'No one will rape me.'

'No. That's true,'

The bungalow
chowkidar
was equally unimpressed with the plan.

Oh sahib, sahib, these people are wicked mens,' he moaned. 'Do not cross the river, sahib. It is not safe. These Gujar fellows are robbers and murderers.'

I did not listen. There was barely a single place on the journey where we had not been told this of the next town. It was always full of deviants and perverts, mother-rapers, father-slayers and worse. It was always madness to go on. The
chowkidar,
however, proved more resolute than most of the Prophets of Doom we met. Having failed to dissuade me from climbing Pir Sar, he did his best to sabotage the attempt. He insisted on escorting me on the twenty-minute walk to the ferry point and there negotiated with the ferrymen, a villainous bunch of Pathans in charge of an equally unreliable-looking raft. This consisted of four water-buffalo hides, sown up and staffed with chaff, inflated then strapped together with a fragile framework of wooden stathes. To my surprise it proved fairly safe. It was. after all, one of the most ancient and well-tried methods of river-crossing known to man. There are sculptures of similar rafts on seventh-century BC Assyrian bas-reliefs, and it was this method that carried Alexander and his army safely across the Danube and Oxus. Thanks, however, to the efforts of the
chowkidar
this raft failed to get me across the Indus, at least initially. Following the directions that they had been given, the ferrymen pushed the raft off into the river and steered it a mile downstream. They beached it just below the bungalow. To their bemusement as much as mine, I was deposited on a patch of sandy riverbank, and helped ashore by Lou and one of the bungalow bearers.

It took thirty minutes to explain that no, I did not just come for a joy ride, and that yes, I did actually want to cross the river. We spent another hour dragging the raft upstream to the crossing point, and a further thirty minutes re-inflating the skins. This involved blowing through what had once been the buffalos' ankles, then sealing the legs with garden twine. It was virtually noon before we finally set off into the current on the short journey across the river. One ferryman, naked except for a loincloth, waded into the river pushing the raft in front of him. The passengers - elderly tribesmen clutching rifles and umbrellas - huddled together at one end of the raft. Suddenly we were caught in the flow. The raft shot off downstream, pirouetting in irregular circles. We hit some rapids and water cascaded over the boat. On we went, spinning and turning, eddying backwards and forwards. I bent over my camera bag, cursing that I had been stupid enough to bring all my film. But the raft was not out of control. At the far end sat two ferrymen. They clutched a pair of sturdy poles each strapped to wooden uprights. These they used as oars. Every time the ferrymen's backs faced the far shore, they heaved at the oars and the raft shuddered off in the right direction.

Only one old man looked at all worried. His tiny granddaughter was crooked under his arm and the child was sweating feverishly. Her hands hung limply from her wrists, and her hair was damp and matted. From the breast pocket of the old man's
charwal chemise
I
could see the top of an unopened bottle of medicine, perhaps the reason for his journey across the river. The medicine was Benylin cough mixture. It looked a very inadequate cure for the girl's fever.

The ferrymen pulled the raft onto a mud flat at the foot of Pir Sar, two miles downstream. Alexander arrived here in the summer of 327
bc
. Aornus was unfortified, but was still almost impregnable: its sheer height and gradient made it a far more formidable obstacle than any fortress. Pir Sar was the capital of the Buddhist Kingdom of Udyana, and all the fugitives from Alexander's previous conquests had fled to it. A rumour went around Alexander’s camp that the mountain was so high that 'even Herakles, the son of Zeus had found it impregnable'.

Siege was impossible, and the terrain limited the strategies open to Alexander. He had no choice but to fight his way painfully up the mountainside. The first assault was a disaster. The thirty hand-picked advance guards were crushed by boulders rolled down from above; Alexander himself only narrowly escaped death. For two days and two nights the Indians beat drums to celebrate the victory, but they recognized that the Macedonians would eventually break through. Sending envoys to negotiate a surrender, they played for time while organizing a secret evacuation of the hilltop. Alexander realized what was happening. Scaling a rock face with the aid of a rope, he led seven hundred of the Shield Bearers into the attack.

The Macedonians climbed up after him, pulling one another up, some at one place, some at another. At a prearranged signal they turned upon the retreating Barbarians and slew many of them in flight; some others retreating in terror flung themselves down the precipices and died. Alexander thus became the master of the rock which had baffled Herakles himself....