In Xanadu (41 page)

Alexander and his Macedonians had to cope with the local barbarians; I found it hard work climbing the mountain even without opposition. The hill rises steeply from the Indus and, failing at first to find a track, I battled my way up through the cultivation terraces, scrambling over ditches and dykes, brushing my way through the narrow strip-fields. The terraces contained thick plantations of maize, wheat, and marijuana. After a difficult climb of an hour I came across a track, a holloway sunk between two dry stone walls, perhaps the very 'stony path cut by the hands of man' used by the Macedonians. It was clearly very ancient: it was cobbled with massive slabs of limestone and these had been worn completely smooth with the passage of feet. The track led a winding course up the hill, past line upon line of neatly kept terraces, giving off to other less substantial goat trails. It was exhausting work. The chill of the previous day had gone and the temperature had risen. The midday sun beat down through the ratified air, and I could feel the weakening effects of altitude. After another hour I was parched. I left the main track and wandered along a trail to a mud-walled enclosure.

There I found a flat-roofed wattle and daub tribesman's house, a separate cooking hut and a courtyard lined with
charpoy.
Its only inhabitants were some sitting cows, a clutch of chickens and a few plump, contented-looking babies. Too exhausted to be polite, I keeled over onto a
charpoy.
A minute later, when
I
opened my eyes
I
found myself surrounded by an are of wide-eyed children in embroidered caps, an orange-bearded Gujar in a dirty
charwal chemise,
and, further behind, some women in brightly coloured prints. Embarrassed by my rudeness, I smiled and introduced myself. After less than a minute I exhausted my Urdu pleasantries and we sat in silence staring at each other. The women built a fire and made some tea, whilst the eldest son was sent off to find a maize cob, which he brought to me still hot from the fire. When I finally got up to go, the boy insisted on accompanying me up the hill and he leapt up the path ahead of me. As agile and foot-sure as an ibex, he seemed not to notice the gradient and could not understand what was slowing down the sweating asthmatic behind him.

The regular terracing soon gave way to rough undergrowth, and the path became slighter, frequently splitting into several smaller tracks. Every so often we came to a hut and each time my friend would sit me down on a
charpoy
and ask the women to bring chapattis and fresh water.

We climbed for two hours before we reached a spring gushing out of the rock. Here the path finally gave out and my friend would go no further. After trying to persuade me to come down with him, we shook hands and he disappeared round the corner. As soon as he had gone I began to regret my decision. It was after four o'clock and there now seemed little chance of reaching the peak and getting back to the ferry by nightfall. Anyway, as Sir Aurel Stein's investigations had shown, there were no visible remains on the hilltop other than a couple of large stone slabs (which the great archa
eologist had somewhat imaginatively identified as the altars raised by Alexander to Athena, the Goddess of Victory). There was a disconcerting silence on the mountainside: a stillness with no wind, no birds and no distant roar of the river. For a while I picked my way along the trail, but it soon became impossible to distinguish real paths from those imagined. Parted undergrowth powdered with dust from passing feet would lead forward, then suddenly give out. Retracing my steps, I would again confuse paths and end up out of sight of the river, facing blank rock walls. Once, not looking where I was going,
I
found myself tottering on the edge of a precipice. I attempted to trek vertically down the mountainside in the hope of regaining the main path, but only succeeded in cutting my legs on thorns. Beginning to panic I quickened my pace, and managed to twist an ankle.

I sat down on a stone. I was exhausted. My ankle was aching and leg muscles that I never knew existed were beginning to complain. The sun was casting long shadows and the silence worried me. There was no sign of the path, and no other trail looked at all convincing. I could not see a single house, there were no familiar landmarks, and the Indus was only a glinting trickle far below. I felt tired, miserable and slightly frightened. I sat for ten minutes without moving, unsure of what to do. All options seemed equally unappealing. Then, immediately above me, I heard gunshots. On other occasions the noise might have been sinister. Now they seemed welcoming, almost homely. I clambered upwards, and soon found a track. Following it around a bluff of rock I saw the source of the shots: a village of half-timbered huts clinging to the sheer hillside.

I walked into the village along a terrace. The alleys were deserted but from the far side
I
could hear other noises behind the volleys of shot: clapping, drumming, and singing.

Intrigued, I followed the sound. Passing under an intricately carved lintel, I peered into the courtyard beyond. Women and children dressed in coloured silks were dancing around a smoking wood fire, while their menfolk lined the walls howling, and occasionally letting off their guns. I had interrupted a
Gujar shin,
the pre-lslamic animist ceremonies still known to take place, but rarely witnessed by Westerners, I watched for all often seconds. One of the women screamed and pointed in my direction. Immediately the singing stopped and the women fled inside a hut. The men jumped up from the ground and came towards me with pointed guns. I could not run away so instead
I
stepped towards them, trying to appear unflustered. I extended my hand, lamely indicating friendship. No one shook it.
I
was led outside at gunpoint, and escorted up to a flat roof where there stood a single
charpoy.
The Gujars motioned that I should sit. They stood around me, guns still pointed, scowling.
I
had wrecked their party and Gujars, it seemed, were not of a forgiving nature. They were tall, thick-bearded and heavily-built. They wore Palestinian
keffiyeh
rather than turbans, and their
charwal chemise
were of a different, tighter fit than any others
I
had seen in Pakistan. One man stuck out from the crowd. His face - vaguely Germanic, I thought - was flat and skull-like. He had cold blue eyes and huge hands. He wore an Afghan chapatti-cap and you could see that he was either bald or shaven-headed.

I tried a little Urdu. None of them understood. I smiled. They continued to scowl.
I
tried looking arrogant. No change. Then I tried expressing interest in their guns. This was quite an obvious conversation point since about fifteen of them were pointing directly at me. Nevertheless it was a break-through. My enthusiasm for one rusty old rifle stirred up jealous competition from the owners of several others. Four or five apparently identical guns were proudly presented for me to admire. No, I maintained, the first rifle was definitely the one for me. The smoothness of its barrel. The length of its stock. The workmanship on its breach. There was nothing to compare with it anywhere in Inglistan.
I
must have a photograph.

I arranged its owner next to the
charpoy
holding the gun in front of him. He beamed and I snapped. This caused uproar. Everyone wanted their photograph taken. The men lined up, and stiffened as if at attention. The German demanded an individual portrait, but two friends barged in at the sides. I took family groups, I took cousins. I took the children. I took all the rifles lined up in a long row against the
charpoy.
I took a picture of the rifles without the
charpoy
and of the
charpoy
without the rifles. Someone fetched me some food, a ghastly confection of sticky rice and goat's leg. The German fetched some even rustier rifles for me to inspect. We swore brotherhood. By the time I got up to go, fully equipped with a teenage guide, the wrecked
shin
was completely forgotten. Thanking God for getting me off Pir Sar alive, I set off down the slope at a trot. Despite the tender ankle, I made it down in less than two hours.

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One interesting angle on the
shin
emerged only when I returned to England and set about reading Robin Lane Fox's definitive
Alexander the Great.
It appears that Alexander himself may have witnessed a similar ceremony during his passage through the Karakorams. Certainly the chronicler Arrian records that immediately before Alexander began besieging Pir Sar, a rumour circulated in the Macedonian camp that the tribesmen of the area had been settled by Dionysius, and that their town was the sacred sanctuary of Nysa. Many of the Greeks twined ivy into wreaths, sang hymns and were 'promptly possessed by the God and raised the call of Dionysius, running in his frantic rout. . ..' This incident has long baffled scholars. The nearest god to Dionysius in the subcontinent is Shiva, and during the last century it was presumed that the Macedonians came across some Shivaites on their passage along the banks of the Indus. It is a convincing explanation, but there is a small problem. The Gujars were never Hindus and they never worshipped Shiva. The only possible solution is that the Greeks must have come across a
shin,
and equated one ecstatic cult with the other. There is a further link: the worship of the goat. The cult of Dionysius included the killing and eating of an ibex, an equally important part of the Gujars'
shin.
It is an interesting thought that I may not have been the first Westerner to be presented with a goat's leg by the Gujars. It could well be an honour that I unwittingly shared with Alexander the Great.

That night the sky towards Swat was illuminated with bright flashes of blue lightning. The storm grew slowly nearer, rain began to fall and the electricity in the bungalow flickered and died. The next morning the road was wet and glistening. We pulled on our rucksacks and set off up the track. If we did make it to the border, we would try to cross into China, link up with Polo's route, and push on to Kashgar. There we would put up our feet and make merry for two weeks. That, at any rate, was the plan. It did not get off to a good start. It was hot and humid and we trudged five miles without a lift. The rucksacks seemed miraculously to have doubled in weight since Mansehra. We were soon sitting on the verge waiting for a truck.

We were picked up by nine Afghans. They had hired a Datsun truck in Peshwar, and were driving it to the Chinese border. They claimed they were
mujahedin
on holiday, but this I think was more fiction than fact. Plump, lazy and well-educated, none looked remotely warlike and during the two days we were with them we did not hear a single campaign story.