Around the World in 50 Years (10 page)

What kind of people would so violate the customary rules of survival as to pillage a disabled vehicle and steal the equipment we needed to repair it? The lawless tribesmen who inhabit the rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, that's who. Those independent, rifle-toting toughs who recognize no nation, no law, and no loyalty but to their clan. The same tribe of insolent hombres who, decades later, gave shelter and assistance to Osama Bin Laden.

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After crossing Pakistan and India and visiting Nepal (where we sold Steve's old Jeep), we were so far behind schedule that East Pakistan was submerged by the monsoon, which sunk our plan to tow the camper across it. Manu, Willy, and Woodrow took a ship with the camper from Calcutta to Bangkok, where we agreed to rendezvous, while Steve and I headed the Cruiser toward the border between India and East Pakistan, hoping to get through before the threatened war began.

We were taken under Indian military escort to a bridge over a tributary of the Ganges that separated India from East Pakistan. Two Indian customs officers carefully checked our papers, reluctantly stamped our passports, and watched us suspiciously as we crossed the long, untrafficked bridge between the two countries.

In the car I mused that “If the Indians think we're Pakistani spies…”

Steve finished my thought: “… the Pakis are going to think we're Indian spies.”

And that was exactly what they did think: We were greeted with the command to take every item out of the car for inspection.

We foresaw difficulty: Our pistol was in Steve's overnight bag, and the irascible officers were looking for some way to bust our chops. It was showtime.

“Every bag?” I asked the officer, holding one up. “This one, too?”

“Every one!”

I put the bag I was holding down and grabbed two more. “How about these?”

“Yes, those, too.”

The officers stepped up and began searching through the bags as I pulled them out of the car. As they did, I'd open up others and helpfully dump clothing and supplies all over the bags they had started to search. In a few minutes I'd addled them. As the officers took a bag out of one door I'd surreptitiously slide it back in the other. I picked up an aerosol can of foaming mosquito repellent and insisted the officers let me squirt some on their arms for protection. Then I went for the backrest massage machine. I plugged it into the cigarette-lighter socket and invited the officer in charge to sit inside the Cruiser and try it. He was reluctant but, after much prodding, agreed, and I turned the vibrator on. In seconds the officer was purring contentedly, his eyes half-closed, like a housecat having his belly rubbed. Then the junior officer wanted to have his turn. Then the sergeant. When they resumed checking the bags they had no idea which they had searched and which they had not. In the end, they overlooked the gun bag and returned our passports. We breathed a tremulous sigh and drove on.

The country northeast of Calcutta and well into East Pakistan is a vast alluvial plain where, during the monsoon, jute grows in endless waves in the flooded fields. Every now and then a wide-rooted tree or thick cluster of bamboo broke the flat contour of the land. Along the elevated roads, built atop high embankments of hardened mud, slow-moving oxcarts hauled freshly cut bamboo and dried jute. The villages looked as they had throughout India: mud houses with pounded earth out front, where withered women stuffed twigs and leaves beneath blackened pots on mud hearths to heat their tea water.

Ferry boats and river steamers were the main means of transportation during the monsoon season. To reach Dacca, the capital, we had to take four of them. We drove into Dacca a little past noon on the second day. It was not an attractive or impressive city, with little to see and less to do. The U.S. State Department Personnel Office classified it as a hardship post.

We located the Government Tourist Bureau, from which we hoped to get a letter of introduction to facilitate our trip across the country. The deputy director was cordial and listened with keen interest about our travels, but when we explained our plan to drive to Chittagong in the southeast part of his country and from there on to Burma, he declared: “Gentlemen, I doubt if you can do it.”

“We realize it's difficult,” Steve admitted. “We know Burma has been closed to foreigners for years. All we want to do is give it a try.”

The director paused before speaking: “I don't believe you understand. Haven't you heard the latest news? The hostility from India has caused a crisis. The Indians have bombed Lahore. There is no telling what will happen next. You had better register immediately with the police.”

We promptly drove to police headquarters. In the Foreigner's Registration Office we found half a dozen officers huddled around an old radio. They interrupted their excited conversation only long enough to ink our names in the registration book, the only entries, I noticed, in many days. The officer adjusting the radio dials anxiously glanced at a clock on the opposite wall. The president of Pakistan, Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, was to address the nation in five minutes. All heads leaned toward the radio as the slow but truculent voice of their president announced that Pakistan was at war with the treacherous Moslem-hating Indians who'd been armed by a devious America.

We left the office to find crowds gathering in the street. Newsboys screamed the headlines: “LAHORE BOMBED. EMERGENCY DECLARED.” A squadron of Pakistani jets roared overhead. We drove to a gas station to fill our tank and spare cans. Fifty cars and trucks were ahead of us, hoping to buy gas before it was rationed. As we waited in line the station manager came over to complain about the military aid America had given India.

“We helped arm India so she could defend herself against China,” Steve explained.

“India used you. We warned it was a trick so India could get your guns to use against us.”

“But look at your own army,” I replied. “Every gun, tank, and plane you have is from the U.S. while India has British planes and German rifles and only a few American weapons. Every one of your pilots and officers has been trained by America.”

He could not see our point. We had betrayed Pakistan, and that settled it.

A trucker rushed up to us, waving a fist, yelling, “Americans help India. You are no longer our friends. Yet even though the Indians have your guns, we will crush them anyway.”

“But you're outnumbered four to one by five hundred million Indians whose soldiers may well be crossing your borders now,” I said.

“We are not worried. Indians are moral cowards. We are Moslems. We have moral courage. This is key. We will win. We will crush them.”

We gassed up and headed for the first of the three ferries we'd have to take to reach Chittagong to exit the war zone. At the ferry landing ten miles east of Dacca we handed our papers to the guard who, without looking at them, handed them back, shaking his head. “No ferry,” he said.

“But we must take the ferry.”

“There are no ferries,” he repeated. “The government has taken them all into service. You might try the steamer in Narayanganj.”

We rushed to Narayanganj and through its narrow streets to the waterfront, where we saw a steamer loading cargo. We ran to the top of the gangplank, where the mate said that if we wanted to book passage we'd have to go to the shipping office. We copied down the address and, after a half hour's search, found it.

“Sorry,” a clerk said, “but the
Harappa
is not leaving Narayanganj.”

“But she's loading now. We saw it.”

“Maybe so, but we have just received orders from the commanding general of the port that no ships are to leave until orders come from the high command in Dacca. You should return to Dacca and find yourself a hotel and wait. Even if you did get authorization to board, and even if we did get authorization to sail, you couldn't pass beyond Chandipur. The military has the road blocked.”

We took his advice and drove to the American Consulate in Dacca to register. After checking our passports a guard led us to an agitated foreign service officer who was on the telephone: “All Americans are to report to the Consulate … No, we'll try to keep you posted … No, we have no official word … No, all communications have been cut.”

When the officer hung up we introduced ourselves and explained that we'd just driven into the country. He was startled. He asked us to wait, rose quickly, and ducked into an office. In a moment he was back. “Mr. Bowling, the consul general, would like to see you,” he said.

Bowling sat behind an impressive but cluttered desk flanked by the flags of the U.S. and the State Department. Three foreign service officers were poring over the newspapers on the coffee table as a secretary took notes. They were dressed in sports clothes, and I remembered it was Labor Day back home.

“You've picked a highly unlikely time to be driving through East Pakistan,” the consul began. “And my assistant tells me you're journalists. I don't think the Paks will be too pleased when they find out—you'd be the only foreign reporters here.”

“But we didn't come here to write about the war.”

“Tell that to them! I advise you to keep out of sight and out of trouble until this whole thing has ended. I wish you luck.” We were dismissed.

Next morning, under the headline:
CHITTAGONG BOMBED,
I read: “Indian Air Force planes launched unprovoked, cowardly attacks on civilian targets in Karachi, Chittagong…”

I scanned the next column, headlined
RESPONSE FROM EAST PAKISTAN
: “President Ayub's call to his countrymen to crush the Indian aggression on our sacred territory met with an immediate, spontaneous response from East Pakistan. The 60,000,000 people of the province now stand as one man behind Ayub to protect the sovereignty and sanctity of every inch of our soil.…”

The government's propaganda machine was trying to stir up the East Pakistanis, and for good reason: All the face-to-face fighting was in the other half of Pakistan, near Kashmir, 1,500 miles away and separated by Indian territory. Ayub's regime needed the support of East Pakistan to furnish soldiers and equipment and to put pressure on India's back, so he was involving them through the press and radio. But the aroused people of East Pakistan saw no invading troops, no one to release their wrath upon—except those who aroused suspicion. And who better than foreigners?

It became unsafe for foreigners to walk the streets. Several Americans were dragged from their cars and beaten. The media warned the populace to watch for suspicious-looking people and report them. The military exhorted the citizens to arm themselves and to shoot enemy guerrillas on sight, a directive that had to be modified when several Pakistani pilots were shot by their own people after bailing out of their disabled planes.

Most menacing was the appeal to the students: They were encouraged to become vigilantes, enforcers of the emergency defense laws. When a curfew was placed on Dacca they patrolled the streets hunting for violators, and during air-raid blackouts they combed the residential sections searching for glimmers of light, beating on fences and doors with sticks as a warning.

Steve and I were in a particularly uncomfortable position: We did not have diplomatic immunity or any cognizable function in Dacca, as the other Americans did. We had no friends there. Nor did we have a plausible excuse for being there. Who'd believe we were driving around the world through the middle of a war? It also looked as if we'd no longer even have a place to stay: Our hotel workers were casting increasingly suspicious looks at us. We expected our door to come crashing down any night and vigilantes to drag us into the street. We had no way to escape. Nor could we communicate with the outside world: All postal, telephone, and cable services had been terminated. We headed to the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) to ascertain if there was some way to send word to the Expedition members who were waiting for us in Bangkok.

When we reached the USIA, the staffers were boarding up the windows. We learned that the university students were on their way to protest America's aid to India and might attempt to sack the library. We weren't in East Pakistan to cover the war, but we could at least get photographs. I dashed across the street and into a four-story office building whose balconies offered a perfect vantage point for taking pictures. I raced up the concrete stairs and knelt down on the third-floor balcony, concealed from the street, while Steve hid himself in a parked bus. I soon heard the shouts of the marchers coming down Topkhana Road and screwed a telephoto lens on my camera.

The day after the 1965 war began between India and Pakistan, the irate citizens of Dacca, capital of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), staged an angry march on the United States Information Agency, claiming America was providing arms to the Indians. I came within seconds of being lynched.

Suddenly, two soldiers came up behind me and dragged me inside, into a large room whose door read:
CIVIL DEFENSE HEADQUARTERS AND OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF DACCA.