In Xanadu (33 page)

'Aren't they?'

'No Baluchi is a policeman. The police force is Punjabi.'

'And they do that to all Baluchis?'

'Not
all.'

'So why to you?'

'Because I haven't got a driving licence. Every time they beat me.'

'It's happened before?' 'It happens every time."

Then why don't you get a driving licence?' 'I cannot afford it. It costs much baksheesh.' the Baluchi shrugged his shoulders and drove on.

Just after dawn we hit a tarmac road. It was cold. All night we had been so shaken and jolted that we had hardly noticed the temperature. Now, on tarmac, we felt the chill and huddled up, hands in our sleeves, shivering. The morning light was brittle and steely and in the silence it lit up a depressing landscape of bleached, white solitude; wadis, hills, cliffs and, everywhere, sand.

Then, as the sun was beginning to rise, we turned a comer and there opened up before us an extraordinary vision: a caravan of two hundred camels, winding their way to Quetta along the dip of a dry water course. In the lead was a huge Afghan, and behind him another, bearded like an Old Testament prophet, with a hooded falcon on his wrist. Some of the animals were loaded with tents and possessions, while one carried a woman hung from head to foot in gilded silk, with a grille for a face, sitting as upright and proud as a duchess in a landau. Behind the camels trailed a string of goats and sheep, and behind them a pack of little boys, ragged and dirty, chased the sheep with sticks and brought up the rear.

Two hours later we arrived in Quetta. After the camel caravan the desert had slowly sprung to life. At first we had come across a few temporary groups of black, felt
kibitka,
the deserted tents of Afghan shepherds, and after that some large white marquees belonging to relief workers. The black tents stood in groups of four or five, randomly placed in the middle of hillsides; the white ones stood singly in the valley bottoms surrounded by pens of barbed wire and besieged by small armies of Afghan refugees. The roads began to fill with trucks, brightly painted and inscribed in English: PUBLIC CARRIER-HORN PLEASE O.K.! USE DIPPER AT NIGHT. The letters were surrounded by medallions of Urdu calligraphy and nourishes of arabesque, broken into small fields of bright
primary
colours,
like
enamel
inlay
in
cloisonne
Jewellery. After
that
came
water
buffaloes,
plodding
bullocks,
tonga
pulled
by
blinkered
horses,
and
swarms
of
yellow
autorick-shaws
squealing
like
kicked
pigs.
There
were
the
film
hoardings,
with
the
stars
bathed
in
gaudy
blue
and
inferno
orange, and
there
were
the
buses,
all
filled
with
luggage,
leaving
the people
to
spill
out
onto
the
roof,
We
passed
posters
of
a
man
in a
lambskin
hat,
and
a
small
political
rally
led
by
a
tractor
and two
Baluchis.
They
were
carrying
a
banner
and
shouting.
We saw
peasants
leading
flocks
of
sheep
to
market,
and
a
trailer piled
high
with
farm
workers
carrying
embroidered
bags, sacks
of
grain
and
big
tin
pails
of
thickly
set
curds.
There
were no
Sikhs,
and
the
women
wore
heavy
white
chador.
but
otherwise
the
scene
was
instantly
recognizable:
it
was
a
typical, busy,
noisy,
dirty,
stinking,
bustling,
loud,
hot
town
in
north India.
It
was
like
a
homecoming
-
a
sight
which
I
knew
well, and
loved,
and
had
not
seen
for
three
years.