The Spiderweb

I am taken downstairs by Yusuf to see my new digs. As we descend the stairs, Yusuf stops.

"What do you think of Jean?" he has a bemused expression on his face. He must be in his early twenties. He reminds me of a young Al Pacino.

"Well..." I vacillate.

"Exactly. A bit crazy, hey? Did she make a pass?"

Seeing my own smile, he guesses.We carry on down. The digs are two rooms and a small entrance way. The entrance has a white painted iron gate with a large spiderweb motif on it. There's room for a couple of pedal bikes or a motorcycle.The first room has a sofa cum bed and a little table under the window. There is one chair in the corner. The further room has a tiny fridge and a large cupboard. There is a pokey kitchen off the second room and aa even pokier bathroom at the back.

"I'll keep my Murree beer in the fridge," says Yusuf. "I have to hide it from my Dad." He gives a charming and mischievous grin. I bring my bags down and say goodbye to Mrs Hashimoto.

"I'll know where to find you," she says archly and closes the Spiderweb gate/door. I settle in my new home.

Tariq Road is nearer where it all happens. It's busy by day and feels safe by night. I have an evening meal with Mrs Smythe. Her husband is a huge man in a T-shirt and jeans. He is very dark-skinned, like an Aborigine, and there is no sign of a turban or the five K's mentioned in my Sikhism course in college. He chuckles loudly, laughs loudly and even has a noisy smile. I like him, for all his lapsed Sikhism.

The Spiderweb

Mrs Smythe

There is no Mr Hashimoto.

Whether he doesn't exist or is dead or they're separated/ divorced, I can't tell. Maybe she has eaten him like some insects do.

The next morning we leave (separate bedrooms) and bump along to Tariq Road. Tariq Road is one of those Jekyll & Hyde locations. It's just one long street and is either a deserted thoroughfare with shreds of newspaper idling in the hot breeze, like today, or it's a sea of people diving in and out of endless shop fronts. Shops of shoes, material, cafes, sweets, more shoes and so on and on and on. There's also an irritating concrete divider preventing easy switching between lanes.

Halfway along, we turn into backstreets. We stop outside a low flat-topped building with just one storey.  Upstairs, I am introduced by Mrs Hashimoto to her friend, Mrs Smythe. (Not her real name, which I have forgotten, which is just as well.)

Mrs Smythe is a typical old-fashioned English housewife. Blustering, bubbly, wearing a loose printed dress. She has short and scruffy blond hair, is in her fifties with a florid face. She uses the Urdu word chakkar a lot slotted into English sentences. Sitting in the same room as Mrs Hashimoto, with her straight back, and neatly composed appearance, the contrast cannot be more vivid. I wonder how they can be friends, which the obviously are from their banter and ribbing. Mrs Hashimoto whoops: Mrs Smythe giggles.

Mrs Smythe's husband, she says, is a Sikh. I don't know whether to believe this. She also has a daughter, Maya, just reaching her teens - beautiful and tall. There's a son, too, Yusif, who is always dressed up in a jacket and tie, though he doesn't seem to do much. He is dark and handsome and speaks with an affected American drawl. I wonder what the father must be like.

Rahmania Mosque, Tariq Road. This is a much later addition.

Carry On in Karachi

Mrs H - Jean - is in her fifties. She could pass for someone younger, maybe in her forties, but her own assertion that she has " the figure of an eighteen - year - old" is a bit of a stretch.  I am thirty-one when I meet her and she kidnaps me.

Being a Misses, I assume a "Mister" is there somewhere, even if he's not actually home when we get there. I imagine Mr Hashimoto as a Samurai, with his honed hair splitting sword, dressed in a patterned knee-length dressing gown with dragons all over it. His hair is stretched back in a tight bun, his forehead shaved. He has the unmistakable rage plastered to his face...

Mrs Hashimoto sits next to me on her spacious settee. She is leaning close - too close for comfort, as they say.

She whoops again with excitement.

"Now then - what shall we do to celebrate?" She looks at me archly and reads my petrified paralysis as a coy come-on. Before she can steal that kiss, I am up and over near the door. I don't remember how I get there and stand like Captain Kirk after he has just been transported to the worst planet in the Star Trek universe.

Mrs Hashimoto has a bemused expression on her porcelain face.

Am I prepared to run around the house and its balcony with this married lady in pursuit?

She chuckles, lets it go and brings in tea.

The Geisha in the Red Car

Mrs Hashimoto has a little red car - little cars are particularly advantageous for a city like Karachi. The car is waiting outside Appa's house as if for a getaway. Mrs Hashimoto is inside.

"Get in - quick!" she shouts, clearly enjoying the adventure. The house is still - none of the servants are up yet.

Then Mrs Hashimoto laughs. It's a strange half manic half joyful sound as she pushes at the accelerator and brake with bare feet, a common practice of ladies in Karachi.

"I'll take you to my place," she says. We bump along the Karachi roads over potholes and mid-morning traffic. "I wonder what Mrs V will say when she hears you've been kidnapped!"

She laughs maniacally again. A sort of whooping sound and I wonder about the frying pan and the fire.

We don't go that far. The house is along Hali Road (Later converted to a school.) Hali Road can qualify as a boulevard with trees down the middle island. Mrs Hashimoto (I'll call her Jean) has a large house with a wraparound balcony. She lives in a second-floor apartment (house portion actually) overlooking a Russian hostel. The front gates are ramshackle, like the Ewell's in To Kill a Mockingbird. They are indented with hollow moon crescents and stars.

We go up a twisting stairwell, and I end up on a sofa in her living room, plushly decorated with cushions and elaborate furniture. Jean sits like a geisha, still and statue-like next to me.

Mrs Hashimoto.

Mrs. Hashimoto is sitting in the library. I have to issue some books for the school. The library is dark with a desk too big for the space available, and bookcases seem crammed into corners. Luckily our librarian is a small young lady and can fit in. Next to it, separated by the wall of books, is the students' lavatory.

Mrs Hashimoto has the carriage and the build of an opera singer. Her hair is a deep red - almost maroon. She has the bluest eyes I have seen, a deep, translucent blue that has been plucked from the Pacific Ocean. There are freckles on her porcelain white skin.She is from New Zealand (not, as first appears, from Japan). She greets me with a strange interrogative sentence.

"Hajimemashite," she says.

She has a perfect Japanese accent and a twang when she speaks English. She resents being called Australian or Aussie. She is the librarian at a local school - not far from our little section. She exudes culture and grace. and moves with an assured confidence of a woman who has been in Pakistan for some time.

Intrigued by my situation, she offers to arrange digs for me nearby. Her friend, a Mrs Smythe, is an English woman married to a Pakistani and has a ground room for rent. It is off Tariq Road, one of the main shopping centres of the city. We arrange to go the next day...

My First Observations.

I am ferried from school to Mrs. V's and from Mrs. V's to school daily in a white Toyota Corolla. Parkash, the driver, is a mild gentleman with the smallest hint of a smile on his face. He tells me, in his broken English, of his other jobs on merchant ships.

Mrs. V, or Appa (Big Sister), as she is also known by staff members, has gathered around herself a team of loyal and reliable helpers. It must have taken time...and character.While she is not here, I hear such words as "strict" and "discipline" to describe her. The students habitually wear looks of terror on their faces while describing her.

The White Toyota Corolla.

While in India in after graduating from college in 1980, I discovered the art of gregariousness. It continued while I was in Sudan. After duties at school, I would sit and chat with the locals. Wanasa it was called in Arabic in Sudan.

My time in M.Amin Noorani Street began to feel like confinement. I wanted to be out: meeting the locals. It is wonderfully quiet at Mrs. V's - Appa's - but there is a time for such quiet and haven. While she is not here, I just have the company of a cook, a chowkidar, and a driver.

I even try, unsuccessfully, to teach Babul, the cook, some English.

I am meeting teachers at the school - a science, a maths teacher and a strange English teacher, a Mr. Tayyab. I am amazed at how little the school needs in terms of staff to run.

The Cambridge Section

It is the time of a man called General Zia. I am only aware that he looks a bit like a racoon - eyesed version of Terry Thomas, famous for his "famous names" advert.

General Zia                                                                                                                                              Terry Thomas

There's the same obsequious smile and a face that shines when it's full-on, rather than in profile. (. I don't really become fully conscious of Mr Zia until 1988, the year that really made him famous.)

Now, in 1987, I am more concerned with getting started in a new school. It's just known as "The Cambridge Section" at present.

It is, in fact, a converted house, as with many schools in Karachi. Inside some of the classrooms, a leftover fireplace is visible. It is a pokey place but with a definite character of its own - one that would win many of us over so that we now remember it with real affection.

Oh, and there's the dome on top. The gunbad.

The Cambridge Section

Just visible in this rare photo of the back of the school.

The main office is circular - at the top balcony in the photo - it has wild west cowboy main doors as well as the usual ones.

The school is small and when I begin has only three classes VI, VII and VII. There are still some years before the first O level examinations.

A Racoon

RICKSHAWS

Rickshaws  AllOverYou                                                 

There are rickshaws alloveryou

there are rickshaws running                                                       

round and round you

taking you                                   

to and fro

taking you where

you want to go

rickshaws running roundyou

backwards and forwards

rickshaws running back toyou

taking me to you

and you to me

ricksaws running here and there

to and from

up and down

their circulating sound

and kickstart

running in one place

they ll go when you go

and stop when you stop

to keep me in a spin

to keep you in a spin

to take you on a spin

to spin and spin and spin

the wheels

where you go

rickshaws parked alloveryou

waiting for someone

waiting for a ride or two

waiting to take you

or me to you

or you to me

someone to take you to

someone to take to you

rickshaws running round and round

and round and round and round

back to where we started from

rickshaws alloveryou

SHEZAN!

I am staying at Mrs. V's , living in a guest room and fed by Babul, the cook. The night whistling is not a "big bird." It is the chowkidar or night watchman - they roam the streets on foot or by bike at night, whistling plaintively to each other.

This house has its own family: a cook and a mali (gardener) and a lady who sweeps the floors with a rush broom. There is also a driver, a Hindu, Parkash.

It is the end of March and school begins tomorrow on April 1st. The beginning of the school year.

It's early days and, Mrs V not being around, I am taken by car to a well-known shopping area : Tariq Road. The Principal's daughter (the little owner) drives me. She has that clipped accent, precise pronunciation, and English that would be the envy of many native speakers. There is a modern air to her; in spite of this, she has the traditional long braid. Like many South Asian women, she has the lithe, quick movements and expressive eyes.



At a junction with Tariq Road, always full of snaking queues of people, we turn into Allama Iqbal Road. She takes me into SHEZAN restaurant. After the sharp sun of the streets, it is gloomy. If anywhere defined the word "dive"  this is it. Everyone inside, including the waiters, has the look of being "up to " something.

Vague shadows lurk behind doorways and around tables, there is the murmur of whispered conversations. Kidnappers? Drug dealers? I have a club sandwich and an ice cream. The little owner chats away about how, when her husband is away, she is free to drive and do what she wants.

M.Amin Noorani Street

I find myself at

M.Amin Noorani Street
Tired with travel, ready to rest.

I'm shown upstairs, after a shower
And freshening. I lay on the floor

Undercover and eiderdown,
cossetted and coddled in the a.c.

Drained to a sleep filled with
Whistles of a bird in the night.

Waking to the peering perusal of
Shakespeare smiling oh so woodily

At me, a harbinger of heroes and
Villains and maybes and certainties,and

Willows and lillies, rotted and blooming
In bright morning classrooms.

I had said goodbye forever
To wet streets in rain riddled Reading.

Goodbye to olde Englande
To Jolly Olde Englande:

Its steeples and people
And proud politicians,

And green fields with sheep
I'd long for to count in my sleep.

                                                           The Hexagon, Reading

                                          Civic Offices, Reading, where my Dad worked.

                                                       Forbury Gardens, Reading

                                                                       George Street

                                                  Prospect Park Mansion House, Reading.

                                                                           Reading.
La da da dahh
Lah dah dah daaah.

Karachi

I spent my first night in Karachi at Mrs. V's. M. Amin Noorani Street, Kachi Memon Society, near Bahadurabad. It was a bungalow I was to get to know very well over the years.

I arrived late at night - the airport was the old Karachi Airport.It was stormed by terrorists in 2014 in June when my wife and I were on our way to the UK for a holiday. Our flight was delayed, but I got to meet Mansoor, an ex-student of mine and we chatted for some time. That was in the new Jinnah International Airport.

In March 1987, Zia ul Haq was in charge in the country. I was taken to the bungalow and after freshening up sent upstairs to sleep on the floor in an a.c. cooled room. That night is memorable - I heard the sounds of long whistles during the night, and half dreamed of large birds circling the house.

I woke to find myself in a room full of books and a wooden bust of William Shakespeare.

                                                        Jinnah International Airport

V is for Victor (y)

When I first flew out to Karachi, it was by PanAm - near the end of that airline's control of the skies. At the airport (Heathrow) I met the husband of Mrs. V, Mr. V. His  "V" stood for Victor. He was a wiry man, very erudite and I discovered later he was a Man of Letters. He was to write a novel: "Sacred Crow."

Victor handed me a plastic bag of goodies to take back for his wife. He disappeared before I could finish objecting - I remembered warnings about receiving stuff while in the airport. I went looking for security in my conscientious desire to stick to the rules.

Security turned out to be a huge uniformed man.

"Excuse me, I was just given...." I proffered the bag. Inside were cold, cooked meats.

"Put it down!" he barked.

I dropped it. Three other very large security men appeared and they all surrounded the bag.

"Everybody stay clear!" he ordered.

He tried to peek inside. I stood to one side.

"Look inside, Dick," said the first man.

Dick looked at him. He was probably the newest of the bunch, realising that last in first out applied to unexploded bombs as well. He opened the bag gingerly with one finger.

"It's meat," he said.

The big man looked at me.

I shrugged. "It's meat," I repeated. "Cold meats." Just to clarify.

They all relaxed and smiled. I was handed back the bag grudgingly and took it on board with me.

Once inside...

I was led by Mrs. V. into a small hall, leading to a dining area. There were boxes everywhere, piled on the dining table, covering the floor.

Mrs V

The boxes were filled with books for the school. As Mrs. V went to get some tea for me, I peeked inside one. "A Tale of Two Cities " Junior Reader. This was a book that seemed to follow me around the world - I taught it in Sudan during my two years there. (1984 -1986)  Other books that have followed me are Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" which I first came across in my sixth form, and Greene's "The End of the Affair." 

Others were science books, all at the junior level. Mrs. V. explained to me that they were for the new school in Karachi.

We chatted - it wasn't really an interview - and I felt I had been expected and accepted for the post. 

I have a feeling I was the only applicant. I'll never know. I left her place with no real expectations. She had struck me as earnest and sincere.