The Road Not Taken.

My long relationship with Religion (Capital R) began in my teens but intensified during a period of unemployment from 1981 to 1984. In college, Bulmershe College of Higher Education, I took a subsidiary course on Sikhism and Hinduism. During the four years that I was without a job, I began visiting Reading's Christian sanctuaries. I read about Buddhism, Zen Buddhism and Taoism. I joined the Transcendental Meditationists or TM-ers. I read and listened to, then visited Krishnamurti at  Brockwood.

I read, actually read, the Bible. I remember buying a Bible even in India where I travelled with Jones at the end of 1980 till May 1981. Eventually, I gave it away to some poor soul.

I inhabited Reading Library - then part of the Town Hall set of buildings. I read huge tomes about Christian theology. But I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to accept Christian belief and devotion, for I formed an affection for its founder, struggling with his struggles as portrayed through the New Testament.

I visited real religious communities to discuss my doubts.

Society of Friends (Quaker) Meeting House.

A Baptist Church.

The Christadelphians.

Bahai Faith Temple.

Christadelphian Church, Reading (Google Earth)

Quaker Meeting House, Reading.

I took the Imam of Reading Masjid to join in the worship. His visit wasn't reciprocated.

Seventh Day Adventist Church.

St. Mary's Church, Reading.

The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (Mormons)

Every Saturday, a group of "Born Again" Christians would preach on a corner in Reading. I would attend and watch. I made a few friends but never joined.

Along came Jones.

Indiana Jones

Suddenly there he is. He seems never to sweat and stands with his weather-beaten hat, his smile, his ..shortness. Jones comes just after Christmas. He has a good grasp of Urdu and a travel-may-care attitude that has brought him all the way across from India to Lahore. From there he has headed south (ish) to Karachi., where I meet him at the Central Railway Station.He has seen Wagah and shared a train carriage with some Sikhs who slept on the top bunk of a sleeper, with tickets being checked by an Edward  G. Robinson lookalike conductor. He is Jones, or his full name: Travelling-in-India-Jones.

Karachi Central Railway Station

Wagah

He stays in a small run-down hotel along Allama Iqbal Road, not far from SHEZAN!  restaurant and Jheel Park Jones likes anything flea bitten, dilapidated or beaten up. Somehow he has been followed by an Urdu Professor: Prof. Binks whom he has taken a dislike to. Prof. Binks has written big books on Urdu and Poetry. He tags along after Jones, usually a day or two behind, hoping for the recreation of some long-lost childhood adventure. 

"He's somewhere back there," Jones tells me. "I thought I lost him in Calcutta."

He tells me an incredible story of bumping into Binks three times at three stations purely by accident in a country with 852.3 million people crammed into cities and villages. (India)

He credits Binks with the nose of a badger.

Downtown, we wander along, past the Fish n Chip shop and Mr Chand's furniture store, which looks very dark and empty. Jones sports a loose sack hung over his right shoulder containing all his travelling needs. He dumps it in his room and we stroll along Tariq Road in the encroaching evening.
We stop by Cafe Liberty on the corner and have biryani in a booth-like cubby served by waiters in grubby white uniforms.

It's dark outside and we continue along the shop-lined avenue of paan shops, shoe shops, cloth and clothing merchants. We cross to an ice cream parlour looking new and sparkling in the meagre street lighting. Inside it is painfully bright and a few high stools are scattered against the large window overlooking the curious multitudes outside. There is no one else, and a friendly, elderly man picks up the scoop. Mr Falooda is small and wide with a nice neat clean apron wrapped around his midriff.

"What would you like?" he asks in a soft Peter Lorre rasp. I choose chocolate chip. Jones examines the open pots of strawberry, pineapple, lemon and other exotic delights. Het takes a strawberry one and we sit, sipping at the melting cream as it drips down the cones. Mr Falloda fusses around us, asking if we need anything more.

Jones and I talk about our travels together and of mutual acquaintances in England. Distance and time (it's been a few years) have driven a little barrier between us and Jones keeps referring to Karachi as my 'home.' Jones will be visiting for just a few days, then heading on to India, his love. I have a love of my own to tend to.

A Time of Transitions.

Anchorage Crescent on Google Earth.

My Mum lives in Anchorage Crescent, Doncaster. The house has a very long garden looking onto a line of poplar trees. Nearby is Cusworth Hall, one of the local big houses. I am used to Reading, so Doncaster is really new for me. This movement up north in Britain will also cause a shift from Heathrow to Manchester Airport. After a reasonably short break, I am back in Karachi which I am beginning to think of as my new and second home. England remains a place of idyll, a romantic dream. Green fields, clean air, holidays.

Cusworth Hall and Grounds near my Mum's house.

Back in the huge flat in Karachi, the place has an empty feeling. Vacant rooms and very little to do outside of work. The library is no longer there and Niggle has left. I spend time with the chowkidar downstairs. His name is Abdul Rahim and he has one aim: to make me a Muslim. I still go to Omer's place in the afternoons. After a while, the flat begins to depress me. The school remains a kind of haven of work - the students are really good. I am teaching geography to Class VI as well as English to Class IX.

It has been announced that Intermediate Colleges will only accept candidates if they have done local examinations - Islamiyat and Pakistan Studies. So there is news that Cambridge International Examinations are introducing these subjects as O levels. Some students won't mind as they are planning to go on straight to A-levels after their O level examinations. However, this will lead to control problems in a classroom with students with mixed aims. I shall be teaching the geography aspect of Pakistan Studies. It will mean learning/ teaching from scratch.

The Sweet Sorrow of Parting

The Late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

With my second year coming to an end, word is getting about that I am leaving. The staff set up a farewell party in a Chinese restaurant. The students are agitated.

The space-mobile

I am still teaching Omer on the other side of Hill Park, but these days he picks me up in his space-mobile silver minibus, which is driven by a a maniac - Fareed. Fareed is a young, clean shaven northerner from Neelam Valley in Kashmir. Normally he is a smiling, mild mannered gentleman. Inside the silver lightspeed van he turns into some kind of demon.He's the same in Suzukis, Toyotas - anything with wheels. He also likes playing Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan"s "Mast Qalandar" (Remix version) VERY LOUD. Omer himself has learned the art of "peeling" using the wheels of whatever vehicle he gets to drive, spinning them while remaining stationary, producing a high pitched and painful screeeeeech. Boys. (He makes sure his parents don't find out.)

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Dam Mast Qalandar Mast Mast

Niggle is getting more... niggled... as he has a lot of disagreements with Appa. Appa is the mistress of generating a lot of short term hatred aimed at herself - until the hater realizes she is only just trying to make him or her learn. Niggle doesn't have the sense and blunders back to our flat and rants while I sit quietly and listen. I am alarmed, as his rants now include diatribes against his chosen religion. I can't blame him, after his marital disappointments, but I feel I ought to tell someone about his toppling towards "unconversion" if that is possible. I know Appa won't be the right choice, so I think the daughter of our founder might be best. She, however, thinks I have some rivalry with Niggle and may think I am making it up. I decide it's none of my business.

Near the end of term, and the school year, a delegation of students from Class IX corner me in the school. They want me to stay with them at least till they take their O levels in two years. I am touched.

At home, while Niggle is teaching Hafeez to "keep his pecker up" he is ranting against Appa.

"When I leave here - the night before - I will take the Quran and throw it through her window," he says. It's the last thing I remember him saying. I will always have a feeling of pain when I remember Niggle.

One day before going back to England, I walk through Hill Park. It is an evening and quite balmy and hot. There is a lake where some lonely looking birds wade and a few children float boats about, their parents chatting nearby. Hill Park is like Safari Park, a dusty expanse with a few trees and some abandoned fairground rides. I realize then, sitting by the lake, that I have fallen in love. And all my affections and feelings will stem from that first feeling of attachment.

I decide to return.

http://www.techofheart.co/2008/08/dama-dam-mast-qalandar-translation-of.html

Hill Park Lake - not the most romantic of locations...?

A new home, a pistol and a bomb.

It is about to turn 1989 and we are to move to a new place. We being Niggle and I. This is the second year of my two - year contract and I am mentally preparing to leave at the end of the school year in May. I shall miss the Spiderweb, with its bustle, but I suppose paying two rents for separate rooms is a drag for the school management. Niggle seems happy with the arrangement.

We are invited to Mrs Hashimotos in Hali Road for dinner with a few other Karachi notables: a police chief, and a local politician. Mrs H puts on a good traditional Sunday lunch with chicken and roast potatoes and veg. The police chief sits next to me and places what appears to be a dead pigeon wrapped in a handkerchief on the table next to his plate. Mrs H stares at him with her glittery blue eyes. The chief unwraps the handkerchief to reveal a tiny pistol - so small it seems like a toy. Mrs H whoops.

Later we sit in the sitting room of her failed seduction and she gives her rendering of the Muslim Azaan, to the bemused smiles of our two locals. In the kitchen, Mrs H stops me by the arm.

"Is Niggle all right?" she asks. I frown.

"He won't even look me in the eye," she says. Obviously, he is impervious to her charms.

"He's a Muslim convert," I say. She nods knowingly.

"I see." Then she whoops.

Mrs H has been good to me, in spite of the failed attempt to "catch" me. She is there when I need help and gives tons of advice about living in Karachi. ( E.G."Three things you need are a car, a telephone and some knowledge of Urdu to order people around") I leave behind a little gift for her on her sideboard - an ornate handcrafted papier-mache box.

Our new place is not too far away from the Spiderweb, in Rehman Appartments on New M.A Jinnah Road, the way to Quaid - i - Azam's Mazhar or Mausoleum. The school is just around the corner.

The flat is huge, with three bedrooms en-suite and a large open area as well as a dining room. Most of it will remain unfurnished. We each take an en-suite bedroom. Along with the flat s a "servant" - Hafeez - and a  larger TV on which we can watch Neelam Ghur. Niggle disappears for two weeks at Christmas 1988 only to return late one night and flop back in his room and sleep for two days.

Early in February, a terrible incident occurs. the British Council Library in Bleak House Road is targetted in a bomb attack.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/02/27/bomb-rocks-british-site-in-pakistan/6eee1c1a-aa51-4945-a2cb-dd2efa6fabed/?utm_term=.8949861c2eec

The reason is Mr Salman Rushdie and his controversial book "The Satanic Verses."

Salman Rushdie

Strange days.

The school exam - not so long ago.

I am worried about Niggle, who is showing marriage withdrawal signs. His divorce has gone through successfully and he is getting more and more unhappy. Nothing affects his teaching, however. He is a hit with the boys in the class, as he is a Muslim, and I feel the pressure on to follow suit. He calls it the "cherry on the cake" this charismatic effect of being a convert. I resist, grinning and bearing it.

Meanwhile, Appa is more and more worried about the fate of the section as the government reveals discrimination against O level students in the choices for seats in the leading Medical and Engineering colleges. Niggle and I are sent to investigate.

I make my way to Dawood College of Engineering, to meet the Dean/Principal there. Walking through a rather shabby and dilapidated campus, I am given admission to the study with its whirring AC and plush seats. The desk is huge, and the small figure of the Dean sits behind it. I know immediately how this will go.

Niggle and I meet to compare notes then tell Appa the bad news. Only a designated number of seats will be allocated to ) level based candidates. The best route, and the least risky one, for most students, will be to give up Cambridge and follow the Matriculation line to make it easier to get a place. We lose a sizeable number of girls in Class IX, the seniormost class. Only two brave souls are left: Hina and Farah. The rest - eleven of them - are boys.

The shrinking of early batches is a risk Appa is prepared to take - pursuing a quality education. It makes little sense to the management, who see the school as a business, but Appa digs in her heels.  The O levels are still two years ahead of us.

At the end of the term, Niggle entertains the rest of the staff with his laid-back approach to invigilation, by 1) sitting down; 2) reading a paperback during the examination. Appa has been very strict about this. We are to remain 'vigilant' for the two hours or so. Tensions have been growing between Appa and Niggle anyway.

We take the students out for a trip to the wrongly named Safari Park in Karachi. It's a depressing place with lots of sand and a few shrubs and one or two trees. The animals, such as they are (a few scruffy deer, a dejected peacock, a donkey and a horse) scratch about and the students whine to go home.

Safari Park, Karachi

Later tells me how one of the students, Fatima, managed to get stuck up a tree. He had to catch her and carry her to settle her down. I am a bit alarmed. Here girls are never ever to be touched by men. We had a woman teacher, the chemistry Miss, with us - he could've called her. I say nothing, however.

"She is so light..." he says. Well, she is a teenager and a very skinny one at that.

"Lah - di - dah," he says. And then concludes, "Muddle - muddle."

Fatima is exhilarated by the incident and just in case she gets wrong ideas, is given a lecture by the aforesaid chemistry Miss.

Small picture of a small TV

By the end of the year a new face is on our TVs. Omer has given me a tiny TV, about the size of a matchbox, to watch. Niggle and I watch "Neelam Gur" a local quiz show with Tariq Aziz. The new face is much prettier and also that of a trailblazer for women in politics. A muslim country has its very first female Prime Minister.

Karachi I'm Yours

The new school year begins on April 1st (1988) and I am freed of my duties to the other school section - the massive Matriculation institute next door. This is much to the displeasure of my Head there, Ms Nazeem. I will miss her and her lively staff - most teachers in the school are women, all very dedicated and hardworking. I am able, however, to concentrate on my duties to the Cambridge students.

Niggle is charming the students of Class VIII with Julius Caesar. I hear choruses of "Caesar! Caesar!" from his classroom next door. It spills out to the play area and during the break. It is made all the more poignant by the Roman pillars that greet you as you enter the school ground from the road outside.

I continue to teach Omer at his home and he takes me to his father's office at Kashif Centre on the main Sharea Faisal that connects the main city (the CBD) to the airport. He's up on the twentieth floor and the inside is plush with a meeting room more like a banquet hall. I usually walk to Omer's home through Hill Park in the afternoon after school.

Hill Park

Saturdays I go to the British Council Library by rickshaw, Passing places that soon become familiar: Frere Hall, FTC, Metropole Hotel, Cantt Station.

 Frere Hall

 Sharea Faisal

Cantt Station

I meet Mr Chand outside his furniture shop in the evening. He takes me inside to look at the handmade chairs and tables. It is a vast array of imitation antique craft work. I meet Askari - a homoeopathic doctor and pir.  He is immaculate looking, dressed in a white sherwani and the "Jinnah" cap. He is staying at a hotel, and I am invited by Mr Chand to his room. Inside is a dishevelled bed and a rather suspicious looking hairless bodied young man draped only in a sheet. Mr Askari merely beams at me unashamedly. I quickly leave.

Niggle and I sit in the evenings. I don't see him pray very much - except once when we saunter through nearby Jheel Park one night. There is a full moon and it sheds beautiful light onto an open shiny concrete area in the park.

"Lahdidah," says Niggle. I often hear him say this. I assume he is invoking the name of his errant Shaykh. Niggle looks at me and smiles.

"Lahdidah."

Then he runs to the moonlight flooded platform under the almost invisible palm trees and begins praying. I wait in the dying light enjoying the silence and suspense of the moon above. I remember the scene in "A Passage to India" where Dr. Aziz stumbles across Mrs Moore in a mosque.

Niggle sips back and nods.

"OK?" I ask

"Lah - dih - dah," he says contentedly.

Jheel Park

We saunter again out through the main gate back into the bustle of Tariq Road.

Karachi - Pakistan - begins to perform its magic on me. And I realize I am slowly, gradually falling in love...

Death of Zia ul Haq

THE DEATH OF GENERAL ZIA UL HAQ

General Zia

Shortly after the beginning of term and the customary Pakistan Independence Day celebrations, news of the death of General Zia ul Haq hits the headlines. He is not a big part of our lives, Niggle and I, and school carries on regardless with stoppages for the news and the funeral.

Niggle and I are walking along Tariq Road when the electricity fails all along the road and we pick our way past darkened shop fronts and around carts. There is the effervescent fizz of electrical tension in the air and lots of people running and shouting.

There is news of a plane crash or an explosion on board a plane - fuel for numerous conspiracy theories in the years to come. The presidency is handed over to Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

Ghulam Ishaq Khan

A political ferment takes place and, as happens in Pakistan, there is the feeling of the country's potential and growth.

Niggle and I make it back safely to our little ground floor rooms and we sit drinking Mirinda and chatting into the night. Niggle is still hurting from his impending divorce and tells me of the dynamics of the relationship have an inner and outer complexity.

Niggle seems a bit lost. The school work is a great anchor for him - it gives him a sense of purpose that he seems to have lost at some fundamental level. And he seems to be losing Faith. 

I worry about that.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/18/world/zia-of-pakistan-killed-as-blast-downs-plane-us-envoy-28-others-die.html?pagewanted=all

Niggle.

Just as there are people who just...well...disappear (Ali, Omer, Rahmatullah) there are those who just as suddenly appear.

Niggle just arrives. I imagine him wandering along the service lane outside the school and then wandering into the main school office. This is practically what he tells me later. He has some sort of interview and is hired. He stays for a year (1988 - 89 school year) and then just as promptly disappears.

Just like a character in the film "Americana." (1981) Played by David Carradine. (It's Niggle's own analogy.)

Niggle is an English "revert." This is not a term I particularly like, being too much like "pervert" and "retard." (I prefer the word "convert.") He is a Shia Muslim and a member of a sort of group-cum-commune run by a Shaykh, whom I will have to call Shaykh Lahdeedah to protect the innocent. Shaykh here meaning a spiritual leader.

His story is a bit complex. He came for the group and basically was shunned, or ousted. Then he had some problems with his wife which ended in divorce while he was teaching with me. The Shaykh ran off with his wife...

Term begins in 1988 and he is given Class VIII while I have Class IX.  There are still two years before the first O level batch to appear. I ask Mrs Smythe if she has any other accommodation - and she has. Just round the corner from the Spiderweb is another empty little ground floor apartment. It's Maya (Mrs Smythe's daughter) who gives him the name "Niggle." Actually, he has a Muslim name and a (proper) English name.

Being a Shia Muslim he carries around a little flat piece of clay which rests his head on when he prostrates in prayer.

Saeed at the Photocopiers

As we come to the end of my first year in Karachi, the school is pulling together. Our Cambridge Section needs to be registered and has to be running for two continuous years to be eligible.

Meanwhile, the workload is increasing and I realise that more resources are needed. One resource Karachi has plenty of is photocopiers - on street corners, in shops and in back lanes. One such photocopier and crew are near the Spiderweb. I make a daily visit to get copies of comprehensions and other worksheets for the students, making my own lesson plan materials to help raise the standard of work. The photocopy shop - or office - is in a back lane near a hairdresser. It is open till quite late and run by Naveed. His English is not bad, a little staccato, but quite able to express his views on General Zia or the latest political crises.

The alley is poorly lit and next to the photocopy enclave is an entrance to flats above; it is merely a dark space with no lighting on the stairs. Most nights, at about seven, a figure emerges.Saeed. Whenever he does, Naveed the photocopy operator gives me a look that would be the equivalent of a nudge with the elbow.

Saeed is an oddity - obviously well off, and well spoken. He's in his mid-twenties.He chats with me (in English) for some while about life, especially "Life without wife." He looks into the darkness of the stairs.

                                            Life without wife
                                            is like a knife,
                                            That curses the life."

He utters, chewing on a toothpick. With that, he disappears. Till the next evening.

Naveed waits for him to go.

"He has someone," he says cryptically."Upstairs." He adds. Then nods up the stairs. I stare into the gloomy blackness waiting for 'someone' to appear. Naveed grins.

Days later, in Cafe Liberty just down the road, Saeed tells me the story of the wife whose husband is away, and whose return he fears while he, Saeed, is with her.

It seems he has got himself caught up in one of the commonest tangles in life and it has done nothing but intensify his feeling of loneliness. In spite of this, and the obvious condemnation of the society he finds himself in, he's a nice guy.

I suppose everyone has that someone to wait for or be with, somewhere.

Appa

Barri Appa and Appa

The old school stretches back to 1948 and is a labour of love and dedication.

I join the British Council Library on Bleak House Road near the Cantt Station. It becomes a delight to visit every Saturday. A haven of books and cleanness. A quiet place where boys and girls meet and smile and laugh together. Appa and I go together and register at the same time.

It's an uneasy relationship with Appa at the moment. She is very strict with teachers, students, admin and the rest of the management. The students fear her, respect her and, underneath, a core of love is growing. Appa loves those who are dedicated, and sincere. She is a practical idealist and a perfectionist. She has the knack of attracting the right kind of people - even down to the gardener or cleaner - people who are loyal. She comes down hard on mistakes, but under her, we learn. She teaches us how costly mistakes can be. In spite of this, she is forgiving and generous.

Barri Appa and Appa (Centre)

Over in the main school, which specializes in Matriculation rather than O level, I am working for Ms Nazeem. She is in charge of the junior section. A small lady, she is frank and strict with the kids. I teach Classes V and Vi and she likes to observe me and sends teachers in droves to sit at the back of the class. With temperatures over 30 degrees C, I am usually dripping sweat.(Literally).

Appa is angry because my time is being taken from the O level school and I am being used in the other school. She has one of her "blood feuds" (her words) with the management. She is very protective and possessive of me, making sure I am properly treated. Occasionally I am invited back to her place in M.Amin Noorani Street for coffee and to chat about the school and its progress. She depends on me to clarify some of the aims. Together we put together an idea to hold assemblies each morning in the school. Students will choose topics and with the help of class teachers make a presentation for the rest of the school.

The students are enthusiastic and lovers of learning and I am glad I left England to teach such highly motivated children.

Barri Appa and Appa much later.

(Pictures generously donated by Happy Home School)

New Year : 1987 - 88

Winter here is two weeks of slightly milder weather. There is even a little rain. School breaks up just before Christmas or Quaid -  i -  Azam's birthday. Then we have just over a week's holiday.

Maya, Mrs Smythe's teenage daughter comes down to visit nearly every day. And of course, Yusuf has his stash of Murree beer in the little fridge. He tells me to help myself anytime. I'm not a big drinker anyway.

Along with my Christian acquaintances, there are Muslim ones. Rahmatullah was introduced to me by the "little owner" (see my post SHEZAN!) He is an ice cream seller and a convert. His group - a sort of Sufi outfit - meet at Sakhi Hasan district. They' re a peaceful lot and talk about the esoteric side of Islam. A few of them are German.

One of the faces of Sufism.

One late afternoon in winter Rahmatullah comes to visit me in the Spiderweb. It is getting quite dusky and he tells me he has to do the sunset prayer before it is too late. I have no prayer mat and he spreads his coat. I am accustomed to watching the seemingly over elaborate prayer ritual from my time in Sudan. After, he leaves as always offering any assistance before he goes.

When he is gone there is a tingling presence in the room after his prayer. An aura. It stays when I go out for dinner and is there, faintly, when I return. That night I have my first out of the body experience. Sleeping, I look down and see myself lying in the bed, sleeping. I am there, hanging, for the whole night till morning. I wake curious and bemused.

Out of the Body???

In winter 1988 the school's opening is delayed and I wander (by train and jeep) up to Quetta and Ziarat. It's just before New Year's Day when I book a room at the Mariner's Hotel in Quetta. I am reading "The Day of the Jackal" by Frederick Forsyth. It rains while I am in the dining room when a huge cart of oranges loses its load outside.In the traffic we rush out to collect the fruit, the old wagon driver slipping between cars and trucks to save his precious produce.  

In Ziarat it is -21 Degrees centigrade at night on New Year's Eve.I bump into a fellow Karachi-ite, togged in a grey suit and hat, looking like Steed from "The Avengers." He is wearing a cravat and is a thoroughly nice chap. We form a group with two students and a Peruvian cyclist who has come overland by bike from Peshawar. The four of us book a heater and celebrate the New Year. The boys have brought biscuits and the man, a cake. We meander out in the evening and have some dried bits of chicken in a tent while bearded, turbaned locals sing their latest hits accompanied by no more than rapping (banging) on old tin utensils.The next day I visit the Quaid's residence and his final place on this earth.

The return journey from Quetta by train is via the Bolan Pass.

The Bolan Pass.