Living in Kashmir: A Year of People, Places and Memories
A Snowy Heart-Stopper
It was mid-winter, and perhaps communications had been poor, or delayed, or simply overwhelmed by the particular chaos that descends upon mountain airports when snow falls. Perhaps it was just human error. My husband, a military pilot, had flown in the Antarctic just a couple of years earlier, and he understood what hazardous conditions looked like and what it truly meant to abort a landing on late finals. His hand tightened around mine. It was barely two months since an Air New Zealand flight had crashed into Mt Erebus in the Antarctic.
Here, we were surrounded by snow covered mountains. The plane rallied and roared its way aloft.
The story we were eventually told was both extraordinary and, in its way, entirely of its place and time. The runway was blanketed in snow, and lacking any appropriate working machinery to clear it, the airport authorities had sent out dozens of workers with brooms to sweep it by hand.
Dozens of men, sweeping a runway, whilst an aircraft circled above.
Needless to say, we landed safely, and we are here to tell the tale, though the memory of that flight has stayed with us.
Poverty
The scenes of poverty were expected, in the way that one prepares oneself intellectually for something one has read about and seen on television. That preparation was wholly insufficient when confronted with the reality.No amount of foreknowledge softened the sight of a man whose limbs were so completely twisted that his hands and feet met the ground whilst his body faced the sky. He was a figure of such suffering that it cannot be forgotten.
The maimed children seated at the roadsides, small hands outstretched, were a sight that settled somewhere in my mind, and that sight has not left.
Alcohol and the Art of Concealment
Murree beer, served quite openly in the Intercontinental Hotel in Rawalpindi, was unexpected, and not a little incongruous, in a Muslim country. In 1977, Prime Minister Bhutto had imposed alcohol prohibition across Pakistan. The law was later amended under President Zia-ul-Haq to permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol.
More memorable still was a small restaurant tucked somewhere in the winding streets of 'Pindi, where an empty teapot arrived at the table alongside the meal. We were quietly advised that this was the vessel of concealment, that any alcohol would be poured discreetly within it, so that to any passing eye, every table in the room appeared to hold nothing more suspicious than a pot of tea.
An elaborate, good-humoured method for finding a way, even under prohibition, to raise a quiet cup to life.
1. Murree Beer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murree_beer
2. Murree brewery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murree_Brewery
A roller coaster post today. From the humour of the alcoholic teapot, to the horror of the poverty and suffering, to the terror of that flight. The latter even more so with an experienced professional pilot beside you. So pleased you survived - the pilot earned his pay that day. As for sweeping the runway….
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