PESHAWAR:

Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar was once the main stopping point for businessmen carrying their goods from Afghanistan and other countries in Central Asia into the sub-continent. As legend has it, storytellers would amuse businessmen while sipping on Qahwa, carrying with them tales from their homeland.

Many who experienced the market at its peak describe it as a news hub, where traders from Central Asia and other countries would share updates on business, trade, food, clothes, and even the weather. This bazaar along a well-worn trade route has heard tales of progress and destruction from localities around Asia. But over the years the market has fallen into disrepair, and the charm it once had has become overshadowed by the issues that plague it, which include poor sanitation and overcrowding. This has some long-time residents pining for the Qissa Khwani of old.

Remembering the past

“I have been here for almost six decades and I haven’t moved even an inch,” Zar Jan, 70, who sells Qahwa from a makeshift wooden shop and sleeps in one of the small rooms of the hotel he owns. “I am witness to the wreckage—from bomb explosions in the early 80s to the vehicle-born suicide attacks between 2007 to 2010,” Jan said. “This market has fallen right in front of my eyes.’

Sitting inside his room, Jan reminisces about how comfortable life was here a few decades ago. Now, he said things are different for people like him who started businesses in Qissa Khwani in the past. Traders from different countries used to sit comfortably in the market but it is now too crowded to walk through, and visitors must dodge piles of trash that line the street. Huts that used to be common in the area have been replaced by high-rise buildings and massive billboards.

In a second Qahwa shop, one of the oldest in the city and recognizable because of a green window near its entrance, another old-timer, Haji Bahir, 75, speaks about the decline of Qissa Khwani. Since the 1960s, Bashir has also been dealing in locally made apparel, including Quaid caps, Chitrali caps, and Qara Qulli, specializing in lambskin imported from Afghanistan.

For decades, Bashir has been feeding his family with the profits from the shop, which used to receive many foreign visitors, but now rarely sees any. “Many wrote news stories—look at this one,” Bashir said, holding up a framed, full-page news story about his handicrafts.

Back when Haji Bashir was young, it was a duty to come into the market and inquire with other businessmen about their families. He said the next generation who’ve started to take over businesses for their parents don’t share the same feeling of kinship. “They [his son and other businessmen] don’t even talk for days,” Bashir said.

According to Bashir, the market has lost its charm over the past 15 years as his fellows have gotten older. Some died and others are bedridden, which has changed the feeling of the place. He asks his sons sitting on either side of him about their well-being. Bashir, who lost hearing in his left ear after a bomb went off near his shop said that despite this trauma, he still can’t stay away from Qissa Khwani. “[I] recovered and I wish the market recovers as I did,” Bashir said.

Laeeq Ahmad, 80, recalls how Ekkas carriages pulled mostly by horses, used to be the most luxurious form of transportation for passengers on the busy streets of this market. Ahmad has been coming to the Qissa Khwani since he was 10 years old after his father bought a shop there from two Sikh brothers in 1930.

 

Ahmad said merchants in Qissa Khwani used to be close friends, often inquiring about each other's lives at home. But over time, these relations -- as well as the appearance of the market -- have changed. “The good old humans left,” he said. “[Now] nobody cares what is happening in the neighbourhood,” Ahmad said the selection of goods offered at the market has increased and people still come there regularly, but the atmosphere is no longer the same.

Long-lost cultural hub

Researchers say Qissa Khwani was the only route used to travel from Central Asia and Afghanistan to India. As a result, it was a centre for educational, cultural, and scholastic activities. Qissa Khwani housed offices for local leadership of the congress, the Muslim League, and other political activists. It also housed newspaper offices above the Afghan building, a prominent place in the market.

Dr. Fazal Raheem Marwat, the former Vice-Chancellor of Bacha Khan University, said all these things made Qissa Khwani an important gathering point in the city, which is also why the massacre of April 1930 took place there.

Years ago, the market wasn’t only a place for locals – it was also a destination for foreigners who would share stories about the place when they returned home. Many believe that during the independence movement, Qissa Khwani was a meeting point for British spies. But some people who’ve lived in the area also say the folklore about the market’s storytellers might not be entirely accurate.

Dr. Muhammad Taqi, a commentator and analyst for the Indian news site, The Wire, said information about political and cultural affairs was shared there but there was no evidence of ‘storytelling’ in a more mystical sense. Dr. Taqi said the origin of the name Qissa Khwani is from Kas-e-Khooni. “Kas stands for water,” he said. “All this area, being on the top in the walled city, would be flooded during rains and this would sweep away things—including humans.”

Still, the importance of the market as an information hub remains, said Ali Owais Qarni, associate researcher at the Hindko Department, a provincial government project. “If somebody would doubt something, they would go to the barber’s shop to verify things,” he said, adding that the degeneration of the market is the result of a changing world. “Modern technology and development in the world [are] the sole reason[s] for its downfall.”

 

Dr. Marwat said official documents also refer to the area as Kas-e-Khooni. He said the name changed with time because of the market’s location and its role as the only place in the area where people would gather for political, educational, and religious activities. He said another reason for the downfall of the historical market is the outflux of elites from the area due to unbridled population growth. Many of these people left their businesses and made the area left profitable.

Despite this rich history as a cultural hub, Marwat said he worries that the market has entered a new and irreparable phase. “I don’t think Qissa Khwani would rise and shine again,” he said