Salt of the earth

Finding another home away from home, the old man had learned to live a life of simplicity.

The sickening sensation of swaying in my sleep jolted me awake! The rattle of crockery and groaning of the roof told the tale. In a split second I was out of bed, out of the house, and standing shivering in the garden along with four petrified dogs, listening to thunder rolling and sheltering from freezing rain beneath the boughs of an apple tree. Earthquake and a big one!

Earthquakes didn’t really bother me pre-October 5th 2005. They were small disturbances, over before you knew it. 2005 changed all of that: quakes are terrifying now, a little tremor has the possibility of exploding into a humungous disaster and this one certainly had the potential.

Quakes and storms go together. A storm usually materialises within a few hours of the earth going into spasm. This time the temperature plummeted and by morning the mountains across the valley in Azad Kashmir were unseasonably dressed for winter.

The quake and storm also brought an emissary from the Matriarch who was still holding court in her remote northern valley. Aslat Shah, the eldest of the Matriarch’s seven sons, huffed and puffed up the front steps laden down like Father Christmas. His rosy cheeks and wildman beard bristled out from the folds of a heavy woolen chador which had obviously seen better days. Dumping his load on the kitchen floor, he shuffled out of his highly polished chappals and headed for the sofa as is usual on his sporadic visits.

“You need to put the desi mukan in the fridge” he instructed. “My wife made it for you and my mother has sent white honey, 20 kgs makai ka atta  fresh from this season’s crop, some cheese she made and a cake which I wouldn’t mind a piece of unless you have something else handy.”

I grinned and went to the store cupboard knowing full well what he had in mind for breakfast – a pickled egg. A delicacy he can only get here unless he wants to make an illegal crossing into Indian-administered Kashmir where he just might get lucky and, if I stopped making pickled eggs, I wouldn’t put it past him!

After relaying his family and Alai valley news in laborious minutiae as in “It happened when Kasim Shah was six inches long” meaning during the early stages of his wife’s pregnancy and reaching for his third cup of tea he came to the point, travelling round Dubai and Karachi in the process. “How was the apple crop this year? Good? Have you made any chutney yet?”

These people go crazy for apple chutney. They literally drool over it and have done so since we first introduced them to the stuff more than 12 years ago. At the time, five of the seven brothers ran a hole-in-the-wall eatery up near the main road, doubling as mazdoors for extra cash off-season. The food they conjured up was the absolute best and they are sadly missed since moving back home in the wake of the 2005 quake when reconstruction was the order of the day.

As I sliced in to the ‘cake’ — a three inch thick concoction of maki-ke-atta, desi ghee, gur and dried apricots cooked in the wood ashes of a tandoor and heavy enough to sink a battleship — he reminisced about the very first time he took me to Alai and of how he had decided to go the long way round, so that he could spin some very Irish tales in which everything was larger, more interesting, more humourous and more real than life, and the goats produced four times more milk than a prize-winning dairy cow.

“My mother wants you to come and live with us now. My father thinks you should do so too. You are part of our family and it isn’t right that you live alone in this place. The people here are bad. Anyway, I’ve come to organise the move. I’ll get a couple of pick-ups for your things, you can do the packing and I want to be back in Alai by the beginning of next week at the latest. Need to get you all settled in before winter. You’ll have your own room of course and the women will look after you. You won’t need to do a thing.”

Kindness comes when least expected but, much as I appreciated the offer, it wasn’t one I could possibly take up at this juncture.

“It is wonderful of you all to suggest this,” I explained, knowing the weeks, even months of joint debate that preceded the decision “But it just isn’t possible for me to live in Alai. This is my home and I love it here. Also, I need electricity and a telephone for the computer so that I can work plus, I need to be within reasonable distance of Islamabad for work too.”

“You won’t need to work in Alai,” he countered. “That’s part of the idea. We’re going to look after you. It isn’t right for you to be working so hard all the time. You can relax with us instead. You won’t need a computer and if you need to make a phone call there’s a wireless telephone a few kilometers away in the village.”

“I really appreciate the invitation” I carefully stressed, not wanting to upset such kind-hearted people. “I just can’t move to Alai right now and leave this place empty and I enjoy my work. Writing is something I need to do and I also need to stay in touch with my family overseas which I do by computer now. My parents would be heart broken if I left here.”

“They can come and visit,” he said not understanding that my elderly parents, settled in their pretty village bungalow in the UK couldn’t handle life in Alai — no bathroom, no running water, no electricity, no central heating, no television, no chairs or tables — for more than a couple of hours at the best of times and certainly not with media-injected images of bearded Taliban racing around inside their heads.

The only reasonable way to politely refuse was to hint “Maybe I could consider it in another year or two but not right now, Aslat Shah. Let me think about it some more please, and thank everyone for honouring me as a family member.”

As he was readying himself for departure, hefting a dozen jars of apple chutney and a huge one of pickled eggs over his shoulders in a loaned backpack, he remembered to tell me that he’d brought his father, The Old Man of the Mountain, with him for a medical check-up in Murree. The old man was hoping I had some vegetable seeds to spare for the next planting season and came to see me himself two days later, with a grandson for company, and went with pockets full of exciting goodies to happily face the ten-hour bus drive and two-hour walk home.

It is wonderful to know that, despite, or perhaps because of, living a harsh and secluded existence, such people are still the absolute salt of the earth.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2010.