A Walk Down the Road

Sept. 29

Today Tahera and I took a walk out to the main road. This is not the first time we’ve done that. Once we are out the gate, we have two choices. We can go through the bazaar, a motley collection of stalls, small shops and the occasional goat, sheep or chicken. Or we can go down Greens Ave., the more part of town with new houses, imposing gates and manicured lawns. We tend to take the former during the day and the latter in later afternoon early evening.

Once you get out of Chatta, you turn either left or right on Park Road and just walk to see what you can see. Park Road is a four lane paved highway with a grass divider in the middle. When you walk here you see many types of vehicles, from brand new four wheel drive SUV’s carrying army officers to wooden donkey carts carrying timber or grass! There are also bicycles, motorcycles and plenty of pedestrians. The most interesting vehicles on the road are the heavily decorated large trucks and small public vans. There have been whole books written about these trucks and taxis. In fact, my husband and a photographer friend of his are putting such a book together right now.

Roadside, one can see plenty of farmland. Narrow dirt lanes lead down to crumbling brick and mortar homes of two or three rooms. A dirty curtain might function as the only door. There are usually goats and maybe some sheep, definitely chickens and roosters. Occasionally we see a herd of water buffalo. In the heat of the day, these large creatures, the cattle of Pakistan, love to wallow in a mud hole to keep cool.

There are also some corporate type office buildings, schools with signboards and drug rehabilitation centers. Those are very big in Pakistan right now due to a large percentage of heroin addiction. People also smoke hashish, but that’s not considered a harmful drug here. And of course, just like in any other destitute country, every other man you see smokes or chews tobacco.

There are some very large and elegant estates in this area as well. One of them was one of the estates of ex-president Musharraf. It is reputed that he never even visited this particular home of his. It has since been sold to some wealthy buyer. These mansions are set well back from the highway, down long paved roads with their own guard houses and sentries at the gate. Believe or not, they are also called “farms”! This is supposedly to be inconspicuous, but everyone knows who owns these homes: higher ups in the government and military.

We stood on a small bridge overlooking a river and saw a herd of sheep grazing. A man was praying by his taxi near the riverbank. Tahera thought he was there to wash the car.
On the way home there was a particular poignant scene. There were some Pathan children cutting the tall grasses at the side of the road. They had small sickles in their hands, but the oldest couldn’t have been more than ten. He was the one with the bicycle. The children were trying to pile the grass on top of the bike, but it was a difficult task. They themselves were as dusty and ragged as the hay. There was one girl in a dirty brown dress and pants. She looked at me with a mixture of shyness and confusion. These children had the look of hunger and thirst in their eyes. The grass is either for sale or for their cattle. May God grant them some benefit for their efforts. Government statistics place Pakistan literacy rate at 40%-60%, but those in the know say it’s more like 6%. When I see children like this at the roadside in the midday heat, I’m more inclined to believe the last figure.