Letters to Zerky by Bill Raney & JoAnne Walker Raney

Author:Bill Raney & JoAnne Walker Raney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nickelodeon Press
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

From JoAnne’s Diary

Rawalpindi & West Pakistan

Map 4

December 13, 1967

We have a beautiful campsite tonight outside a civil rest house beyond Rawalpindi. The toilet is a clean, wooden throne with a removable chamber pot.

It’s great to see greenery and women’s faces again. Saris! Along the road today we saw many monuments to the Pakistani army’s various battalions and brigades.

Letter From Hussainiwala

December 14, 1967

West Pakistan

Maps 3 & 4

Dear Zerky,

We are camped tonight at a Pakistani government rest house, about a mile from the Indian border. When we spotted it late this afternoon, we decided to take advantage of it by putting off crossing the border until tomorrow morning. We asked the caretaker, could we please park our van inside the fence and spend the night? He readily agreed, but an hour later as we were cooking supper, we were approached by a Pakistani army officer who informed us we are not supposed to be here. This rest house is for military only, he told us. After questioning us thoroughly about who we were, where we had come from, and where we were going, and why, he finally told us we can remain here for one night only, but under no circumstances are we to leave the compound. So tonight we are both guests and prisoners, which comes as no surprise, because much of our reception in Pakistan has been this weird concoction of one part official government harassment mixed in with an equal portion of personal welcome on behalf of the Pakistani government’s messengers.

It all started with our Road Permit, a special kind of permit for an automobile that you can only get from a Pakistani Embassy outside Pakistan, at the same time you get your entry visa. In no other country have we encountered such a document. On it, they write down your exact route and your entire itinerary inside the country. Any change in either, “whether voluntary or not, must be immediately reported to the police,” it says on the permit, which goes on to say, “no photography of bridges, dams, headworks, communication centers, cantonments, etc., is permitted.” This was obviously designed to thwart spies and saboteurs, and you—Zerky—you have been issued one too. So don’t get any bright ideas—your permit has your picture on it and you have been designated a spy. Or maybe a saboteur. I should hasten to add that the same Pakistani government officials who threatened to shoot you also welcomed you into their country with all the delight and amusement reserved for small children everywhere.

All across this northeastern section of Pakistan, we get the impression that we are in an intensely militaristic nation. There seems to be tension everywhere. Here at Hussainiwala—the only border crossing between West Pakistan and India—nervousness is understandable. Four years ago, this was the scene of the India-Pakistan War over Kashmir, a war that neither country believes to be over. You are at one of the tensest, most dangerous borders in the world, Zerky.

As we came down from Rawalpindi today, population began to press in upon us.

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