Under the Queen's Colours by Penny Legg

Author:Penny Legg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752486550
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

The view from the Khyber Pass over Afghanistan.

The Pathans are Muslims, normally of the orthodox Sunni sect. Extremely fanatical and superstitious, they abide by a code of honour, the pakhtunwali, which imposes on them three obligations. To grant to all fugitives the right of asylum (nanawatai); to proffer open-handed hospitality (melmastia) even to their deadliest enemies; and to wipe out dishonour by the shedding of blood (badal). The latter leads to blood feuds originating over disputes concerning money, women and land. They seem perpetually at feud; tribe against tribe, clan vs. clan and family against family.

Magic place names such as Kandahar, Kabul, Chitra and Gilgit are not far away. And there, the Khyber hills, the Hindu Kush, spreading into the Karakorum Range and Kashmir.

Old disused stone hovels without roofs littered the roadside. Choking dust billowed up behind us. At last the solitary road had a limit. A checkpoint: the entrance to the Khyber Pass. In the middle of nowhere, a couple of houses, and then to right and left vast stretches of wadis, gullies and nothing. Tribesmen pedalled through. The outpost guards checked off our chits of authority. Strange, our friends called any piece of paper a chit, even money, any denomination. Pistols and rifles were flourished lazily and we were ushered through. Old Gatling guns perched on top of the crenelated towers either side of the arch that spanned the road. A potted history of the Khyber had been carved into the walls.

Just past the archway, on our right, brooded Jamrud fort, looking insipid with its colour squeezed out, bleak and surrounded by desolation and dust. It seemed so much like a ghostly edifice, nary a flicker through the tiny slits in the walls. Parchment leaves of the few balding trees inside drooped. Wooden telegraph poles peeked above the drab featureless walls, the only sign of our times. ‘The variations of climate and scene are extreme – a pass of biting cold and scorching heat,’ the carved rock warned us. ‘The average annual rainfall in the pass is about 14 inches with occasional snowfall.’

Snow was the last thing we expected, as we drove the 3 miles to reach the actual opening to the pass at Shadi Bagiar. Immediately, rock walls towered on either side, dwarfing us. Hemmed in and separated by craggy peaks and ridges once seamed with glaciers, now terminating in empty moraines. Above lay long, uneven sweeps of patchy upland strewn with boulders; the sparse quilt-work of furze, a yellow, grey or livid green, according to the sunlight’s mood. Fold upon fold, in interminable succession, their bleak monotony only relieved by the infrequent grace of wild flowers and mosses.

The road snaked for mile on heavy mile, with a channel for the camels and one for autobuses. Bill remarked that the overall length of the pass was about 33 miles.

After a steep ascent through cheerless, hard and craggy mountains near its mouth, the pass rose gradually to the narrows of Alid Masjid.

All the way, Bill had emphasised that we ought to remain on the road and not wander.

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