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Both my children are heading off overseas which, given the state of travel safety these days, is always a worry. And it got me thinking about the places I have travelled and how they have changed. Like the Swat Valley in Pakistan, a beautiful gorge that forms the Upper Swat Valley which is surrounded by barren mountains. My family were living in Islamabad. It was the 1980s. When I went on the school bus to watch my son play soccer at a school in Murree it was a hair raising trip over the mountains, as was any excursion onto the roads. But imbued with grandfather’s love of Kipling (Tales of the Hindu Kush!)I had to go to the Kyber Pass, so we’d drive up to the border town of Peshawar, a wild bazaar with no tourists. Probably the biggest item for sale anywhere were guns. My daughter searched for silver jewellery and my son became a coin collector bargaining hard in urdu for old silver coins from the time of the Indo-Greeks. And perhaps it was the Buddhist shrines in Swat that influenced Nick to study Buddhist art and religion for his PhD. I became a carpet nut as there were so many fine old carpets from Afghanistan everywhere. My son is now a carpet collector too.
When my daughter turned 13 she went with several other girls on a school excursion into the Swat Valley and got caught in a storm. The roads were flooded so they abandoned their small van in a remote, rocky empty landscape. Until several women walked down from their mud huts clinging to the incline and took them in to shelter. These young western girls spent the rest of the day inside a mud hut round the small brazier where the women made them chappattis and roasted corn. They shared no language, but the women were warm, welcoming and genuine. For Gabrielle it was a profound experience to step into someone’s life for a moment, so different to her own. These women had nothing but they were able to relate. She struck up a rapport with one younger woman and the two exchanged necklaces, simple beads for a chain and a charm.
The Swat Valley is now the epicentre of a growing number of Islamic militants, and an insurgency that threatens to embroil Pakistan in a full-blown civil war. In October 2007, Cleric Maulana Sufi Muhammad and his followers intimidated the newly elected President Al Zardari and the Pakistani government into imposing Sharia Law in the Swat Valley, essentially making the region operational headquarters for the Taliban. The Pakistani government have begun a military operation to remove the Taliban forces now well entrenched. Millions of people have been displaced from the jewel that was once the legendery Swat Valley. Our wonder if Gabrielle’s women friends are among them.
Cheers
Di’s latest book The Islands, published by Pan Macmillan, is now on sale.
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