We didn’t emerge, from the room anyway, for quite a while this morning, since we couldn’t think of anything worth emerging for. We breakfasted, then read, wrote, etc, Val finally completing the PNG bilum or string bag that she’s been working on, on + off – mostly off – for very nearly a year. But that really wasn’t enough – we decided we had to do something with the day. So we looked at the map we’d obtained from the Tourist Office, + decided to walk out to the point marked as “Viewpoint”. It would give us some sense of purpose, however artificial. And it really was pleasant enough, different anyway, tho’ we never did reach the viewpoint. We crossed the railway tracks, + then walked out thro’ what in England would be a council estate. Many similarities – same box-like housing – even more so here of course – same graffitied walls, a group of boys playing cricket on a waste patch. But tho’ the place was dirty – for it had to be, the roads + houses themselves all being made of dirt – it was all remarkably clean, well-swept + uncluttered. A pleasanter environment than its English equivalent, + even more so than India, made permanently mucky by the caste system, placing responsibility for dirt firmly on another person’s shoulders; by the laissez-faire commercial exploitation, so that every spare piece of land is a business premise, + the area around a site for business waste; + that silly cow fetish.
We turned back eventually, when we could see we weren’t going to be able to reach any viewpoint, but it hadn’t been a waste of time. Back to the room, womb too, for a few hours. I stood on the balcony outside for a while, watching a beggar across the street, working his way thro’ a pile of filth + rubbish, putting what he found straight into his mouth. Humanity at its lowest, standing out more clearly in Pakistan because of its rarity.
We called round to see Terence once again, + went out for a meal with him. Once again, both sociable + interesting. T has a particular interest in purdah, + how unnecessary + degrading it all is, even within Islam orthodoxy. We returned home to listen to a new tape, The Blues Brothers, borrowed from T, but we could only hear half. While the tape was being turned over, the mains adaptor fell out from the socket, then the radio dropped from its shelf. Val caught it, but surprisingly, since it has endured + survived plenty of worse knocks, it turned out to be damaged. All the parts down in one corner were found to be malfunctioning, meaning no mains power, (+ no tapes), no pilot light for radio tuning, + no use of the headphones. I felt incredibly depressed, with so much seeming to go wrong with so little time to go. It was scant consolation that the radio reception, for the first time in Pakistan, was excellent. Just as well, for I couldn’t sleep, so it was company for me.
Killing time again, waiting to be moving on, but at least we did manage to motivate ourselves sufficiently to get out of the room (womb too!) and to see something… even though there was not a great deal to see. The usual depression at things, especially something we relied on so much, our radio/tape player, starting to disintegrate. Still, things do not have to last too much longer now, we hope.
The photo is of tuk tuks in Quetta; remarkable that right now, forty years on, in Dhangadhi, Nepal, they are so much a part of my life. And that they look remarkably the same. Only nowadays, some at least are electric.
