Peshawar was the seat of activity for Afghan Mujahideen fighting across the border in Afghanistan. When they weren’t fighting and dying in Afghanistan, they were roaming the bazaars of Peshawar. Bombings and political intrigues were the norm. It was a time of aid-wallahs, ex-pats, journalists and spies, living mostly in University Town (simply called ‘Town’) outside of Peshawar City (old city) on Jamrud Road, leading to the Khyber Pass and Afghanistan. Heroin factories abounded just outside the city in Tribal Territory and across the border in neighboring Afghanistan.

This story takes place in this environment and in this time, but only has passing concerns with these matters. I lived in Peshawar City, in Hashtnagri, with Bibi Ji (a local PPP* leader of a respected and prominent Sayid family) and her family. One could say this story is about Pakistan, though parts of Pakistan most travelers don’t get to tread—a diary, a travelogue of sorts.

It covers from January 1988 to November 1991, starting with a visit to Hira Mandi, the famous red-light and nautch district in Lahore, and prayers in the Shrine of Data Baba and at the majestic Badshahi Mosque (also both in Lahore). It tells of a five month 1000 mile horse expedition through the Hindu Kush, the Hindu Raj, the Karakoram, and Himalayan Mountains from Peshawar to Chitral, Kalash (Kafiristan), Gilgit, Kaghan Valley, and Azad Kashmir. Witnessing the world’s highest polo match on the Shandur Top, delayed by road blocks in the Karakorams, crossing the Babu Sar Pass, and intermingling with migrating Gujars and Koochies.

I was involved in the Pashtu music recording scene in Peshawar, though only bits of that come out in these journals. Running through this story of life in Pakistan is my ongoing relationship with a Pathan courtesan and her family in Lahore—afternoons spent lounging on a charpoy visiting friends at a Pathan ‘house of pleasure’, an evening shootout with Punjabi pimps, smoking charras with malangs and policemen. All roads travelled brought me back to her side in Lahore.

In the second half of the story there is an entertaining brief interlude taking place in Thailand and a wild month abroad fringing on insanity staying with Waziri taxi drivers in the desert outside of Dubai on a crazed search for her after her disappearance. Back home in Pakistan my ongoing search for a wife, including chaperoned meetings with several girls on the Frontier.

Finally our relationship caused me to be kidnapped to Bajaur Agency (Tribal Territory) where I found myself miles off the paved road in a mud fort a short walk from the Afghan border, tied to a charpoy with her.**

It is my sincere wish that none of the sentiments expressed in the following pages be offensive to Pathan people (Pukhtun Ghirrat), women, or to the good people of Pakistan (or Pakistanis in general). It must be said that the majority of this was written (and experienced) under extreme pathos and the outermost extremities of obsessed and insane love.<

This is not a history of Pakistan. I am not a historian nor an academic. The bits of history appearing herein are purely coincidental. Nor is this an anthropological or cultural study, though I imagine a fair amount of that finds its way in here as well (including a detailed glossary). I did not study Pakistani culture and tradition; I merely found myself living it. One could say it was a gradual progression, a natural osmosis. This is the story of my life in Pakistan circa 1988-1991, as seen through my eyes, the only ones I have.

Pakistan is a country much in the news nowadays (and much maligned). It is a beautiful country with wonderful, warm hospitable people.

This story is basically my private diaries, collected and organized in 1993-94, when all the events were still fresh in my memory. I could have rewritten some of the story without so many personal painful details, although at the time it was written I felt it was such a fascinating view into a world that so few Westerners (or even Pakistanis) have tread, that I decided to omit nothing! No holds barred! Definitely parts of Pakistan one doesn’t read about in your usual travel novels! These events occurred more than twenty years ago. There are things I did that I might not necessarily repeat, yet nothing I‘m ashamed for having lived at the time.

Incredible adventures in Pakistan and an intriguing, maybe scandalous relationship run throughout the story. Looking back, the truth does seem rather harsh at times. I could have changed her into just a nautch (dancing) girl, but ‘the profession’ is so different in Pakistan and both are interwoven. As her mother told me, it was their zot (caste). Her mother had done it, as had her mother before her, and her mother’s mother before her.

Yet she was a Muslim girl, of a Muslim culture, with many Islamic values. She believed it was her taqdeer (predestination), where and what she was born into, as it was my taqdeer to fall in love with her. She was a ‘family girl’ by many standards, doing housework and looking after family and children. She wouldn’t think of going outside the house without a chaddar to cover her head. She was more modest and family orientated than so many Western woman I see. It all seems so different to me.

Am I only naive? When we look into that special set of eyes, we have no choice where God will cast us. From the moment she walked into that room in Lahore and I looked into her mesmeric eyes, I can not forget her. Prostitute or queen, it was not my choice.

All is God’s will.

This is how it happened and this is how I present it to you....