Ishkoman, I’m Coming – Day 3: Eid Mubarak

Eid-al Fitr is Pakistani Halloween. Everyone dresses up in their new Shalwar Kimeez, the traditional Pakistani duds, and children's shouts of "trick or treat" sounds more like "tea and fruit." It is the day after the last day of the month of Ramadan ("Ramazan" in Urdu) for which all Muslims fast during the day and only eat at night and in the early morning before the sun comes up. When you can eat at natural times again, it's only natural to have a celebration.

We took a walking tour of the entirety of Shonas and stopped at about 8 houses for 18 cups of tea and even more homemade cream, biscuits, egg-noodles in a sweet milk soup, almonds, apples.

At Ayub's family's house, we were greeted by "the Mullah," Ayub's brother and all-around nice guy who had a reputation for the hottest dancing feet on this side of the valley. He had a beard sans-moustache and he wore Chitrali Cap, also known by its Afghan name "Pawkul" popularized by anti-soviet resistance fighter Ahmed Shah Masoud.

He sat down, Murad said something in dialect, probably Khowar, then everyone laughed and had a hearty round of high-fives, except for Mullah who chuckled and wore a smile of embarrassment on his beard-faced face.

"I just said that he looks like a Taliban and that the foreigners must be terrified," Murad expounded in between sounds of stifled laughter. To be honest, he looks more Mennonite than he does Taliban.

Mullah, deep in thought:

As we walked from house to house, we were greeted on the streets by many a stranger who just wanted to tap my heart, shake hands and say "Eid mubarak" - Happy Eid.

It is the feeling of the genuineness of your reception that makes Eid-al Fitr so special. People do really just want to take a friend into their house for 10 minutes and give them a biscuit as they schmooze over a cup of chai. At Mahboob's house, we sat outside on a set of patio furniture that looked like it had been stolen from my grandparents' old duplex in Queens - chipped white paint, rusted iron, wicker-pattern chairs. His 4 year old daughter came up to me and started speaking to me, first in dialect (Khowar, Shina?), then in Urdu. I used my minimal Urdu to ask her name "Apka nam kya heh?" then tell her my name "Mera nam Jono heh." We became fast friends. Murad was talking to Mahboob while his daughter would run off somewhere then bring back something to show me, then speak to me in Urdu, none of which I understood. First she handed me an apple, then she disappeared and brought back a cat. I don't think I was supposed to eat the cat, but I was gracious for the apple.

We made it to Wazir's house by sundown. He had offered to host us the night before but was beat to the punch by the comic king Jageer. Wazir looks like Pakistani Elvis, an occasionally wore aviator sunglasses - he was the coolest kid in Shonas, especially while wearing sexy eyewear.

The façade of his cool came crashing down as he met us at the door of his house. With a pout, he said "I've been waiting all day for you guys! I had all these eggs hardboiled for you!" 2 things: 1) In hearing that we would spend the night at his place, he had assumed that we would be with him all day as well. 2) He prepared about 10 hardboiled eggs to "egg fight" with.

There were 3 local boys, Wazir, Wazir's son, Wazir's brother Abdul, Matt, Murad, Jageer, and Myself. An egg fight, as explained by Wazir is: "I don't even like it, I think it is stupid. But I will fight you with my egg." You find an egg you like, and you tap your opponent's egg until one of them cracks, the one whose egg does not crack is the winner. He shrugged off eggfights like it was a child's game, but he put on his game face and smashed eggs at a near-olympic level.

It was a boy's night out: we ate dinner with our hands, had eggfights, played cards, played with guns, sang and danced and played sitar into the night. The card game "Big 2" was a big hit.

Intoxicated on competition (eggs and cards), Wazir began to talk. He told us how Abdul used to fight and drink alcohol until a priest convinced him to be a better Muslim. Before, Abdul looked like Daniel Day-Lewis from "Gangs of New York," now he looks Amish. He made us promise that we'd go fishing with him the next day. He told us that I looked like the old Chitrali man who used to come to his village to fix broken cups.

Wazir with an old picture of Abdul:
Abdul now, in the background:

Wazir showing his guns:


Eid Mubarak everyone, peace on earth.

Ishkoman, I’m Coming – Day 2: Let’s Get Sitarted

Jageer is the funniest man in the world. Not just in Shonas or Ishkoman, or Gilgit, or Pakistan, or Asia, but the whole world. Now if I could only understand Kowari I’d tell you what he was saying.Every time he spoke, somebody around him would laugh, and somebody would get a high five. In Pakistan, the hilarity of any joke can be gauged by the number and intensity of high fives given after the delivery of a joke, and Jageer always got the most.


He asked us the night before if we would stay in his house and treat us to food and music. Matt and I both agreed. Jageer lived in Shonas as well, but further up the mountainside near a waterfall that we could reach via hikeable path.

At an unreasonably early 7am, all the lights in the tranquilly dim common-room turned on and Indian bollywood music began to play. Moussa had sabotaged our slumber and in a firm, English-as-a-second-language voice said “I think… it is time… to… stand up.” We didn’t start the hike for at least 2 hours; from that moment on I found Moussa annoying.

Wazir pulled up to Murad’s house in an old Japanese jeep to pick us up and drive us to Jageer’s place. Wazir was sad that we wouldn't be staying with him at his house that night, but we promised that we would be his for the night after, and the day after that we would go fishing. Homemade chapatti, cream, and butter awaited us, the foreigners who couldn’t follow Ramazan. The hike was on a dirt path to a waterfall. The sun was hot and our Shalwar Kimeez kept our skin from burning and kept the sweat close to our bodies. Murad picked some wild red and orange berries (sea buckthorn berries) for us, since he was following Ramazan. The berries were extremely tart and citrusy with a pleasantly sweet aftertaste. We hiked down from the waterfall, back to Jageer’s house where Murad dumped us and said he’d pick us up the next day.

The 3 of us sat down in the common room among cylindrical pillows and sitars.

Five strings, only the center string tuned differently than the other four. The sound is layered, not redundant, and celestial. He sat down and looked at us as his clowning demeanor melted away in a foreign tune that seemed improvised until he began to sing.
He claimed to be able to recreate any song that he heard and play it on the sitar. So I have him my iPod® playing “Blackbird” by The Beatles. There was a silence, followed by a Ravi Shankar rāga that might have been the sound that Paul McCartney heard when he thought that he could recreate any song that he heard on his guitar.

The next morning would be Eid-al Fitr and a good rest was needed in preparation. Jageer rolled out some sheets and we fell asleep to the overlapping sounds of an old wooden sitar.

Ishkoman, I’m Coming – Day 1: Tick Tock

Touch his heart, lightly grasp forearm, shake hands, touch own heart “as-salaam aleykum, Eid Mubarak! Kya hal heh? Teek tahk.”
The handshake is strange at first, but it becomes quite natural after a few tries. Not all people are completely comfortable with the heart-shake and will just go to give you a standard, western-style shake. Although, even that shake is not as firm and doesn’t have the same stronger-than-thou male machismo intention.
“Teek tahk,” in Urdu means “good” or “I’m good.” When it’s said quickly, it sounds like “tick tock.” My hand pulled away from Murad’s father’s aged heart and wrapped his grizzled hand as he looked me in the eyes and, in a raspy, toothless voice, said “tick tock.” I couldn’t help but smile an unusually wide grin as I thought of this man in some retirement home in America where he, when asked how he was, would only respond with muted clock noises.

I did the handshake an innumerable amount of times over the course of four days. Northwest of Gilgit, in Ghizar county, in Gilgit-Baltistan (formerly known as “Northern Areas,” or “NA”), off of a bumpy tributary road of the KKH, lost in time, sandwiched in the crevasse of the Ishkoman Valley, lie the facing villages of Shonas and Da’in. It is the home of our Pakistani guides and good friends, Murad Khan and Muhammed Raja Ayub Khan (no relation), and their motley band of misfits, friends, cousins, and complete strangers.

We first left to Murad’s house on a four hour bus ride from Gilgit. The bus stopped at the police checkpoint on the Ishkoman border and asked for our identification. In a ratty, old ledger, Matt and I wrote down our names, nationalities and passport numbers. I was pleased to find that these checkpoints were very common along the KKH and were used to keep suspect characters out of legitimately peace-loving towns. At the next stop, we picked up some children and their mother. At another stop, we picked up a large-bearded shepherd with a staff and Chitrali hat who looked like Pakistani Gandalf when he was still called “Gandalf the Decrepit.”
He put his staff in the back while Murad looked at us and beckoned a warning, “He could blow at any second.” This, I would find out, was only the first of many terrorist/Taliban jokes.

Off the dirt road behind the stone wall was Murad’s home. Tired from a day’s travel, we collapsed on the furnitureless floors of his living room. Most residential Pakistani rooms are unfurnished aside from a full carpet and cylindrical pillows to lean on. We were brought tea, chapatti(bread), and homemade cream to snack on before the grand tour. I had had one cup of tea in Sost, and one cup in Alliyabad, but this would be my first of oh-so-many homemade cups of doot-patti milk tea.
Murad had lambs and cows and farmland where he grew wheat, corn, potatoes and other vegetables. Most dairy food we had in his house was homemade and delicious. His property overlooked the Ishkoman river and was situated in a basin of mountains. He pointed out the homes of his childhood friends; some had stayed, had arranged marriages and had 4 to 8 children, while others had moved to Gilgit, Lahore, Karachi, or as far as Dubai to find a life of markets and business, leaving behind the serenity and near-complete isolation of the valley.


The sun was setting as Murad, his friend Jageer, Matt and I sat in the living room playing a life-or-death game of Parcheesi. The images of Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pikachu, and Cinderella adorned the battleground of the most intense match of a children’s board game in history. A horde of children gathered to stare in through the windows waiting for the Angrezi (foreigner, literally “Englishman”) to do something amazing. They would be disappointed on that front, but truly happy to catch a glimpse of us rare creatures.


I think I was more intrigued by the children than they were of me. Most residents of Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) in no way resemble the Punjabis and Sindhis that make up the majority of the Pakistani population; Murad looks Italian, Skandar looks like a Ukrainian-American immigrant, and Ayub looks like a Polish train conductor. Some of the children have the most stunning golden-brown eyes with locks of dirty-blonde hair. Their facial features are somewhat Aryan. Years of isolation among the valleys has produced a beautifully unique people who derive their appearances from Tajik, Afghan, Turkic, and Persian peoples with some influence of Alexander the Great’s armies as they marched through the territory some 1700 years ago. They are mostly Ismaili Muslims who have the Aga Khan as their spiritual leader. They are forward thinking and uncommonly loving people.
Dinner was served after sundown for Me, Matt, Murad, his cousin Moussa, Jageer, his brother-in-law Hassan, and his elderly parents. Although the Ismailis are very progressive, the absence of women at dinner, aside from Murad’s mother, clearly displays a still mostly male-dominated society. Women receive education, but they are still required to wear non-revealing clothing, headscarves at some times, and typically do not assume occupations other than housewife. However, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is trying to change this with Female Empowerment programs that set them up with jobs like handicraft production and gem-polishing. Murad’s wife is an English teacher, and she is very well educated.

It was the last night before the last day of Ramadan (“Ramazan” in Urdu) and the beginning of the four-day festival holiday Eid-al Fitr. Exhausted from dinner, we retired to the common room where makeshift beds made from sheets and blankets were already waiting for us.