conversation seemed excessively stilted till my parents left for their siesta. It was late June. The temperature had reached 108 degrees Fahrenheit and the tar on the roads was beginning to melt. I was racking my brains to find a way of asking after Jindié without appearing too eager, but discretion prevailed. He was her brother, after all, and might be offended by an informal display of interest. Then, just before he left, Confucius, trying to sound as casual as possible, said, ‘By the way, we might see you in Nathiagali. My mother is desperate to avoid the heat this year, and we’ve booked a cottage in Pines Hotel for a month.’
I managed to conceal my joy.
‘With all of us leaving, the city of culture will be empty.’
We laughed at our own arrogance.
FOUR
I N THE EARLY DAYS, my father would drive us there, spend a week, and then return to Lahore. The mountain routine in our household was well established. The servants would wake us up at three in the morning, when it was still pitch dark outside. My twin sisters, three years younger, and I would be placed half-asleep in the back of a ramshackle Chevrolet station wagon and by four at the latest my father would be driving northwards on the Grand Trunk Road, which had barely any other traffic at that hour. This was the reason for the pre-dawn departures, which felt like torture at the time. My sisters and I would wake again when the sun rose and wait for the inevitable stop at Wazirabad Junction Railway Station, where they served excellent scrambled eggs on toast, brewed a fine pot of tea and had relatively clean toilets. That was a very long time ago. Soon afterwards we would cross the mighty Jhelum and once again hear the story of how Alexander the Great had found the river too difficult to ford and almost lost his life. We came to know this tale so well that in the years ahead we would repeat it in unison as we approached the bridge, to pre-empt the parental version. The next stop was Rawalpindi, a brief halt to pick up chicken sandwiches and chilled coffee at the Silver Grill before the final stretch, which began on the tarmac road to Murree, the official hill station which my mother loathed because it was not Simla and was overcrowded with the ‘wrong sort’ of people—not counting Zahid and his family, of course, and the many other friends who spent the summers there. In my mother’s imagination Murree was Babylon, to be avoided even as a stopover on the way to our Arcadia.
Beyond Murree lay the rough road to the galis , the valleys between the Himalayan foothills, clothed in pines; soon after leaving the hill station the fragrance of these trees became overpowering. More than a hundred years ago, the British had come to the galis and built hill-cottages with quaint names like Kirkstone, Moonrising, Retreat, etc., to remind them of home. First we passed Khairagali, then Changlagali, then Doongagali, and on a ridge two miles above that lay Nathia, the queen of them all, with its own club and tennis courts and, most importantly, a library filled with books, mainly by authors one had never heard of before or never would again: the literary equivalent of B-movies and sometimes startlingly good.
Heaven in those days was arriving here, inhaling the scent of wild strawberries, sighting the snow-covered peak of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayan distance and wondering which of our summer friends had arrived.
This year, all I could think about was Jindié. When was she arriving? What day? What hour? I have scant memories of that time now, a time of unrequited passions that seemed to be the fate of our generation. To write the life of Plato I have to work hard to collect myself and remember what else happened that summer. It’s easier now, since my memories of Jindié have faded.
When we reached our summer house, the caretaker delivered a number of messages and handed me a scrap of paper. None of the messages were of any significance. Summer friends from Peshawar
I managed to conceal my joy.
‘With all of us leaving, the city of culture will be empty.’
We laughed at our own arrogance.
FOUR
I N THE EARLY DAYS, my father would drive us there, spend a week, and then return to Lahore. The mountain routine in our household was well established. The servants would wake us up at three in the morning, when it was still pitch dark outside. My twin sisters, three years younger, and I would be placed half-asleep in the back of a ramshackle Chevrolet station wagon and by four at the latest my father would be driving northwards on the Grand Trunk Road, which had barely any other traffic at that hour. This was the reason for the pre-dawn departures, which felt like torture at the time. My sisters and I would wake again when the sun rose and wait for the inevitable stop at Wazirabad Junction Railway Station, where they served excellent scrambled eggs on toast, brewed a fine pot of tea and had relatively clean toilets. That was a very long time ago. Soon afterwards we would cross the mighty Jhelum and once again hear the story of how Alexander the Great had found the river too difficult to ford and almost lost his life. We came to know this tale so well that in the years ahead we would repeat it in unison as we approached the bridge, to pre-empt the parental version. The next stop was Rawalpindi, a brief halt to pick up chicken sandwiches and chilled coffee at the Silver Grill before the final stretch, which began on the tarmac road to Murree, the official hill station which my mother loathed because it was not Simla and was overcrowded with the ‘wrong sort’ of people—not counting Zahid and his family, of course, and the many other friends who spent the summers there. In my mother’s imagination Murree was Babylon, to be avoided even as a stopover on the way to our Arcadia.
Beyond Murree lay the rough road to the galis , the valleys between the Himalayan foothills, clothed in pines; soon after leaving the hill station the fragrance of these trees became overpowering. More than a hundred years ago, the British had come to the galis and built hill-cottages with quaint names like Kirkstone, Moonrising, Retreat, etc., to remind them of home. First we passed Khairagali, then Changlagali, then Doongagali, and on a ridge two miles above that lay Nathia, the queen of them all, with its own club and tennis courts and, most importantly, a library filled with books, mainly by authors one had never heard of before or never would again: the literary equivalent of B-movies and sometimes startlingly good.
Heaven in those days was arriving here, inhaling the scent of wild strawberries, sighting the snow-covered peak of Nanga Parbat in the Himalayan distance and wondering which of our summer friends had arrived.
This year, all I could think about was Jindié. When was she arriving? What day? What hour? I have scant memories of that time now, a time of unrequited passions that seemed to be the fate of our generation. To write the life of Plato I have to work hard to collect myself and remember what else happened that summer. It’s easier now, since my memories of Jindié have faded.
When we reached our summer house, the caretaker delivered a number of messages and handed me a scrap of paper. None of the messages were of any significance. Summer friends from Peshawar
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