had already arrived, including two demon tennis players, Pashtun brothers, witty and easy mannered, who usually pulverized their opponents. Zahid and I had beaten them once and that was only because we could see better in the mist that enveloped the court. The note was from Younis, the jolly sub-postmaster who presided over the tiny post office in summer and stayed in the rest house below the bazaar. He wondered when we could meet for a cup of tea. The next day friends from Lahore and Karachi arrived as well. We met and exchanged pleasantries, but my thoughts were elsewhere.
My friends noticed how distracted I had become and assumed that as I was due to leave the country later that year, my mind had already departed and I found their company tiresome. How could I tell them all that I was suffering from love fever? There were also two young women present who were great fun because they never relapsed into coquetry and loathed bourgeois pettinesses and whose company, for those reasons, I enjoyed a great deal. I could only imagine their scathing comments if I admitted to anything that remotely resembled serious passion.
I walked alone to the Pines Hotel and exchanged greetings with the proprietor and staff. Soon after Partition, in 1947, when I was three and my sisters had not yet been born, we began staying at the Pines, and the proprietor, Zaman Khan, a tall, pot-bellied Pashtun with permanently bloodshot grey eyes—the result of an overfondness for the beer produced at the Murree Brewery by one of Jamshed’s more prosperous relatives—had become a familiar and friendly figure over the years. There was little that escaped him. He gave me a hug and immediately offered some information.
‘That green-eyed girl from Peshawar whom you liked so much last year is arriving next week with her mother.’
I feigned delight and then said in a casual tone, ‘A friend of mine, Hanif Ma, told me he was coming this year. They’re a Chinese family from Lahore.’
Zaman grabbed me by the arm and took me to his office. Together we looked at the reservations register. The Mas were due in two days.
‘I didn’t know you were friends. I’ll put them in the cottage where you stayed ten years ago. So I’ll be seeing more of you this year. Good. You know you can always eat here.’
‘Yes, but not in your dining room where you still serve those disgusting stews the English used to like.’
He pinched me and laughed. Thrilled by the news and on a high I walked down to the bazaar and met old friends, bought an off-white Chitrali hat and warmed my hands on a cup of delicious, if oversweet, mountain tea, a concoction made by boiling tea leaves in milk and sugar till the colour is exactly right. One of the most warming drinks in the world. When I walked into the post office, situated above a sloping ravine leading to the deep-valley villages below, where the local people lived throughout the year, I got a shock. Seated next to Younis the sub-postmaster was Plato. I’d completely forgotten that he was coming here this summer.
‘You didn’t know that we were old friends, did you?’ asked Younis. Younis and his mother had been in the same bus that took the refugees from Ludhiana and it was she who had looked after Plato till they reached the camp. Younis’s father, a night watchman working for a Hindu-owned factory in Ludhiana, had never been seen again. They had family in Peshawar, and Younis had matriculated and become a Grade 6 civil servant.
‘Grade 6’, said Plato, ‘is recognition that you will never rise in the service. Sub-postmaster for life.’
Younis roared with laughter. ‘Better than a peon. I just hope I can spend all my summers here till I die.’
It was barely noon. Younis offered me some locally fermented apricot liquor in my tea. I declined the pleasure, but both of them poured generous helpings into their own bowls. Some friends arrived to post letters and joined us for a while, till their sisters and mothers
My friends noticed how distracted I had become and assumed that as I was due to leave the country later that year, my mind had already departed and I found their company tiresome. How could I tell them all that I was suffering from love fever? There were also two young women present who were great fun because they never relapsed into coquetry and loathed bourgeois pettinesses and whose company, for those reasons, I enjoyed a great deal. I could only imagine their scathing comments if I admitted to anything that remotely resembled serious passion.
I walked alone to the Pines Hotel and exchanged greetings with the proprietor and staff. Soon after Partition, in 1947, when I was three and my sisters had not yet been born, we began staying at the Pines, and the proprietor, Zaman Khan, a tall, pot-bellied Pashtun with permanently bloodshot grey eyes—the result of an overfondness for the beer produced at the Murree Brewery by one of Jamshed’s more prosperous relatives—had become a familiar and friendly figure over the years. There was little that escaped him. He gave me a hug and immediately offered some information.
‘That green-eyed girl from Peshawar whom you liked so much last year is arriving next week with her mother.’
I feigned delight and then said in a casual tone, ‘A friend of mine, Hanif Ma, told me he was coming this year. They’re a Chinese family from Lahore.’
Zaman grabbed me by the arm and took me to his office. Together we looked at the reservations register. The Mas were due in two days.
‘I didn’t know you were friends. I’ll put them in the cottage where you stayed ten years ago. So I’ll be seeing more of you this year. Good. You know you can always eat here.’
‘Yes, but not in your dining room where you still serve those disgusting stews the English used to like.’
He pinched me and laughed. Thrilled by the news and on a high I walked down to the bazaar and met old friends, bought an off-white Chitrali hat and warmed my hands on a cup of delicious, if oversweet, mountain tea, a concoction made by boiling tea leaves in milk and sugar till the colour is exactly right. One of the most warming drinks in the world. When I walked into the post office, situated above a sloping ravine leading to the deep-valley villages below, where the local people lived throughout the year, I got a shock. Seated next to Younis the sub-postmaster was Plato. I’d completely forgotten that he was coming here this summer.
‘You didn’t know that we were old friends, did you?’ asked Younis. Younis and his mother had been in the same bus that took the refugees from Ludhiana and it was she who had looked after Plato till they reached the camp. Younis’s father, a night watchman working for a Hindu-owned factory in Ludhiana, had never been seen again. They had family in Peshawar, and Younis had matriculated and become a Grade 6 civil servant.
‘Grade 6’, said Plato, ‘is recognition that you will never rise in the service. Sub-postmaster for life.’
Younis roared with laughter. ‘Better than a peon. I just hope I can spend all my summers here till I die.’
It was barely noon. Younis offered me some locally fermented apricot liquor in my tea. I declined the pleasure, but both of them poured generous helpings into their own bowls. Some friends arrived to post letters and joined us for a while, till their sisters and mothers
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