Greetings from NWFP (North Western Frontier Province). I am with my friend Aziz, who is showing me fantastic hospitality. It is nice to be with a local who can give me a view from the ground as it were rather than the tourist's eye view that has been wonderful but maybe not very real. I was beaten for a couple of weeks by an attack of a horrid Gastro sickness but I am just soaring again now. I have just been told to post this as a power failure will come but I have much more to write, please wait for next installment.
Aziz says that I am the first woman to step foot on the soil of NWFP with no hair!! I have so many different stories but I have to chose... I fell in love with Pakistan, the people welcome me everywhere with open hearts and the land is glorious and ever changing.... It is so precious to get this chance to take a peek into a world so different from the one I know.
Starting from the beginning a conversation that has stuck with me was with the Germans who we got a lift with from Taftan to Quetta. The scene.... a spaceship in the form that westerners would recognise as a caravan rolls up in a small village in Balouchistan and is soon surrounded by wide eyed boys, all peering in, "they have one thing we in the west dont have, time" -"wealth eats time" -"I'd prefer to have wealth , at least when we are sick we can get a doctor" So the life west is set up for when things go wrong? My immediate thoughts on arriving in Pak on 20th March in those 1st few days were that I could never live in the west again, but then I got really sick and I feel less strongly now. I feel wiped out by so much philosophising, but it goes on as I am yet to come to any conclusions...eek!!
I still absalutely love it here, I can't wipe a huge face splitting grin off my face when I am walking amongst the hecticities.
I return to Lahore tomorrow for my final days in Pak to party Sufi style with some other travellers before crossing the border into what will be again an all sensory explosion for all 5 of my massively overstimulated senses.
2 comments:
oh my beauty, me breathing deep deep deep those good words. i kept forgetting to look at your blog (since the first time actually) and then remembering when im far from internettle. and now i feel like ive started feeding this crazy bitter salty strange taste that i want more of. cant wait to see you, whenever wherever this will be, and learn some of these lessons and taste some more of these crazy lifefoods youve been fed with. wowee. god bless you angel and the ground and folk all around you oxxooxoxox
By Mevlana Jalal al-din Rumi -- Persian Poet
I wanted to share this gorgeous Rumi poem. Thanks
Spring Giddiness
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.
Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
Post a Comment