|
|
|
|
 |
 |
  
|
idea The
vandal in the mosque
idea This is a usual
Saturday morning. Nothing charms me as I take the dusty road to work. Amid
Lahore’s traffic mess and particularly bothersome road construction work,
my only desire is to get into a bus that would take me to my last stop. Moving up north, in Mirpur,
Azad Kashmir is another girl who shares this moment with me. For Zeest, too,
this travel is usual but her office is not the last stop she is imagining. It
is the thought of Mirpur to Birmingham bus ride that brightens her day. In
her head, she is journeying through Turkey and Austria on her way to meet her
relatives in Birmingham. Zeest is just one of the
3,71,000 Mirpuris who is enthralled at the recent announcement by the AJK
government to initiate a bus service linking the city directly with the UK
this year. The service is said to benefit more than eight million Kashmiris
based in UK, who can now easily see their relatives in both the countries. Syeda Zahra Batool termed
the Mirpur-Birmingham bus service a unique idea. Zahra belongs to District
Bagh, Azad Kashmir, and is now settled in London with her media professional
husband. “It’s still not clear how feasible this will be and how many
people will be ready to embrace the harshness of the long-winded route but
the idea itself is thrilling,” says Zahra while sharing her thoughts with
me on email. It’s only in the UK that
one realises how strongly connected are the Kashmiris in UK (known in the
mainstream as Pakistanis) to their roots in Azad Kashmir. “It is also important
when our pacifist local culture is facing an onslaught from the forces
hostile to our origins. Such an initiative has a huge symbolic value and must
be supported, especially by those who have the luxury of time and who also
want to see a lot of countries and landscapes on the way,” Zahra says. She, however, feels that
the initiative would have gained much wider appeal and publicity if the AJK
government had marketed it in the UK amongst Pakistani communities. This is not a new attempt.
During the 1950s and 1960s, there was a lot of road travel from AJK to UK.
Many still recall the days when travel between the said points was no big
deal. People used to travel in their private cars and security was not a
detriment. However, during the 1970s a
lot of it changed; security became a major concern and travelling via Quetta
and Iran took a back seat. “2012 will change the
course. You will see the first formal bus service from Mirpur to Birmingham,
and it will connect many families,” says Tahir Khokher, transport minister
AJK government, while talking to TNS. “We are aiming at the April 2012
kick-off date but one has to be realistic; a lot of matters still need to be
decided,” he says. The intended route for the
service is Mirpur, Quetta, Iran, Turkey, Union of Serbia and Montenegro
(previously Yugoslavia), Austria, Germany and Belgium into UK. This will
include stopovers and sightseeing in the major countries. In case you are comparing
this bus ride to anything that you experience locally then read what Khokher
has to say “No no!” he laughs, “this is not going to be anything close
to Mirpur to Rawalpindi or Lahore to Rawalpindi bus ride is. We will follow
all set international standards for this service. There will be particular
arrangements for sightseeing, camping and restauranteering. Special motel
bookings will be done in the countries the bus travels through.” The bus service will not
only facilitate the Kashmiris (who have relatives on erither side) but also
any common Pakistani who wants to explore the world. “This is going to be a
magnificent booster for our tourism industry. Anyone who has a passport and a
visa can avail this opportunity,” says minister. The government of AJK is
still talking with some international transport companies. “We are weighing
our options; most of the transporters interested in this project are
Kashmiris who are based in UK. We have to pick up the best so that the
passengers get all basic facilities like dining cabin, toilet,” Khokher
says. Talking about the proposed
fare for the bus service, Khokher said that the one-way fare per passenger
will be between Rs15,000 to 18,000. On asking about the timing
and duration of the service, he says: “It all depends on the response that
we get from the service. At present we are planning a once-a-week trip from
Mirpur and Birmingham but you never know the response might force us to
reschedule it to twice a week. I remember a few years back when a local
transporter started a bus service from Mirpur to Karachi, he faced a lot of
flak but now his company is running two buses daily between the two
cities.” The AJK government plans to
set up a swift counter to fasten the visa process for the bus service. “A
majority of the Kashmiris have British passports, so for them getting visas
won’t be an issue but we plan to smoothen the process for the rest.” On the security aspect of
the trip, Tahir convinces us saying, “I don’t feel that security will be
a problem. At present there are more than 60 cars (private and convoys) that
are daily commuting in and out of Quetta. This also includes foreigners who
come from Iran. The government is responsible for the security. Barring one
or two instances in Quetta, the overall situation is good to go.” Back to where I started.
Like Zeest, I too am dreaming about The Peacock Throne in Iran, the famous
Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, a well-lit Brandenburg Gate, which has become
a symbol of Berlin’s past or Edgbaston, Birmingham, host to the legendary
1999 world cup semi-final tie between Australia and South Africa… Let me book a ticket before
it gets too late!
The
vandal in the mosque It was a cold December in the year 1987 that my wife Shabnam and I went travelling in the outback of Badin district with a friend we had met only a few days earlier. Abubaker Shaikh of Badin knew everything there was to know about the district. We were looking for old monuments and he, having travelled there extensively, was our captain. At the end of one long day
as we were heading back for Badin, Abu said we ought to check out Belo vari
Maseet — Mosque in the Forest. And so, somewhere near Tando Mohammad Khan,
we turned off the main highroad onto a byway. The tarmac eventually gave way
and we trundled along through tall grass and spreading peelu and acacia trees
until we spotted the three squat domes in the distance. It was a beautiful edifice of burnt brick, on a raised plinth forlorn in the middle of a great void. The nearest village was several kilometres away and though we found some reed prayer mats on the floor of the central prayer chamber, worshippers were evidently few and infrequent. Spotted owlets roosted on the ledge below the central dome and blue rock pigeons in the shafts of the wind-catchers. These wind-catchers were a remarkable feature we had seen only in mosques in southern Sindh. The two alcoves on either side of the mehrab had openings at the top. The hollow shafts went up to just below the drum of the dome and opened outward in the rear wall. Unlike the chunky rooftop wind-catchers of southern Sindhi towns, these were artistically designed features integral to the structure and were not immediately obvious. We had discovered them only by accident as we stood by the mehrab and felt the blast of cold wind streaming out of the alcove. Later we realised this was a common feature in most mosques of the period. As for the period of Belo vari Maseet, it is early 16th century. This made it among the earliest complete worship places in the province. The architecture was clearly Central Asiatic and matched other buildings raised by the Arghuns elsewhere in the region. In fact, the mosque was identical to the two among the ruins of Dhonra Hingora twenty kilometres to the north. The brick structure was majestic with its squat domes and exposed brickwork. Inside, however, the plaster still held and with it some of the ancient frescoes. The squinches were worked in Central Asiatic style and the arches dividing the three bays had incipient cracks. I took dozens of pictures but since I was on assignment for the Department of Culture of the Sindh government, they were all handed over for publication. Sadly that never happened. For years after I left Karachi, I had planned to return to Belo vari Maseet to capture it on film for my own record. But though I was so many times in the area, I never got to Belo until recently. There was whole new network of roads and as we came down from Hyderabad on the Matli Bypass, we crossed the bridge on the channel known variously as Bypass Mori, Naseer Canal or even Fuleli Canal. Half a kilometre on, a paved road took off to the right for village Haji Mohammad Varar. The mosque lay three and a half kilometres down this way. What had been forest a
quarter century ago was now farmland dotted with hamlets. There were people
where we hadn’t met a soul; most of the trees were gone and the sugarcane
stood tall above which the domes, now whitewashed, were visible. We drew
nearer and I was horrified to see that the ancient building had been
‘renovated’. The brickwork was covered with cement and gaily painted in
green and orange chequerboard and floral designs. The domes and the parapets
had finials where none had stood back in 1987. This never fails. It has never happened that I return to a place after many years and am not disappointed. Always the untrained hand of the ignorant matched by the aggressive inactivity of officialdom has destroyed ancient heritage. Belo vari Maseet, now called Jamia Masjid Noor Beli, was sadly no different. In the worst cases, I have seen priceless historical buildings torn down to be replaced with modern structures. Back in 1987, I had climbed a huge peelu tree to photograph the mosque and startled a whole family of spotted owlets roosting in a hollow in the thick trunk. I asked about the tree and its stump was pointed out. The men said they cut it but were unable to say why. The peelu, a slow growing and majestic tree, was not getting in the way. But the first thing we Pakistanis do when we wish to build is we destroy all nearby trees. The peelu that had held its ground for hundreds of years succumbed to the callous mindlessness of ignorant people driven by some insane nature-destroying death wish. The interior was similarly vandalised with cement plaster and green, brown and orange colour scheme. The ornate squinches in the corners were plastered over and the original frescoes were lost beneath the ‘renovation’. Perhaps the only good was the two pillars holding up the arches between the three bays, the ones that had cracks in 1987. While the pillars may have averted collapse, the overall ‘beautification’ greatly took away from this fine piece of Central Asiatic architecture. Right next to the mosque was a clump of houses. The men told me the renovation was inflicted upon this beautiful historical monument by a mullah sometime in 2007. The monies were gleaned from local ‘well-wishers’, themselves as ignorant as the mullah but evidently keen to secure their place in paradise. Officialdom did not come into play very likely because they do not even know such a priceless building exists. For a quarter of a century I had repeatedly procrastinated. Had I only been back to Belo vari Maseet early in 2007, I could have caught it in its pristine form before it was vandalised. I am certain the transparencies I left with the Department of Culture in Karachi have all been lost to fungus and there might not be a single image of this building as it looked before the untrained hand of the vandal was laid upon it. In my roster, Belo vari Maseet now sits with buildings too numerous to be enumerated. Either the perpetrator is the untrained restorer or the treasure seeker. Always the loser is Pakistan’s national heritage. And no one cares. |
|
