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travel The
legend of Mum
After a disappointing trip to Cuba, visiting Communist North Korea became a mission. But it entailed some challenges… By A.H. Cemendtaur Though it is only the end
of April, Beijing is experiencing a hot day. The budget hostel room I have
checked in does not have A day earlier it was our last day in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). It was dark and gloomy in Pyongyang, and it drizzled every few minutes. Our group had reached the Pyongyang railway station in a bus. There were other foreigners too — it was the largest contingent of foreigners I had seen anywhere in North Korea. I was ready to board the train that would take me to Beijing. I was given a card, to write a farewell message. “Pyongyang is my home, and I feel sad leaving home,” I wrote. And I really meant it. I grew up in a bipolar world. I remember an older relative of mine explaining the political realities of the world, to a fifth grader, in these words: “Son, there are two superpowers in our world, America and Soviet Union. All other countries are merely pawns on the chessboard we call the world. These world powers decide which pawn would move which way.” It was a credible theory, but I saw anomalies. For some reason the USA was more accessible to us than the USSR. For example, we always saw Hollywood movies and TV productions, but we never saw such cultural onslaught from the USSR. After completing the tenth grade I got admission in Karachi’s DJ College. The bus that I would take to the college would pass through the busy Empress Market area. It was the time when Pakistan’s first and only steel mill was being built with the help of the Russians. I would often have an interesting observation in the Empress Market area. I would see steel mill buses lined up and Russians buying clothing, especially jeans, from used cloth vendors. What kind of superpower was that, citizens of which were buying the used clothes of citizens of the other superpower? I would ask myself and won’t find a good answer. The image of the USSR as a superpower tumbled in my head. In the long vacations after
two years of college, I devoured a lot of books. Besides other writers I read
James Hadley Chase. In several Chase novels Eastern Europe would be portrayed
as a dark and mysterious place. Why were the societies taken up by The whole world saw a political shake-up. Eastern European countries ditched socialism. Two pair of countries erstwhile divided geographically because of diametric political and economic ideologies, united. Eastern Germany joined Western Germany and South Yemen united with North Yemen. Along with the crumbling of the Soviet Union, came shattering down my dreams of visiting the mysterious communist country. But all hope was not lost. Puddles of socialism were drying up fast, but some of them were still there. Cuba was there and was still functioning on the socialist principles. So I made a trip to Cuba. But Cuba as a socialist country did not impress me. By the time I reached there Castro was ailing and was not on the scene much — the country was slowly losing its socialist colours. Cuba was experimenting with parallel economies: a socialist economy for the natives, and a capitalist economy for the tourists. The economy I landed in, worked well. It was disappointing. I wanted to see the real thing. Where should I go? I asked myself. I must go to the world’s least visited country. Visiting North Korea became a mission. And this mission had a few challenges. Things had to be planned right. I could only enter North Korea through China. I could get the North Korean visa only from DRPRK approved travel agents based in Beijing. I did everything I was supposed to do. Several months later when my travel agent in Beijing showed me my DPRK visa, I felt a great relief. I was finally going to see a hard-core communist nation and an alternate economic set-up in action. Things we hear and read
influence our thoughts and perspectives. Today we live in a world that is
dominated by the western In popular culture, propagated by the West, North Korea is described as a member of ‘axis of evil’, its people are said to be cold and lifeless, it is not a safe place to go to, you may never come back, the state is about to collapse, the country is going through a famine, there is a shortage of everything, and it is an authoritarian regime where dissidents are sent to the concentration camps. I repeated these biases in my head to become sharply aware of them and then be able to openly question them. Some western propaganda is easy to reject outright. They show you a satellite image of the two Koreas — that satellite image, supposedly taken at night, shows that the two Koreas are a world apart. South Korea has lights all over, proving South to be the beacon of capitalism. Areas encompassed by North Korea are mostly dark with a few bright spots here and there. Look more closely at that ‘satellite image’, and you can see that it is a doctored photo. In order to clearly show the outline of DPRK, the doctors got carried away and put lights all around the boundary. Don’t count on seeing street lamps all along the China-DPRK border. But my DPRK visa came with certain unnerving restrictions. During my stay in North Korea I would be escorted by guides all the time. I can only see places of interest present on my travel itinerary. I cannot just get up, leave the hotel, and go anywhere. I am not allowed to talk to people in the street. I can only take photos after seeking permission from my guide. I could tell North Korea was very suspicious of its visitors.
In the last 50 years the black bears of Balochistan have been hunted down to extinction By Dr Raheal Ahmad Siddiqui For long, residents of Quetta valley feared the dreaded ‘Mum’. In the days of the Raj, during the winters, children were ushered inside the houses and were asked to lock the doors properly after sunset. As a young girl in 1950s, my mother remembers that the streets of Quetta would go deserted in winters. Ami describes the Mum as a black hairy creature of the mountain that prowled the streets at night in search of ‘naughty children’. As the myth goes, it would knock at the door and carry the naughty children away. Another source however
relates Mum to be a she-creature that would take away young men and copulate
with them in a den. On top of the Beengah mountain in the Sulaiman Range, located between tribal areas of Punjab and Balochistan, there is a cave associated with Mumbra (He-creature). The legend has it that it stood on the entrance of the cave, waving a log and chased away an intruding panther, while the shepherd and his flock remained safe. The older generation of Buzader tribesmen would narrate this legend but the Baloch youth find it irrelevant to their present environment. Both the mumbra and the panther have become extinct from these mountains. Interestingly the physical description of the mum and the mumbra fits into that of a black bear. In February 2000, as political agent, I camped for the night at Border Military Post (BMP) at Chittarwatta, located at the remote north-western tip of tribal area of DG Khan. The borders of three provinces converge at this place. The valley leads to South Waziristan after skirting around the western reaches of Takht-i-Sulaiman. The BMP post at Chittarwata was a colonial fort perched on a hill to guard the western pass. The Britishers built it to protect the towns of Vehowa and Taunsa along Indus plains from the marauding attacks of Waziris. It was burnt and raised to the ground in 1895 and 1901 by the Waziri tribesmen. The present fort was constructed around 1905. At night, during the campfire I inquired about the existing fauna: Every odd winter there would be sighting of bears moving along the valley. When the Takht-i-Suleiman is enveloped in snow, they descend here in search of food. In 1998, during a massive flash flood in Chittarwatta stream, a carcass of full-grown black bear landed few kilometres downstream of this post. The fury of hill torrent must have caught this bear offguard and smashed it against rocks. Drowning was a subsequent action. Next morning before the jirga it was decided that any fresh sighting of bear should be immediately reported in DG Khan. Anybody heard of hunting or killing a bear would be arrested by BMP. Three days later, I met the district wildlife officer in D.G. Khan, and made a request to immediately post a game watcher at Chitterwatta for protection of bears. Far from taking any action, the entire department refused to believe the story. The three gentlemen officers of wildlife department proudly produced two photocopied pages from T.J. Robert’s ‘Mammals of Pakistan’ according to which black bears are not found in this part of the country. I was sort of checkmated by the authority on Pakistani wildlife. My evidence was dismissed as exaggerated heresy. When I pulled my copy of T.J. Robert’s book from my briefcase, the trio was taken aback. None of them had actually read or even seen this book. They got the photocopy from a ‘friend’. I was politely made to understand that I may be good in administrative affairs but the wildlife department knows all about their job. In late October 2000, the news arrived in my office that the Qaisrani tribesmen had killed a female bear and her cub, some 15 kilometres from BMP Post Chittarwatta. I was enraged and asked the district wildlife officer to immediately send his team (three days of hard travelling from D.G. Khan) and book the miscreants under relevant laws. He said he would “look into the matter”. In other words, the matter was closed. Back in DG Khan, the trio from wildlife department along with some local journalists, the tribesmen swore that the jirga members had not conveyed the PA’s order. They were afraid that the beast would harm them or kill their livestock. They chased the mother and her eight-month-old cub for two days and two nights. The mother could have easily escaped its pursuer but the motherly instinct prevented her from abandoning her baby. She repeatedly paused and came down to help her struggling cub, who could not match her speed. Finally she took shelter in a small cave. Repeated burst of Kalashnikov ended their lives. I presented the front paws of the mother and baby bear, along with a putrefying portion of the pelt as evidence before the wildlife officer. On my report to the Commissioner and the Secretary Forest, the department initiated an inquiry against the negligent staff. The officers pleaded complete ignorance, which is bliss and by pleading it, you can get away with anything. Two months later I moved on to another assignment. No more was heard on this inquiry. The black bears of Balochistan have been hunted to the verge of extinction in the last 50 years. They have become extinct from Hazarganjji-Chiltan mountain range around Quetta. With it died the legend of Mum, which had sent so many chills across my mother’s spine in her younger days. The
writer is an animal right activist and can be reached at dr.raheal@gmail.com
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any air conditioning. I lie on the bed doing nothing, just feeling the slow
trickle of sweat on my back. I stare at the ceiling and ask myself if it is
really over. Why so soon? Especially when visiting North Korea had remained a
cherished dream for me for so long…
revolutionaries, shrouded in such mystery? What were they trying to hide? I
had to go there and see for myself. I especially had to see the Soviet Union,
the land of the Bolshevik Revolution, the first country to embrace communism.
It turned out that the Soviet Union was hiding some fundamental flaws. The
whole union was based on big lies. Revolutionaries, who had got peasants and
workers by their side to throw out the landed and privileged class, had
ultimately themselves become the new privileged class. George Orwell could
clearly see it in 1945 when he wrote ‘Animal Farm’, but starry-eyed
idealists believed in the invincibility of the socialist ideals. USSR was
slowly gutted by its own contradictions, and in 1991 the union collapsed.
media. Consequently, it is hard not to look at things the way western sources
describe them to us. But before visiting North Korea I tried to shrug off any
unconscious biases insidiously accepted reading western media reports on that
country.
The offspring would always be a female Mum. In the late 1970s in Quetta
valley there were a few reported night attacks in the isolated huts. Terror
struck the city and newspapers ran stories of the return of the ‘Mum of the
Raj’.