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retrospect
After the recent snowfall and rains, life edges back to normal in Loralai By Salman Rashid It was late afternoon on a November day. The mellow sun sat on the western horizon just above the brown and grey tree-less hills when we fetched up outside Lahore. The place was deserted. The doors set in high mud walls were closed and padlocked, not a soul walked the narrow lanes. The squares of agricultural plots were desiccated with a thick layer of powdery dust upon which stood sere stalks of what would have been corn and what were once handsome, spreading mulberry trees were mere leaf-less skeletons. It was a ghost town we had entered. My friend Dawood decided we
should drive on to Dilly. And so, five minutes later we turned off the Dilly was scarcely better. Here too dried out fields lay fallow behind mud walls along which ran desiccated channels where water once flowed; here too were skeletal remains of once handsome trees under whose cooling shade the Dilly-wallahs would have reposed during the long summer afternoons and here were also a few emaciated goats and donkeys browsing in the dust. We passed by padlocked doors opening into deserted streets seeking the home of Malik Abdus Samad. He was an elder and one of the better off land-owners of the village and with him we had hoped to talk of the old days. Once we could have stopped anywhere we wished to ask directions; now we were hard put to meet with anyone. After a couple of wrong turns and a few knocks on doors that were not padlocked, we fetched up outside Malik's home. His sons led us across the high-walled courtyard and into a dimly lit room. Malik Abdus Samad, perhaps in his late fifties, with a full-bearded chubby face lay in a bed under a thick quilt. He was crippled after an accident some months earlier. But he was willing to talk. This part of Loralai had
long been renowned for its almonds -- not just one, but three different With the proceeds of their almond sales, farmers enlarged their plantations and the new townships that came up near older homesteads were given the names of the ones the farmers traded with: those who took their produce to Lahore called theirs by that name and the group trading with Delhi called their township Dilly (with a palatal d). Malik remembered a time before partition when he accompanied his father on the bullock cart laden with their almond crop on the three-day journey to Harnai. There they loaded their precious cargo on the train and rode another two days to Lahore. Sometimes there journey extended all the way to Delhi. But then came the partition of the subcontinent and Lahore was the last limit of their forays. Proceeds were fair and it was a good life that Malik Abdus Samad can look back on. Things went well until the 1980s when the worst drought in human memory hit Loralai together with most other parts of the country. The district being rain-fed, produce began to peter off until there came a spring when the trees just barely broke out in blossom. The farmers did not lose faith hoping that the summer would bring some rain or the next winter snow on the mountains. The aquifer would be recharged, they hoped, and it would soon be back to business as usual. But that did not happen and the following couple of years saw the orchards start to die off. Today in Dilly and Lahore
it is not a rare land-owner who will tell you that he lost about eighty per With farming being the only craft they knew, many joined the coal mines of Harnai and Shareg; others went farther afield to the cities of Sindh and Punjab to work as unskilled labourers. And so it was that Lahore came to be completely deserted and Dilly partly so. Time is that these villages are now peopled only by the elderly, women and children. Young men able of body and mind can only be seen during religious holidays. Lahore and Dilly in remote Loralai are now hopeful again. Since the winter of 2005, things have started to look up. Early that year, the first snow of many years fell on the neighbouring hills and the villages themselves saw some rain. The farmers are now replanting their orchards and some of the younger members are only too glad to be returning home to tend to this growing responsibility. And so life edges slowly back to normal in Lahore and Dilly.
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed Last November was a month of uncertainties, surprises and even revelations for me. I was supposed to leave for San Francisco, USA to attend an event as a media delegate. I had received my air-ticket, hotel booking details etc but they were of no use as I had no idea whether I would receive my passport from the US embassy on time or not. My excitement was at peak as it was going to be my first visit to that part of the world. Though the consular officer
at the embassy can confirm the approval of your application at the Anyhow I came to know that the delay was for the reason that my personal details had been subjected to name check -- a process that can take long. Any close resemblance with the name of any unwanted person could further prolong the process. My worries increased manifold when a colleague told me, without disclosing his sources, that my last name Ahmed was part of many terrorists' or wanted criminals' names. It was right when I had lost all hopes that I received my visa stamped passport, hardly 12 hours before my scheduled departure. Barring a few colleagues and some close relatives, I had not told anyone about the visit because of the uncertainties it entailed. Once the passport was in my hand I started calling my acquaintances to inform them. What followed were congratulatory remarks, suggestions and the advice not to argue with US officials even if they resort to my body and strip searches. A relative even advised me to keep shaving kit with me and shave my face prior to landing at J F Kennedy airport in New York. "An unshaven face can land you in trouble. You know all rogues care less about their appearance," he said. There were even those who, despite my repeated denials, were dead sure I was going there for good. Expecting unique experiences ahead, I reached Lahore airport early in the morning next day to find watchful immigration officials on a hunt to catch illegal immigrants. One of them was about to peel off the visa sticker with his thumb nail when I requested him to handle it with care. Thank God it took him little time to realise that he was holding a passport and not a fake currency note. What followed was a volley of oft-repeated questions which I could answer properly and was cleared for boarding. The travel from Lahore to Dubai and onwards to New York was smooth. All through I was busy visualising what lied in store for me. The plane crew was repeatedly warning passengers not to stand near toilets in groups as it was gross violation of US government's directions to airlines bringing passengers to their country. If they can exercise power on passengers flying thousands of miles away from their territory, what would they do once they land on their soil. This was the question that was haunting me at that time. It took us good 14 hours to reach J F Kennedy airport from Dubai. Finally the wait was over and the passengers started disembarking. There were long queues at the airport where we were made to wait for around two hours to clear passport control. The clearance process was slow as all visa holders were undergoing the process of fingerprinting, scanning and photographing, through a biometric system installed by the US Department of Homeland Security. While standing in the queue and waiting for my turn, I could see people taken to an interrogation room for a question-answer session. Tall and stout personnel of Homeland Security Department with rubber gloves on their hands would escort them. I also made a wild guess as to which of these officials would frisk me shortly or subject me to rubber glove rummage. Soon I was asked to appear before the concerned official for registration. Without raising his head even once he made all the entries, took my photograph and fingerprints. Everything was done in a mechanical fashion and I was simply asked to collect my luggage from the conveyer belt. This indifference shown on the part of the officials left me a little hurt. They had cleared me without subjecting me to any kind of interrogation or body search. I had visualised so much about this phase of my journey that I was dying to see all happen, in reality. Dejected, I collected my luggage and slowly moved towards the exit gate to take the domestic flight to San Francisco. I was talking myself. "No one back home, especially my advisers, will believe my version of the story. They will doubt that Americans did something bizarre, and that is why I am not sharing these details with them."
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highway and entered Dilly. Ten minutes between Lahore and Dilly and not even
an international border to cross may sound a geographical anomaly. But in
Loralai district of Balochistan this is reality. And its origin lies two
centuries, perhaps farther, in the past.
species. There was also a goodly quantity of mulberry, apricot, pomegranate
and some peach to be had. The well-off Loralai land-holder could safely boast
of five or six thousand almond trees and a hefty fiscal turnover annually
from its crop. So plentiful was the yield of the almond orchards that every
autumn traders loaded up their camels and ox-carts with their produce and
began the long slog to the markets of Lahore and Delhi. But that is hearsay;
what persists in memory is the ox-cart journey to Harnai where they loaded
their produce on the train to the plains. And this would have been only after
the late 1880s when the railway line was laid.
cent of his almond trees -- Samad being no exception. And the almond tree is
the most drought-resistant and least irrigation intensive; other fruit trees
being less hardy were completely wiped out. This is the typical scale of
loss. The rich were reduced to poverty and the not so well-off simply moved
out of the area to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
time of the interview, it can get you from six weeks to six months or even
more to actually receive your passport with a visa stamped on it. Getting
more impatient with each passing day I decided to call the embassy but my
advisors warned me against it. "They know their work and don't like any
interference in it. Just sit with your fingers crossed or you may lose your
chance to visit their country."