35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘I LIKE TOO MUCH THE PHFIT-PHFIT’
‘He killed our beloved Bhutto.’ The bartender sighed. ‘We can
never forgive that. He was a wonderful man, Bhutto.’
I asked why a Muslim would object to the enforcement of Islamic
prohibitions against frivolous activities – like having fun. The
bartender, however, was an Indian Muslim at heart, preferring the
looser, less censorious Islam he’d grown up with to this state-imposed
puritanical form. He genuinely seemed to miss the old days.
Ray had rented a two-bedroom suite, and on his return we sat
watching American TV programmes – ones crudely edited by
Islamic censors – and eating room-service food.
‘Lahore’s still a wild place,’ Ray volunteered. ‘But you gotta know
where to look.’ Even he confessed, however, that it was wise to keep
your nose clean in Pakistan.
The next day, we drove the two-hundred-odd miles to the twin
cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad – this latter the newly
constructed capital, a showpiece of modem structures as contrived
and artificial as most modern cities designed and built from scratch.
Along bleak, broad boulevards lurked a lot of evidence of the heavy
military presence – telltale signs of a nervous dictatorship. The
threat of another war with India made it nervous, as did the threat of
a coup from within. Every available surface was plastered with
posters and pictures of General Zia, looking, with his rakish
moustache and heavy-lidded eyes, like some roguish thirties matinee
idol on opium.
Dropped at another Intercontinental Hotel, we ate a bad lunch
there, hiring another car and driver to take us on to Peshawar, another
hundred miles north-west. Ray told me he didn’t want our
movements to be easily traced.
We were heading up into the hills now, through landscape that
was bleaker, while less arid, occasional groves and relatively fertile
fields visible beyond roadside irrigation ditches, the air cleaner and
slightly cooler. Approaching the Attock bridge, a bare, pragmatic
army-style construction spanning a gorge over the Indus River, we
encountered a checkpoint, as if we were crossing some kind of
frontier. Soldiers looked at passports, compared their photographs
to their owners, asked cursory questions. Then we were waved on
into the North West Territories, where the jurisdiction of Pakistan’s
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