THE PAKISTAN AIRLINES FOKKER FRIENDSHIP, a small turboprop, weaved through the high snow mountains of the Hindu Kush an hour after we left Islamabad. The mountain people were isolated from the rest of the world for several months each winter by heavy snowfalls that blocked all the passes and were too dangerous for turboprops. But it was late summer, and the pilot speared through a gap in the mountains. We landed in a valley close by a small town, Chitral.
I had come to that faraway place in search of a mysterious Afghan tribe, the Kafirs, who claimed as their ancestors the Macedonian troops accompanying Alexander the Great’s invading army in 333BC. But while there, I came across a tale of British military heroism at the besieged Chitral fortress. It enthralled the British public, including Queen Victoria, back in 1895 — but has since been largely forgotten.
Nudging the remote north-eastern edge of Afghanistan, at 4,902 feet above sea level, Chitral’s air was at first gasp spare and icy. An open-air Jeep was waiting for me at the small terminal. “I’m Ali,” the driver said. “Prince Siraj ul-Mulk sent me to pick you up.”
A provincial capital, Chitral bore the rugged look of an ancient land, hardly touched by the modern world. A maze of wheat fields mingled with orchards whose clusters of densely-leafed trees were laden with apples, apricots and walnuts. At the head of the valley, the glacial Kunar River surged towards the town, then swerved just before the bazaar, and splashed its way past a crumbling fortress.
The Jeep edged through the crowded, narrow streets of Shahi Bazaar, where robed merchants with bushy beards sat on carpets in hole-in-the-wall shops. They sold an eclectic spread, from assault rifles to antique flintlocks to washing powder, fake Nike running shoes and fistfuls of much-used US dollars. No women were in the bazaar, not even in the burqa cover-all cloaks, except for little girls, hand-in-hand with their fathers, as they shopped. Did they fear the day when, aged nine or ten, they were stopped by their fathers from going into the bazaar with them ever again? It must be a traumatic rite of passage.
The sun was drifting below
