Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Khan, see? Khan means chief, and so does Sirdar in Hindi. He's a
Swati khan. Thousands of acres of
zmaka
, rich as . . .'
He trailed off, thinking. I expected him to say 'rich as
me
,' but
words often eluded him. Where the hell was Swat? I imagined we
were going somewhere near the Pakistan-Kashmir border. Finally,
after Ray's extremely vague description; I located the place on a
large, ancient British map at the hotel, using a magnifying glass. It
was up in an area that here resembled a bent finger crushed between
Afghanistan, Soviet Central Asia, and China. The capital, Saidu
Sharif, did not even appear on this map. Indeed, north of a place
called Malakand, which itself was just southwest of the area
identified as Swat, the next major city on this map was somewhere
named K'a-Shih - and
that
was at least a hundred miles inside the
Chinese border. I mentioned this to Ray.
He laughed. 'That's the way I'd like to keep it, too. Don't want
tourists messing things up. Tourists bring in government; government
brings in cops; cops bring nothing but fuckin' trouble.'
He claimed he'd instructed his 'people' to make sure that anyone
resembling a cartographer was to be given 'fuckin' uncooperative
cooperation.' Swat, he told me at least thirty times, was 'the
Switzerland of the East.' I still pictured it, however, as a malarial
swamp, famous solely for being where the first flyswatter had been
invented.
But this conversation took place later. That night, in spite of
Sirdarji's exhortations, Ray insisted on taking me to the Cages. A
street in an exceptionally hectic and shabby area of Bombay, it was
devoted entirely to the business of two professions: dentistry and
prostitution. The dentists occupied second-floor walk-ups, and the
prostitutes plied their trade from . . . well, cages. Where other shops
might have had walls and doors, these 'brothels' had bars, just like
Hollywood jail cells. Behind them, often peering out, hands
gripping the metal rods like prisoners, were the hookers. Many
were village girls purchased from their parents and little more than
thirteen or fourteen. They were grotesquely made up: eyeliner
applied with a jumbo Magic Marker, eyelashes half an inch thick
and curling out practically to their ears; crimson rouge, unnatural
on dark skin, and dusted heavily with white powder, ostensibly to
