A Trip to the Dyers

The Dyer at his very simple station in front of his shop

There is one thing about Pakistan that I really love and that is you can get practically anything made to your specifications. The vast majority of clothes are tailor-made, so anything you can think up, you can get made. It doesn’t always turn out the way you want, but considering that it costs three times less to get a full Pakistani Kameez Shalwar (lit. ‘Shirt Pant) suit made than it does to get my trousers taken up an inch in Australia – I’m not complaining!

Inside the pakced dyers shop

It is also commonplace to get cloth, shawls or anything really dyed to meet your colour needs — and the other day I went with my mother-in law to the dyers to get a shawl. My mother-in law always goes to the same dyer, who is a young man, but skilled in what he does. His little shop is packed to the roof with different shawls, plain cloth for dying and more shawls.

As a ‘gori’ (white chick/foreigner) I am not well versed in the subtleties of buying cloth, but my mother-in law is an old hat at it, and goes through tens of different cloth, which all look the same to me until she finds one that is the right feel — the dyer regularly has to unpack loads of his nicely folded cloth for women to inspect in order to get that exact right piece — it’s quite a process just to get one scarf!

The Dyes

It is one of my favourite things to watch the dyers working, because the setup is so infinately simple, yet they produce the most vibrant and sometimes complex designs and colours and make it look so simple! Actually it is a favourite thing of mine in general to watch people who are skilled at their craft, because it reminds me that there is Art in everything.

Some dyed shawls, and the dyers overlocker - a real multi-tasker!

Valentine’s Day Special

It was Valentine’s Day a little while ago, as most of us know and I wanted to post this earlier but a seasonal flu got in the way – so belatedly I’ll share the Pakistani Valentine’s Day hoo-haa.

Turning the corner we saw that Valentine's Day maddness had begun!

I am used to a bit of fuss and advertising here and there for Valentine’s Day back in Australia, but I really wasn’t expecting there to be anything made of it in Pakistan — how wrong I was! There wasn’t much TV advertising prior to the day, but when my husband and I decided at the last minute to go out for dinner in Islamabad we were bombarded with red hearts and roses at every corner. The first I saw of it was a lone heart shaped helium balloon caught in a tree, I thought ‘how cute, maybe someone here knows its Valentine’s Day’ and then we turned the corner and saw this:

Cardboard hearts covered everything!

Valentine's Day well under way at the Flower Village

I was shocked — there were cars everywhere, and young boys selling love heart helium balloons at every car window, and the flower market was insanely busy. Red roses abounded and business was booming. My lonely tree-caught heart balloon was obviously not the only sign of Valentine’s Day in Pakistan.

My husband asked me if I wanted some balloons, but i figured I could do without!!

Arriving at the restaurant was no less love-festy — the lighting was dim, and there were scented candles on tables, more helium balloons festooned in a net on the ceiling and streamers and love hearts all over. Everything was starting to feel sickly sweet!!

The interior of Pappasellis in Islamabad -- lovey-dovey to the max!

Needless to say we had a pleasant dinner, playing everyone’s favourite game of ‘couple spotting’ — basically guessing if a lovey pair is married or not — the give away is if they keep casting furtive glances around the restaurant! Which brings me to the most puzzling thing about all this — I don’t know if its just me, but I kind of had the impression that Valentine’s Day, whilst being celebrated my married couples, was more of a ‘sweetheart’ thing – so how was it that in Pakistan, a conservative kind of country was the celebration so very big??? Of course it would be naiive of me to think that things don’t go on behind the scenes, but this is a very public display going on here, so I was somewhat gobsmacked by the whole thing.

I can’t remember how many times I must have said ‘I can’t believe it’, but my husband was pretty tired of the phrase by the end of dinner, only to have me start it up again when we were on our way home and saw that the tree-lined street outside had been all lit up for the occassion. Well Pakistan, you have more than outdone yourself on Valentine’s Day, as strange as it was for me to see!! I guess it is a reminder that Love, even sappy Valentines-style Love, is a universal thing :)

The trees lit up in fairy lights as we were leaving Islamabad

Sonia The Dancing Bear

Sonia

The sound of bagpipes rippling through the quiet afternoon is not what one expects to hear in Pakistan — the afternoon call to prayer perhaps, but bagpipes? The unusual sound is always accompanied by an unusual, but much sadder sight – that of a dancing bear. For some reason unknown to me, the owners of dancing bears always play the bagpipes, and whilst I have heard them being played at a distance, one afternoon a little while ago I heard them louder than normal, and looking over the balcony realised they were right outside the door. The security guards normally don’t let them through into the residential areas where I live, but this time the man with his bear, his little brother and another guy with a monkey made it through.

Because I have worked with WSPA back in Australia, I was preparing myself for something quite dreadful, but as far as bears in captiviy goes, this one looked OK. Her nose was not all torn up like you so often see in dancing bears, though the ring through her tender nose was present. Her name was Sonia (which is kind of like darling, or sweetheart) and she was three years old. Amazingly the bear owner’s little brother proudly showed me how he could put his neck in Sonia’s mouth – though with her front incisors removed, she couldn’t do much if she wanted to. I was also glad to see that she still had all her claws, as sometimes they are ripped out. We got some fruit for her from the house which she ate, and the owner told us that he feeds her on fruit and milk – which is something of a luxury in Pakistan. I wouldn’t let him get her to dance (which he thought was odd) but just took some pictures.

Sonia and her owner

I wanted to tell him about the Pakistan Bioresource Research Centre, who work with WSPA on bear issues in Pakistan (particulalry with bear baiting, which they have managed to almost irradicate through a lot of hard work in the NWFP) but I don’t have the Urdu for it. The PBRC have a sanctuary where they provide homes with WSPA financial support for rescued bears as well as alternative livlihoods for owners. The sanctuary is called Kund Park and I so want to go and visit, but it is too dangerous nowadays for going into that area as a foreigner. It’s always really hard for me to reconcile how I feel when I see these things, because this guy was really sweet, and was obviously really fond of Sonia and

Sitting Up

gentle with her. He asked if we had any old shoes or jackets that we didn’t want because he and his little brother only had the sandals and shawl they were wearing, and that’s not much against a Pakistani winter. In the end my heart went out to both the man and the bear, and the circumstances which brought them together so. After they had gone I couldn’t help but feel strange in myself that I had asked for the bear’s name, but hadn’t asked for the man’s name.

The little brother putting his neck in Sonia's mouth

Pictures of Pakistan

Seeing as though I have been terribly silent all January, here are some of the pictures I have been taking recently…I am looking forward to the photo opportunities that the breif but beautiful Pakistani Spring will present, so hopefully there will be a whole lot more to follow …

An old Uncle with an amazing face

My Favourite breakfast food, fresh hot naan!

More of the colourful public buses – one with steel flagons of milk on top

Navigating the crazy Pindi traffic with a huge load is no mean feat!

The sweetest, most juicy mandarins ever!

This cool-looking old Uncle was selling radishes and bright red (dyed) carrots – what an awesome face!

I just loved this guy’s look — so much character in his face, and looks a bit cheeky too :)

There was nothing between him and all the little kiddies around but this dodgy looky chicken wire… I could have easily touched his nose!

A New Year in Pakistan

It’s a new year, and I spent my first Christmas away from my family in Oz and my first Christmas freezing. No snow, but plenty of cold! Christmas was very underwhelming, though we did go and have tuna sandwiches on the banks of a local river. Very unorthadox, but then a family of Muslims doing anything for Christmas is. But I grew up with Christmas as a big family thing, not as a religious thing, so it was nice to mark it in some (strange) way.

New Year was equally unspectacular, although in place of the fireworks there was a whole lot of gunfire. Here it seems everybody gets on their roofs and fires into the air at any chance they get, so the new year was ushered in under the eerie light of a lunar eclipse and the sound of gunfire. I am utterly suprised that more people are not injured by falling bullets from this silly (but ingrained) tradition. My father-in-law utterly banned anyone from firing guns on my wedding, and I was very happy about that!

The new year has brought one thing with it, and that has been nearly every single thing that I was craving (foodwise) from home. On New Year’s Day my aussie sister-in-law and I went to Islamabad with her kids and had real coffee and amazing cake at Gloria Jeans (I never went there when I was in Oz, but it was such a treat). This is located in the ‘foreigner’s market’ where there are a number of supermarkets that sell imported goods to the expat community. Most of said expats live in Islamabad, so accessing the glorious foreigner food for them is not a problem, but for us we don’t get there that often, so its a real treat and we feel (and act) like kids in a candy store.

I found button and shitake mushrooms, brocoli, TOFU (!), chops, a proper roast, mozzarella, parmesan, capers, parsley and TimTams. That night we had homous and kofta (parsley is an essential ingredient!). The next night I made an amazing roast in my tiny toaster oven and had mushrooms on toast for breakfast (bliss!). The next day my sister-in-law suprised me with a real stir-fry of shitake and tofu and more bliss bliss bliss.

So a few kilos heavier, but in culinary heaven I have started the new year in Pakistan. Now the only problem is there is nothing left to crave.

Cramped Pindi Streets

An ancient corner building

Ancient building amid the choas of Rawalpindi

Still functioning ancient balcony

The Hindu Temple, sitting unnoticed on the corner

Totally in disrepair, but still beautiful in my eyes

The entrance to a beautiful mosque tucked away in the city centre

I have been going quite regularly right into the inner parts of Rawalpindi city in the past few days, where the streets are tiny and contain remnants from hundreds of years ago, all chaos and confusion.

The streets are so small for todays standards, but I’m sure when they were built hundreds of years back they would have been considered luxuriously wide — two donkey carts could pass each other, and still do, however trying two cars passing each other? not so easy, but people still try!

The most amazing thing is that there are still these ancient buildings, which are in totaly disprepair, but which still contain that beauty from a time when even the smallest of features where intricately carved and made beautiful — I would love to be able to go back a couple of hundred years to see how the place looked when it was all these kinds of buildings, it would have been quite something I’m sure. Still, it inspires the kinds of imaginings (for an over romantic mind like my own) where beautiful maidens glanced down at handsome passers by from their ornately carved windows… Arabian Nights kind of stuff… but now the only thing gazing out of the windows is a stray alley cat or a family of mice or something. Still, I let my mind wander!

I even found an ancient Hindu Temple standing solemnly amidst the chaos, untouched for all these years and reminding of the shared past India and Pakistan have. Its one of my favourite things to go driving in the crazy inner city, because there is always so much to see, so many faces and so many crowds — and the convenience of a car window to give a bit of distance!! I’ve put in a whole bundle of photos taken over the last three or four trips into the city… because they give a better description than I can!

‘Paiy’ – Sheeps Feet Anyone?

A couple of mornings ago, I came down bleary-eyed to the kitchen to find the sink occupied by a dozen or so very smelly sheeps feet. The leftovers from Eid had made a mysterious re-appearance, although they weren’t leftovers at all, rather delicacies, as I was soon to discover.

Sheep's Feet in the sink, not the best morning smell!

‘Paiy’ pronounced just like ‘pie’ is a winter specialty, one of my father in-law’s favourites, and is well, sheep’s feet (actually mostly goats feet) boiled for a really really long time with spices. The main probelm with Paiy, is that it never really loses that goaty smell, so can kind of make one unaccustomed to the smell of goat in thier food, gag.

The first step after the initial wash in the sink is to get their God-made ‘boots’ as my father in law calls them, off — basically the outer layer of the hoof, as these parts are inedible. so the next morning I was greeted again by the next stage of the dish, bootless goat feet in a bucket. Nice.

The feet without their boots

Then it was time to burn off the hairs that remained in between the hooves, so my mother in law got out some metal rods, heated them up on the stove and proceeded to burn off the little hairs that remained. The smell of burning hair now filled the kitchen, but I’m not sure if that was  better than the smell of goat or not — when I started to think of a cremation ceremony I went to when I was a kid living in Bali I had to leave the kitchen. Some things are just too much!

My mother in law searing off the remaining hairs

Next it was my job to make the ‘Masala’ or spice mix whilst my mother in law cleaned the feet again. The masala consisted of about five large onions, loads or garlic, tumeric, chilli, freshly ground coriander powder, cumin seeds and oil, all fried up - finally something was smelling good! So in went the feet on top of the masala, and covered with water and set to boil for… ten hours.

In go the feet on top of the masala

The next morning was the allotted time for consumption, so it boiled away slowly all day, with everyone complaining that the house smelled of goat. And yes, you did hear me right, Paiy is a breakfast food.

Being the youngest brother, it seems to fall to my husband to run the errands like getting up for naan in the morning, so this morning he was up and out of the house to go to the local ‘tandoor’ (bread oven) to get fresh naan.

When it was all ready and the naan was there, I then discovered that my husband and my father in-law were the only ones in the house who actually ate Paiy, but I did dain to try the sticky broth dipped up with bread.

The end result

It was suprisingly not too bad, with the smell of goat much diminished by the spices. I can certainly see why its a winter food, as it was extremely warming, but I couldn’t quite come at the slurping and sucking of the actual pieces of feet that my husband and father in law gleefully downed.

The point where I noticed how sticky my hands were and thought… ‘sheeps feet’… ‘glue’… was the point where my stomach revolted on me, and I politely declined a further helping and gulped down my extra sweet tea instead!

A Day in the Life…

 

Yesterday I went to the newly opened ‘Cosmo Cash and Carry’ which has just about everything I have been craving  — including TimTams — excluding good cheese. It was a marvelous outing, something that only someone who has been deprived of their accustomed comforts in life (said TimTams) and suddenly stumbbles upon them can really understand.

Cosmo Cash and Carry is located around fifteen minutes drive from our house, in Jinnah Park, which is a great place for outings, houses a number of good restaurants and a number of not so good ones (McDonalds). On the way there, I noticed a proliferation of armed men on the roadside, one about every five hundred metres to be exact, which I thought must have been in response to the terrorist attack that happened in Rawalpindi on Friday in a Mosque during prayer time.

They say a bunch of guys went into the Mosque and opened fire on the attending

faithful, throwing grenades as well — the first thing everyone here has said is ‘they can’t be Muslim’ and I tend to agree … the more puzzling question is who then?(Perhaps a discussion for another time) Around fourty people, including women and children were killed that day.

Because there were some higher up military men killed in the Mosque attack, they must have tightened security on military and government

officials, because when we came out of Cosmo Cash and Carry there were military men swarming all over the place. It took us two hours to drive what had taken us fifteen minute before, because they had blocked the road up ahead to allow some officials through — I tried to get photos of the large, black flag-bearing cars that carried the ‘important’ people — but they were driving so fast that there was no chance at all — I did manage to get some shots of the military men along the roads, and one very chirpy old security guard at a gas station — all the security guards everywhere in Pakistan (bakeries, clothes shops, restuarants) have guns his size too — its amazing just how accustomed you get to seeing firearms.

Life goes on in Pakistan. It kind of has too, despite all the killings, and all the bloodshed the people here are resilient. An old cousin of my father-in-law was recently telling how he fought off an armed robber in his house, and when the gun was pointed at his head, he simply thought ‘if its my day to die, its my day to die’ and kept fighting. It wasn’t his day to die, though I did see that he put in for a gun license of his own. But the point is that so many people here live by that philosophy, and just keep on going despite everything.

Coming out of Jinnah Park. First military man

Under the Golden Arches

A military man at the petrol station along the way home

The Security guard at the petrol station

Military truck outside Jinnah Park

The Jinnah Park sign, and Cinepax in the background

A mini sandbag fort at the petrol station!

The Ways to Get from Here to There

One of the most fascinating things I have found here is the great degrees of variation in modes of transport and ways of transporting things. For a start every truck worth its weight in salt is painted to high heaven in vibrant colours and designs, and looks fit for carrying a king — well you could imagine they would have when they were first painted anyhow! 

A Decorated Truck on the Road to Muzaffarabad

 

In varying degrees of disrepair, the cars and trucks in Pakistan all vie for their piece of road, and really the only real road rule adhered to is the horn, which is a driver’s means of communicating ‘I’m turning’, ‘I’m breaking’ but mostly ‘I’m coming through — get out of the way!’ I think most Pakistani drivers would die of boredom in Australian traffic. 

This morning on my way into town on one of the dirt roads that mark the back way into the city a canary yellow Ferrari whizzed by. A Ferrari for crying out loud! I wanted to take a picture, just because it was such a weird juxtaposition on the tiny little dirt street, but like I say, it was a Ferrari, and it whizzed, so the picture moment was gone in seconds. I did manage to get a picture of the grand pyramid of cauliflower that graced the back of an old not-so-elaborately painted truck on the way to market though — I wondered how many cauliflowers the guy loses on the way! 

The Precarious Pyramid of Cauliflower

 

There are thousands of again, fabulously painted truck/buses that are the public transport of the city, and customers regularly hang off the back and just seem to jump on and off whenever they need to — am not quite sure how the payment system works, as the driver never seems to stop or get out, but it must work somehow! Of course there are also the taxis, which are the more expensive option, but by Australian standards of taxis fares — cheap 

The Colourful Public Transport

 

as chips. My brother and I once got in a taxi which for all the world looked like it was held together with duct tape, and it probably was, but thats the ingenious thing about this place, no matter how broken it is, they seem to make it work. And work and work! 

A Donkey Cart and Driver

 

The other common way of transporting good is by animal/human power. I used to look at the donkeys and horses with their cart loads and think …aww… but then I saw this guy, and hundreds more like him, and realised the humans are working just as hard, if not more so than their animal friends. 

A Man Pulling His Full Cart on the Road

The fact is that people here really do amazing things with the little resources they have. I once saw a man pulling a cart with about twenty washing machines on it — and he probably wouldn’t earn enough in six months to buy even one of those washing machines, but day in and day out he does what he has to to make ends meet. 

It’s such an incredibly double-edged country, because on one side of my car this morning was an old man begging on the road, on the other the guy in the Ferrari hooned by. What a contradiction!

Eid al Adha

Eid al Adha marks the end of the Hajj, or Pilgrimage to Mecca and is in commemoration of the sacrifice that the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) was called upon to make of his son, Ismail (Ishmael).

Warning: This post is a bit graphic

Our Eid morning started off with getting all the guys out the door in time for the Eid prayers and getting breakfast ready — which for me was cake (nothing better than chocolate cake for breakfast!) whilst everyone else mostly had Halwa Puri, which is a dhal like soupy thing, sweet halwa and fried bread. Almost as healthy as my cake!

The next thing I knew the butchers had arrived. There were four of them. A head butcher, and three attendants, one looking far too young for that kind of work in my mind. As in accordance with the Halal way of slaughtering, all the goats were kept away from the place of slaughter at the back of the house, and each one was brought out individually. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my tummy as the first goat was brought around, but it was all over before I could even comprehend. They gave him a drink of water and next thing his throat was cut and he was gone.

They washed all the blood away, and hung the carcass to be skinned and gutted. Out came the next goat, and the next and the little sheep in the middle, which I was particularly sad about, as I had hung out with the sheep all morning. The cow was last, at about four in the afternoon, they tied his legs whilst he was sitting and again, it was over very quickly.

As I said in a previous post, I have worked in animal welfare, so know just how bad slaughtering can be — but this was really very quick, humane and in one swift precise cut. I think that in Pakistan the general level of care for animals is quite high, despite having some great big blotches on the animal welfare scale like bear baiting (the MOST horrible thing I think I have seen as animal cruelty goes). Because so much of the country is involved in some way with animal husbandry there is a respect there that also translates to the way the animals are killed.

After all the animals had been slaughtered, and the cutting up had begun, it was our turn to get our hands dirty… quite literally. You see the animals slaughtered are divided into three parts, one is kept by the family, another given to extended family and the third given to the poor. In our case it was more like ninety percent given to the poor. So the day was spent sorting out the meat and bagging it for freezing, as the following morning there would be an influx of poor people coming around to collect thier share of meat.

Eid is the one time of year when the poorest of the poor get to eat meat, and many go from Eid to Eid without having it, simply because they can’t afford to buy it. It is also the time of year when all of the many stray dogs and cats are full, full, full as all the scraps are usually dumped on the sides of the street. Not very pretty and a huge health hazard I am sure.

The last of the meat was cut up at around seven at night, more than ten hours work by the butchers. At that time the house was already full of guests — the extended family seem to come to our place on Eid — which means a whole lot of tea to be made and served, and a whole lot of smiles and nods as I don’t yet speak much Urdu, and they don’t speak that much English.

I then had to accompany my husband on the rounds of the city dropping off the other portions of the meat to family members and came home quite exhausted.

I had survived my first real Eid al Adha, and whilst there were still two more days of guests to get through, the part I had been dreading was over. I don’t think it will ever be easy for me to watch the things I watched on Eid, but as someone who eats meat, I think it is a real duty to understand the reality of it, and to give thanks every time.

I have put some pics in a gallery, but left out the more graphic ones, as I thought it would be  inappropriate to show them here.

The Head Butcher

The butchers at work

Cutting it all up in the front yard