Peshawar Blues





But unlike others in adverse circumstances, Pashtuns never reconcile themselves to what fate has assigned them. Pride is both their blessing and their curse. It keeps them from being overwhelmed by adversity; but it often also impedes their progress out of it. It gives the society an irreverence that disposes it to egalitarianism; but it also instils a vanity that consumes it with maintaining appearances. People in the region are given to grandiose gestures. These impulsive attempts at gaining the respect of peers often drive people of modest means into penury. Like the impoverished protagonist of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s No One Writes to the Colonel, determined to uphold his dignity amid dwindling means, the burden of a man’s pride is inevitably born by the wife and children.

Possession marks the distance between being and nothingness as far as life opportunities go. Amid a crumbling economy, without a social security net, there are those whose lives are so diminished that survival is their only concern. These shards of human debris crawl along streets, lurk about the bazaars, go door to door, rummage through refuse, with the only hope that the kindness of strangers will see them through another day. Henry Byroade, the US ambassador to Pakistan from 1973-77, once described these shiftless ambulators as ‘bipeds’. The inheritors of this attitude today regard this tableau of misery with equal disdain as they zoom past in their imported SUVs.

You can’t be a person of any consequence and be seen on foot. The quickest way to lose peoples’ interest in Peshawar, in effect to become invisible, is to walk. This can sometimes be a blessing. Traditional cultures are notoriously claustrophobic. Less due to physical space—though space is often a factor—than to the oppressive presence of a society which is forever disciplining, restraining, and confining individuals in its mind-forged manacles. You are assigned a role and your life is reduced to a performance. To be yourself, to escape its onerous expectation, you have to be anonymous. Like Baudelaire’s poet, you can only find solitude in crowds. Peshawar is too big for the comfort and security of community, but not big enough for the freedom and opportunity of anonymity. Anonymity has to be manufactured. And one way of doing it is by walking.


Peshawar is Pakistan in a microcosm. The public infrastructure is crumbling as more and more wealth is squirreled away into gated communities of extraordinary opulence. Notions of civic responsibility are hard to cultivate when the state is dysfunctional and services poor. This absence of civic consciousness is particularly evident in people’s liberal attitude toward littering: there are few streets which aren’t strewn with plastic bags, soda cans, empty bottles, pizza boxes, food wrappings, and other filth. It is also evident in the crumbling public transport system. Railway tracks are frequently stripped by thieves for scrap metal. The Khyber Steam Safari—a train which crossed 34 tunnels and 92 bridges on its short scenic journey from Peshawar to Landi Kotal—was once a major tourist attraction. Today the two 1920-vintage steam engines have little track to roll on. A recent visitor to Dara Adam Khel’s famous weapons market told me that after he purchased a hand gun, the seller congratulated him on his choice. The gun, he said, was made from ‘hundred per cent track metal’.

But Peshawar is not all pain. It has a grace and nobility which lend it an enduring magnetism. Shortly before lift-off, I was visited by a memory from the summer of 1997. A friend and I were walking down Peshawar’s Saddar Bazaar when we were approached by a little girl, no more than eight years of age. She was offering to sell us balloons. My friend bought one and gave her money for two. The girl refused to take the extra money. My friend insisted and we walked on. We had barely gone a few steps when we heard the child shout after us. We turned around to find her running away. Before leaving she had tied a second balloon to a railing near us.

Underneath Peshawar’s rigid structures, amid the tyrannical traditions, despite the social disintegration, there exist traces of a community whose dignity, hospitality, generosity, irreverence, humour, compassion and grace under pressure remain matchless. In Peshawar, friendships are real and courtesies backed by genuine sentiment. Its culture prizes self-sacrifice and community service—qualities that have given the city resilience despite decades of neglect. Had there been a government interested in genuine nation-building, it would have tapped into this as a civic resource. But until now, Peshawar has lacked a civil society, or elective affinities based around issues and ideas rather than class, clan, or party affiliation. The space for political engagement was limited, monopolized by Pakistan’s visionless political parties. There were no causes to join, no forums for meeting likeminded people. But this is gradually changing. Pakistan’s rambunctious new satellite channels, for all their flaws, are broadening the scope of political activity. Blowback from an unpopular war in Afghanistan has further shaken people out of political torpor. People are more politically aware and a civil society is finally emerging. The women’s movement around the Ladies Club is serving as a nucleus. The city is being reclaimed. Peshawar is in poor shape, but it is a city in transition. It will rise again.

Author: Idrees Ahmad


4 thoughts on “Peshawar Blues”

  1. Nice article. The story of the little girl is inspiring. It shows there is good in this society. It also demonstrates that the poor are not the problem – it is not poverty that is alone driving people towards corruption but the corruption at the top, which is driven by insatiable greed and selfish personal benefit. We need more people like her in the right places, i..e. government, administration..etc. I hope and pray that she is in such a position in future to give what Peshawar and the rest of Pakistan the type of leadership that has been missing thus far.

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