As if in a dream we were a single file
line walking along a narrow path through a golden meadow.
The group had been driven to the border
from Lahore on another hot dusty day in August 1971. Stooped over backpackers
in search of enlightenment and well dressed locals travelling to see relatives
in India. At that time Pakistan and India were officially at war. It was a cool
war here. No soldiers in sight. The frontier was apparently two miles wide. One
mile of grassy meadow on each side.
I wasn’t well. I had developed
something like dysentery in Kabul. Probably from sleeping on the roof of a
hostel. Nothing to worry about. I was hardened after weeks on the road through
Greece, Turkey and Iran. A few nights I slept rough.
The night in the small border station
of Islam Qala was one I won't easily forget. On the edge of nowhere, near no
city lights, at the western tip of Afghanistan, just over the border from Iran.
I was sleeping in the backyard of my
host's one room house. I saw more stars that night than many urban dwellers will
see in their life. A ragged silver blanket like snow covering the top of the
sky. I imagined Alexander the Great saw the same when he passed this way
two thousand years earlier.
I came out of Afghanistan by bus from
Kabul a week later thru Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass.
Peshawar was the first stop in
Pakistan. I quickly had an ice cold Coca Cola. I needed it. There wasn’t any in
Afghanistan.
My visual memory of Peshawar was the
massive U.S. Information Agency Pavilion. It was significant. At the time the
U.S. and Russia were competing for influence in the region. It was said each
built half of the main highway across Afghanistan. Paved but not exactly Route
66.
Then from Peshawar by train to Lahore.
I was trying to get to Delhi quickly so I could rest somewhere with more
amenities.
And from Lahore by bus to the grassy
meadow that was the border with India.
It was a long walk. Stopping and
starting. We didn’t know what was going on ahead at the border.
Finally we came upon a single woman in
a ruby red sari sitting side saddle on a bar stool lightly vetting each
traveller in line. This must have been just the first border check. We were
expecting tanks, sandbagged barriers, machine guns, the whole nine yards. On
both sides.
But we were wrong. This one woman,
alone, was the only person manning the border into India. She was border
guard, customs agent and immigration manager rolled into one.
I was next in line. In front of me were
two girls from Germany. The border lady was checking their documents and
searching their backpacks. All of a sudden she pulled out a three inch wad of
rupees from one of the girl’s backpacks. That was lots of moolah.
At that time India was trying currency
controls to protect its economy. It was illegal to bring rupees into the
country. The girls had obviously purchased theirs outside of India, probably in
Afghanistan, at a hugely discounted rate.
I was in hearing range. The border
guard spoke pretty good English. I could understand everything she said. She
was polite. Briefly, but thoroughly, she explained to the girls about the
currency controls and that what they were doing was illegal. Then she took half
of the their rupees, as a tax, I suppose.
I was next. I was not worried because I
had a B.A. in economics and knew about currency controls. I hadn’t purchased
any rupees in advance. I knew how to work the system. I was going to buy them
on the black market when I got to India.
Then customs lady starts vetting me.
She looked at my Passport. I didn’t need a visa. I’m Canadian. We were comrades
in the British Empire. Then she went into my backpack. It wasn’t very full.
When you have to carry all that you have, you own less.
She found something I was trying to
hide. In Kabul I had purchased a hockey puck of hash. I say a hockey puck
because that was the shape of it. It was a lot more than I needed or wanted for
myself and I don’t remember that I was planning on selling any. Maybe it was
the smallest quantity I could buy. Afghanistan is the Costco of the drug
business.
She looked at me with the same look she
had used on the German girls. And then she explained that drugs, even soft
drugs like hash, were illegal in India. And then she broke my hockey puck in
half and kept one side while returning the other to me, as a tax, I suppose.
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