Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

A Passage to Pakistan: My First Adventure with GeoEx

street and a few side streets lined with small shops. But something heavy hung like a shroud in the air. As we walked through town, we saw storefront after storefront, each one glistening with pistols, rifles, bullets, and knives—every variety of weapon one could imagine, all on neat display.

for the Afghanistan guerrillas who have been fighting the Soviets and the Soviet-instituted government in Kabul. Unlike Rawalpindi, Westerners are in evidence throughout the city— most, Asad said, either journalists or workers with one or another international aid organization. We began our tour with a quick exploration of the Peshawar bazaar. This manifested the same wonderland of colors, smells, and sounds as Rawalpindi’s, but made even more complex with the addition of the people and products of Afghanistan. Then we set out for Darra Adam Khel, which Asad described as the headquarters of Pakistan’s burgeoning gun-making and gun-smuggling industry. On a trip that promises a wealth of eye-opening revelations, this one was acutely memorable, and jarring. On the dusty road to Darra, we passed scenes that already seem iconic snapshots: rough, mud-walled settlements that Asad said were Afghan refugee camps; women in flowing red and white robes balancing bright green packages on their heads; donkey carts bearing bricks; barefoot children in ragged clothes skittering through the dirt or hoisting slingshots, stopping to cry out and wave when they saw our foreign faces; eye-relieving splashes of green fields—wheat, sugar cane, and sugar beets—and stands of trees; scraggly cows and burros and sheep by the side of the road. At one point, Asad explained that we were now passing into tribal territory, where Pakistani law stops and local law takes over. The tribes elect their own councils and representatives, he said, and essentially police themselves. An invisible corridor that extends forty feet on either side of the road is considered Pakistani territory; venture beyond that, and your fate is in the hands of the local tribes. “The gun is the law of this area,” he said. And then we reached Darra Adam Khel. At first Darra looked like any other dusty town, one main

Later, I ambled alone along the dusty back alleys, watching old men and young boys patiently tapping and tinkering and polishing their creations like kindly Swiss toymakers. Suddenly the unreality of it all overwhelmed me, and I stopped and spoke into my tape recorder: “They don’t look like monsters; they’re just brothers, husbands, and fathers making money to buy flour and fruit and shoes. And yet I feel that I’ve touched the heart of some immense evil, the vital nerve center of a sinuous and shadowy network of smuggling/oppression/conflict that operates all around the world and is vastly more powerful and pervasive—and perverse—than I had ever imagined.” This unfurling map is a complicated one. April 4, Pearl Continental Hotel, Peshawar: This morning we learned that we would have to alter our

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