The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  On the six day my concern had almost reached fever pitch. Hafiz Jan’s wife was now cooking day and night. I noticed she had dragged her bedding roll into the kitchen and was sleeping in there, too. The Pashtun’s family would be bankrupted for generations if something was not done immediately. I pleaded with my hosts, begging them not to cook such absurd quantities of food. But when I questioned the catering arrangements, Hafiz Jan would rear up like a king cobra preparing to strike.

  “How can we mere mortals not salute the triumphs of our ancestors?” he would demand.

  I feared that Hafiz Jan might be tempted to replicate the fabled Muslim feast of his Bedouin antecedents. The meal, which is customary at great desert weddings, holds the world record for comestible extravagance. Cooked eggs are stuffed into fish, which are packed into whole chickens, which themselves are stuffed into a roasted ewe’s carcass. The sheep is then crammed into the belly of a female camel and borne by stewards to the awaiting guests.

  Unable to stand such rich food any longer, I sought refuge in the tranquil surrounding of Jan Fishan’s shrine. A week of feasting under my belt, and I could at last consider the future of my journey. Hafiz Jan’s teacher seemed more appealing all the time. Another week in Burhana and I would be unfit to walk. Although fearful that this man Feroze might have nothing to do with me, I vowed to travel eastward to Calcutta.

  As I sat in the doorway of the tomb, planning my next move, Hafiz Jan approached. He seemed restless. Before I could ask him what was wrong, he voiced his concerns;

  “Tahir Shah”, he began with his characteristic greeting, “I know that you have been thinking about my suggestion of Hakim Feroze.”

  I nodded.

  “I recommend him. He is an excellent tutor. Indeed, there’s none finer… But beware!”

  The Pashtun widened his eyes until they were as large as chestnuts. Feroze is a merciless teacher,” he said. “If he accepts you, he’ll crush you – that’s his method. He expects his students to toil without rest… destroying them thrills him. Don’t call on him unless you are certain this is what you really want.”

  “But surely a simple course in stage magic would be harmless?”

  Hafiz Jan’s cheeks turned milky white, his eyes became bloodshot, and his lower jaw dropped in trepidation. I waited for his advice. As I did the Pashtun trust his arms like rockets towards the sky.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he bellowed. “You have no idea who you’re talking about! Hakim Feroze is no ordinary teacher. His training is no simple course for someone with a passing interest in conjury. It’s not a course at all – it’s a way of life… a tortuous regime – drill after drill under a sadist. As he torments those in his clutches, you wonder what act of insanity brought you to his door. Most of the time he makes you study absurd subjects. You hardly learn any ‘magic’ when you’re studying under him. Now that I think about it. You must not make contact with him. You are too precious to be mishandled by that man!”

  “But respected Hafiz Jan,” I protested, “I can’t believe that your teacher – Hakim Feroze – could be so stern.”

  The Pashtun cupped his head in his tremendous hands, and emitted a demonstrative shriek. I feared that recalling his former teacher had driven the man to hysteria.

  “Hush!” he wailed. “Hush…don’t say another word and don’t ever say that name aloud!”

  “What name?”

  “Hakim Feroze’s name, of course!”

  “Why? What’s wrong with saying his name?”

  Grooming his beard, Hafiz Jan peered to the left and to the right.

  “He has spies, that’s why. Feroze knows what everyone’s doing. I may not be certain where he is at this very moment, but he certainly knows every minuscule detail of my life.”

  “But you have not been in touch with him for more than twenty years.”

  “Irrelevant!” spat the Pashtun. “Like I said, he’s no ordinary mortal. He is a magician!”

  Feroze sounded more like a monster than a master. Could he really be that bad? There was only one way to find out.

  Again and again Hafiz Jan begged me to forget his “foolish” suggestion. He strove to terrify me from engaging in the course. “Spend one day with him and Feroze will turn your blood cold!” he would say. Or, “He will tear you apart… that’s his way. He thrives on others’ misfortunes.”

  The more counseling I received to turn back, the more I longed to go forward: to meet the master, to meet Hakim Feroze.

  I am not sure when it happened, but the point came at which Hafiz Jan ended his outbursts. He came to me late one morning, as the sun’s rays rose up above the tomb of Jan Fishan. I had been reading at my usual spot in the shrine’s doorway. Without a word, the Pashtun held out a clenched fist. The hand opened, revealing a ragged leather pouch. Inside was a curious reddish stone.

  “I am giving this to you,” he said, “as Feroze gave it to me. Present it to him and he will believe I sent you.”

  “What’s this inside?”

  “It’s a bezoar.”

  “What’s that?”

  Hafiz Jan held the stone to the light.

  “A healer of poisons, an amulet, and the symbol of a searcher for knowledge – this bezoar is said to have come from the stomach of an eagle.”

  As I tied the locket’s leather thong around my neck, the Pashtun pulled me out beyond the enclosure’s gates. There, on a large Afghan rug, a picnic lunch had been arranged. But this was no frivolous snack of crustless cucumber sandwiches. It was a meal of dangerous proportions.

  Hafiz Jan dug both hands into the mound of rice, pulled out a charred waterfowl, and passed it to me, wincing. It seemed to be a mallard duck, its annual migration terminated by a hunter’s gun.

  “Khalifa Ashpaz!” cried the Pashtun, as he rammed the back end of another mallard into his mouth. “Khalifa Ashpaz!” he called again. “The famous master-chef of the Hindu Kush – this is his recipe!”

  Four hours of eating came and went. By late afternoon, mutton, mallards, chickens, and immeasurable quantities of pilau had been consumed. I wondered if I would ever need to eat again. By the end of the meal I felt exonerated of any further duty. Hafiz Jan had obviously gone mad. He had decided that we were both to eat ourselves to death. Determined to put an end to this insanity of feasting, I protested vehemently – the food had to stop before someone was injured.

  Hafiz Jan stared at me. The furrows of his brow deepened. But then, grinning broadly, he wrung his hands together, exclaiming:

  “Imshab chi pukhta bekunem – what shall we cook tonight?”

  FOUR

  City of light

  The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveler into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.

  As I passed over a wad of rupee notes, the clerk at Delhi’s railway booking office paused. Without looking up, he mumbled, “Yamuna Express or Farakka Express?” The question was innocuous enough. But the locomotive’s name had triggered a violent subconscious reaction. I started to choke uncontrollably.

  The clerk asked again. The next man in the queue was nudging me to decide, “jaldi! Hurry up!” As always happens in India when you’re deliberating under duress, a crowd gathered. They took it in turns to call out suggestions: “Farakka very nice,” said one, “No, no, too noisy,” replied another. ‘sahib, you like to buy handkerchief?” asked a third.

  Apologizing aloud to the Namibian adventurer, I whispered, “Farakka Express, please.”

  Later that afternoon I was installed in the second-class carriage, eager to begin the journey to Calcutta, in search of Hakim Feroze. With the bezoar locket hidden beneath my shirt, and a formal letter of introduction
from Hafiz Jan, I felt that I was in with a real chance of securing the apprenticeship.

  Peering around the compartment, I wondered what all the fuss had been about. The train seemed clean and orderly. Silly old travelers, I thought to myself, they deserve all they get. A knock from outside pulled me back to reality. The door slid away. A boot-boy with stark, beady eyes, dressed in a smart calamanco shirt, stood in its frame. In a single, expert movement, he scanned the cabin.

  ‘Shoe cleaning, Sahib?”

  “No thanks, I had them cleaned yesterday.”

  “Dirty now, I do good job?”

  He motioned in circles with a large patterned rag. I shook my head and he scurried back into the corridor, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Ten minutes later, as the train was due to depart, the door slid back once again. A well-dressed couple entered and took their seats. The woman was wearing a fine crimson-colored south Indian sari; her wrists were tinkling with glass bangles. Her hands and feet had been ornately decorated with mehendi. The extent of the pattern, like an exquisite filigree mesh, suggested she was recently married. Beside her sat a rather scrawny, unshaven figure – presumably the groom.

  I broke the silence.

  “Newlyweds?” I asked.

  “Yes, we were married yesterday,” said the woman.

  “You better be careful with your jewelery,” I warned. “I’ve heard horrible stories about this train.”

  “I told you,” the bride protested to her husband boisterously, “we shouldn’t have brought my trousseau!”

  Unable to contain myself, I expounded the ill-favored legends of the Farakka Express. I spoke of the ghouls, the Thuggee insurgents and the cunning thieves.

  “The Farakka Express supposedly has its own breed of brigand,” I summed up. “They even dress up in disguises – or pretend to be blind – to win the other passengers’ sympathy.”

  “Why did you take this train?” asked the bride.

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t believe all that garbage – look around. This train’s as safe as anything. There’s no getting me, I know all the tricks!”

  At eight p.m. a modest vegetarian supper was supplied by a bearer. After a week of gigantic meaty meals, it was a positive delight.

  The newlyweds cooed to each other lovingly as I wolfed down my vegetables. When I had finished, the bride peeled a ripe juicy chakotra. She offered me a segment. The perfect way to round off a meal. I accepted gratefully. As the section of fruit slid down my throat, I sprawled out on my bunk. Then, taking care to wish the kind-hearted couple a comfortable night, I fell into a deep trance-like sleep.

  Just before dawn I woke up. The train had stopped at a station to pick up supplies. Still half-asleep, I foraged for my travel alarm clock. My fingers fumbled like a blind person reading Braille. The clock wasn’t there. Expecting it to have fallen on to the floor, where I had left the smaller of my two cases, I peered down. The timepiece was not on the floor. Nor was the case. I lurched upwards. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I called out to the newlyweds; had they too fallen victim to the vile curse of the Farakka Express?

  But no one answered. The newly married couple was gone.

  Five minutes later, I was huddled on the floor in a ball, my legs hugged up beneath my chin, my hands over ears, my face pressing in against my stomach. My passport, most of my money, and half my luggage were gone. I thanked God that the bezoar locket was still fastened around my neck, and that the letter of introduction in Hafiz Jan’s hand had not been stolen.

  The Farakka Express sped towards the rising sun. I shunned the breakfast when it came. And when, at Allahabad, a new passenger entered the compartment, I shunned him, too. Screwing up my face miserably, I gazed out at the agricultural heartland of Uttar Pradesh. Workers were already toiling away, sprinkled across the landscape like peppercorns on a sheet of cloth. Some were busy winnowing grain, others combing ploughs through the sienna-red soil, straight-backed, carrying water-pots on heads, or dragging great spiders of kindling homeward.

  I would have continued to stare at the paddy fields and palm-thatch houses, but I sensed the cabin’s new passenger watching me. Twisting round, I gawked back at him. His stout frame was topped by an egg-shaped head. Its face, rough as a loofah, was dominated by overgrown mustachios. His hair was matted with dirt, his clothes were tattered as a scarecrow’s. The figure emitted an odor similar to ripe Camembert.

  Rather than glancing away as I scrutinized him, the man gaped back. We leered into each other’s eyes like dueling hypnotists. Neither blinked. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I strained to carry on.

  “Been robbed, have you?” asked the man, swiveling abruptly to face the window.

  “How did you guess that?”

  “Remember what train you’re on. This is the Farakka Express – or don’t you know the legend of the Farakka Express?”

  “I know all about this bloody train, thank you very much!”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I think I was drugged.”

  “Was it fruit or Bengali sweets?”

  “Fruit.”

  “Chakotra or banana?”

  “Chakotra.”

  “Clever stuff,” hissed the man. “The taste masks diazepam very well indeed.”

  “I feel so stupid. Especially as I’d been warning the couple about the dangers of this train. They must be paralyzed with laughter.”

  Rising to his feet, the man opened the cabin door and leant out into the corridor. He seemed to be examining its outer glass.

  “Before the train left Delhi Junction,” he said quizzically, “did a shoe cleaner come by?”

  I agreed that one had.

  “How did you know that?”

  The man pushed the tip of his right index finger towards me. On the end was an ocher-brown smear.

  “The shoe cleaner was in league with the fruit person,” the man explained. “It’s teamwork. First the boot-boy comes scouting for suitable prey. Seeing that you were a lone foreigner, he marked the door with a shoe polish thumbprint. The person with the drugged chakotra just follows the trail.”

  “Ingenious,” I said weakly.

  “Brilliant!” he corrected. “But then again, I wouldn’t expect anything less than brilliance on the Farakka Express.”

  In the hours that followed, the portly, mustached passenger opposite revealed much to me. A private detective by profession – known as “Vatson” to his friends – he put the myth of the Farakka Express down to a few simple scams.

  “Well before a train linked Delhi to Calcutta, the route was lined with thieves,” he noted. “Between these two important cities is Varanasi: holiest place in Hinduism. For three thousand years con-men of all kinds were drawn there. Everyone knows that pilgrims are trusting, naive and easily duped.”

  “Do they?”

  “Of course,” said Vatson sharply. “Look at your own situation. Although well aware of the dangers of this train, you were letting down your guard. Newlyweds, you thought. Instead of thinking, How sweet, you should have been thinking, Newlyweds: can’t trust them as far as you can throw them!”

  “Well, how do I know that I can trust you?” I asked.

  “You don’t,” said Vatson. “You’re learning already.”

  A restless interval passed as I contemplated the problems caused by the grand theft.

  “Chakotra fruit,” snapped the detective, clasping his cheeks after ten minutes of silence. “How could you have fallen for that one?”

  “I was expecting far more sinister con-men,” I said defensively, puzzled that a complete stranger should be so reproachful.

  Vatson was unimpressed at my gullibility. He seemed unable to discern that I required comfort not condemnation.

  “Do you know how modern trickery developed in India?” he asked bluntly.

  I shook my head.

  “Thugs!” he clamored. “Phansigars, ‘People of the Noose’, ‘the Deceivers’: they’re the ancestors of these small-time c
harlatans. Theirs was a great tradition – it’s sad to think they've been reduced to such pitiable acts of thievery.”

  “This was a heist of considerable ingenuity,” I responded.

  But the detective wasn’t listening.

  “Thuggee was a cult dedicated to ritual murder, in honor of the goddess Kali,” he declared. “You see, Thugs considered murder an art form. They felt no guilt about killing.”

  “How many people did they actually kill?”

  Vatson cracked the knuckles of his left hand.

  “Millions!” he cried out. “Millions at least! In those days journeys were taking months, even years. By the time you realized your dearly beloved was late home, there was nothing to do!”

  “So what happened to all the Thugs, then?”

  “The Britishers realized they were destroying the country. You couldn’t travel anywhere. The roads were far too dangerous to use. Then a chap called Sleeman set about wiping them out. Bit of a pity really. He taught himself Ramasi, the secret Thug language, and worked out their formula for death.”

  “What formula was that?”

  “Number One,” cooed Vatson: “never let any member of a party escape alive – strangle them all with a rumaal, a knotted handkerchief. Number Two: always decapitate the victims, to make identification impossible. But most important, Number Three … prepare!

  “Thugs would follow an intended victim for months, sometimes even years. They dispatched scouts, just like the boot-black who was sent ahead to find you. Then they would gain the trust of the servants by posing as holy men. But within thirty years they’d been broken. You Britishers got them off knotting handkerchiefs, and on to knotting carpets. They made lovely rugs.”