by Tahir Shah
‘Another English woman, called Pauline,’ recalls Cheryl, ‘left her husband for a young man from this area. She was sixteen stone and forty-four years old. One day I got a package of beads and stuff the boy had given her, together with an anonymous note. It said that Pauline was dead, and asked if I could inform the boy and his family. I found out soon after that Pauline, who had got back together with her husband, had written the note herself. She wasn’t dead at all. She was just tired of the affair!’
Like the other white women who come to Samburuland, Cheryl Lekimenju finds herself spending most of the time with the men-folk. A woman’s role in African village life is a subordinate one.
‘Women here do everything!’ says Cheryl angrily. ‘They don’t have a life. They build the houses, collect the firewood, have the babies and raise the children. And they’re treated like second rate citizens from the day they’re born. It’s lucky that I don’t speak maa, the Samburu language, because I’d tell them to rebel!’
Most men dislike being told what to do by their wives and, in Samburuland, an over-dominating wife is a source of great embarrassment. As night falls over Bawaa, Cheryl’s hard-edged tones can be heard over the nest of huts. Dikola, who seems to be a little more hen-pecked every moment, chaperones his English rose between the cow-dung homes of the village. The threat of wild animals is all around. Leopards come in the night and kill the goats; lions come during the day and kill the cattle. Blind to the dangers which surround her, Cheryl chirps on in the piercing voice that the community has come to know so well.
‘Dikola married me in my culture,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘But I haven’t yet wedded him in his culture. Dikola’s younger brother won’t be able to marry, until we have been wed in a Samburu ceremony.’
A dedicated romantic, Cheryl wants the tribal wedding ceremony to be held on St. Valentine’s Day. Dikola understands the relevance of the date, but his family have never heard of St. Valentine. To the Samburu – most of whom don’t have calendars – one day is much like any other.
‘I’m not looking forward to the Samburu wedding,’ winces Cheryl restlessly, ‘because they wrap the bride up in an oily goat skin. I’m not quite sure what the actual procedure is, except that the groom’s mother shaves off all his hair, saying that he’s passing from a warrior and becoming a responsible husband.’
The outlandish wedding ritual may sound harrowing to Cheryl. But it ought to be the least of her worries. For, in Samburuland, a bride is expected to be circumcised. Samburu circumcision techniques – performed as a matter of course on men as well as women – are regarded as the harshest of their kind. Dikola’s mother and sisters (all circumcised and proud of it) are eager to get a knife to Cheryl’s private parts.
‘Usually the woman is circumcised when she is a child,’ says Dikola’s half-brother, Lmakayo, grinning broadly. ‘But sometimes, the circumcision is done just before the marriage… even on the wedding day itself.’
Cheryl, who – perhaps unwisely – takes the calls for her circumcision lightly, wants to see the operation modified or outlawed altogether.
‘Samburu women believe that their daughters won’t find husbands,’ she says, ‘unless they’ve gone through the agonizing surgery. They just hack away blindly in a dark hut. A lot of girls die because of unsterilized knives. The woman doing the cutting doesn’t know what to remove, so she cuts out the whole lot. I bet that if you threw chicken blood all over the hut, and got the woman to scream, the men would think that a circumcision had been done!’
Dikola’s one-eyed father, Loperecho, sits outside his hut, contemplating his family’s predicament. One senses an air of despondence hanging over the old warrior. Like most in the community, you get the feeling he would have preferred Dikola to have chosen a nice Samburu girl, and taken her as a wife. A family is disgraced if the favourite son leaves to live somewhere else. And the Lekimenjus sense that Dikola will soon leave them. To have one’s son go off to a distant land with a strange English woman – who’s neither circumcised, nor a Samburu – is depressing. But, for Dikola’s elderly father, there’s a far more pressing worry.
In Samburuland, the father of the groom is expected to pay a dowry to the bride’s family. No one else can pay the dowry – generally eight cows and two sheep – on his behalf. Loperecho, who lost most of his livestock in a drought several years ago, is concerned as to how he will raise the bridal gift. In line with customary protocol, he expects that Cheryl’s family will soon contact him for the required head of livestock. But, procuring the animals – which won’t be easy – is only half the problem. The real worry for Dikola’s father is that he will, according to tradition, have to make arrangements to transport the animals to Cheryl’s own ‘hillside’ – in England.
N.B. White Mischief, Summersdale Press, 1996.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Memoir of a Torture Jail
I SCANNED THE ROOM. It was arranged for torture.
There was a rack for breaking feet, a bar for hanging a man upside down, rows of manacles, straps and batons, and pliers for extracting teeth.
There were syringes with used needles, smelling salts, a medical drip, electrocution equipment, and dried blood strewn over the floor and walls.
Exactly where this dreadful place was I still do not know – I arrived and left in military blindfolds. All I do know is that it was near Peshawar on Pakistan’s northwest frontier, and it is run by Islamabad’s military intelligence.
I was arrested while travelling in Pakistan, just after the London bombs, and I was held for sixteen days, along with my two-man film crew, David and Leon Flamholc. We were heading overland from India to Afghanistan to research a documentary about a massive lost treasure of the Mughals.
From Peshawar our plan was to head down the Khyber Pass to Kabul, the Afghan capital. But I suggested a detour to find the house of a distant relative. As we searched, David videoed me, hoping to capture the reunion with old relatives. Suddenly a military police officer, armed with a sub-machinegun, strode up. He took our passports and the camera and led us to a military post.
We said we had not filmed anything sensitive and the atmosphere was calm – at first, anyway. They admitted there were no signs in English prohibiting filming but said there was a sign in Urdu, which none of us could read. They rummaged through our luggage, asked questions, and said they were waiting for a senior officer to turn up.
After about four hours, he swept in.
His tone was abrupt. He said we were being detained and had no right to call our embassies. We were blindfolded, our hands chained behind our backs, and led to a truck at gunpoint.
After a short drive we arrived at a medical installation. We were stripped and examined, still chained and blindfolded. Just to lose one’s vision is the most terrifying thing. The doctor told his assistant to prepare sedatives. It was a terrible moment. I crouched, waiting for the prick of a needle which, thankfully, never came.
Fearing I was about to pass out, I fought hard to take deep breaths. I was sweating so heavily that my blindfold was drenched. Through a tiny gap I could make out blurred details of the room: resuscitation equipment, manacles and a pool of fresh blood on the floor.
Suddenly, we were bundled back into the pick-up and driven at high speed to an interrogation unit. We spent the next thirty-six hours in a military dungeon – a large, cavernous cell with bare walls and a concrete floor. Armed soldiers stood at the door.
A plain-clothes officer interrogated. At first he emphasized that we had committed grave crimes and would have to pay the price. But after watching the video footage, however, he changed tack, agreeing that there was nothing wrong.
‘Then why are you charging us?’ I asked.
‘You are not charged,’ he replied.
‘Then can we go?’
‘No, I must write a report.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘Days, perhaps weeks.’
It became clear that I was being held on susp
ected terrorism charges. As a British citizen of Asian Muslim origin, I was suspected of being part of the world of suicide bombers, religious schools and Islamic fanaticism.
At ten p.m. on the second night we heard the sound of keys.
The cell was opened by a pair of towering plain-clothes officers. I noticed that the chains and blindfolds they carried were different from those of the military police. It seemed that we were being passed to another agency.
We were led to a jeep and driven through the streets of Peshawar, then out of the city and down a bumpy dirt track. My overwhelming fear was that we were about to be shot in the back of the head and dumped away from town.
Eventually the jeep braked.
I heard an iron gate open and we jerked in over what felt like a cattle grid. One by one we were then dragged out in chains and held squatting on the ground. Behind my blindfold I could smell jasmine and hear a man moaning in the distance.
We were led calmly into a cell block and isolated in solitary confinement cells. Mine was about two yards by three, with a concrete floor and no furniture of any kind. There was a rough lice-ridden blanket, a strip light that was never turned off, a squat lavatory and a hosepipe.
The walls were bare white, covered in graffiti, written mostly in faeces and blood – much of it in English.
I could not sleep, nor see what was happening beyond my cell. But there were the sounds of men weeping and what had to be the screams of others being tortured. The fear of being taken out and shot was constant, especially in the first days. Nobody outside would have known; nobody had a clue that we had been taken away.
The next day I concluded that we were being held by military intelligence. The guards, who were all dressed in plain clothes, refused to give their names. One, a young man who brought me water, said the unit was known to them as ‘The Farm’. He told me that keeping calm, and telling all I knew when interrogated, was the best way of staying alive.
My colleagues, Leon and David were in cells nearby, but speaking to each other was forbidden. When I needed the hosepipe to be turned on I would shout so the guards could hear me.
Late on the second night a guard came to my cell with chains and blindfold. I called out to David and Leon that I was being moved. They told me later that they thought I was being taken out to be executed.
I staggered down a long corridor and was pushed into a chair. A voice said that if I told the truth I would not be harmed but that I’d be in danger if I lied. I was so frightened that I felt weak and nauseous. And the fear brought sweat. But it wasn’t normal sweat. It was mixed with adrenalin, and stank like cat pee. For all the washing, I couldn’t get it off my body.
That first night, I was interviewed for three hours.
The questions ranged from my family to my knowledge of Islam, explosives and weaponry, my work as a writer and documentary maker, as well as on how much money I earned. They were also preoccupied with the fact that my two colleagues were Jewish – something which I had never really thought about.
My fears were increased when, after several nightly interrogations, the blindfolds were untied. It was then I saw an array of bloodied torture instruments, and the central drain. The implication was clear. Horrified, I was returned to my cell.
As the interrogations went on, I explained my life and details of the books I’d written. Recounting it all piece by piece, I realized how complex it all must have sounded. After all, I am of Afghan and British ancestry, brought up in Britain, married to an Indian, and living in Morocco – and my passport has stamps from dozens of obscure countries. Every answer seemed to provoke another slew of questions. One young interrogator in particular drove me crazy with his inane questioning.
Night after night he grilled me.
Eventually, during a long session one night he unlocked the handcuffs. I rubbed my wrists. As the questions continued, me staring into blinding interrogation lights, I reached forward and grabbed the interviewer’s face – digging my fingernails into his cheeks. Rather apologetically, he admitted that he was only a trainee.
The next night a colonel took over the interrogation. When I told him how grim the food was, he promised to send me some food from his own home. But he never did. On the second night, he asked if I could help get his son into Canadian university to study forestry. I remember almost smiling at the absurdity of the question. Blindfolded and chained once again, I replied that I could certainly have a go, but that in my current situation it was going to be difficult to help.
During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trick was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.
Then I spent days and nights retelling myself all the stories I’d ever heard, playing them on the whitewashed walls as if I were in a psychotic form of cinema.
I forced myself to drink huge quantities of liquid to compensate for all the sweating, and spent the days in fitful sleep, worrying about my wife and two children who I had left in Mumbai, wondering when and how the outside world would begin to miss us.
Time and again I was interrogated, usually between midnight and about 3 a.m. Sometimes I was blindfolded and at other times not, but I was always chained.
One night I got a peek into other cells.
In one I saw two Afghan men crouching on the concrete floor. Both had long black beards. A guard said they had been there for months. Another prisoner was kept in a cell painted with black and white spirals to drive him mad.
The interrogators refused to let me contact my wife or the British embassy. One night I boasted that news of our incarceration could not be hushed up. The interrogator told me that two weeks earlier an American helicopter had strayed across the border from Afghanistan and strafed a truck, killing twenty-seven women and children. He said news of the atrocity had never got out – that anything could be covered up in Pakistan.
After about a week, however, I persuaded the young guard to leave a message for my sister-in-law in London, stating that my colleagues and I were alive.
I did not know that my family had assumed we had been kidnapped – or that my sister Saira Shah, known for her documentary about Afghanistan, Beneath the Veil, had jumped on a flight to Pakistan to try to find us.
The days dragged on.
I found that the best way to stay upbeat was to see the absurdity of it all. And there were moments of grotesque humour. One night I was stamping around the cell killing cockroaches. In the background I could hear the wild wailing of a man being worked over in the torture room. The guard came to my cell and ordered me to stop making so much noise. He said I was keeping the others awake.
There were also elements of touching humility. Late one evening a guard came to my cell. I was wearing just boxer shorts because of the summer heat. I started putting on my shirt, assuming another interrogation session was about to begin. He waved for me to relax and stuck his fist through the bars.
In his palm were three juicy pineapple cubes for me.
Then, after sixteen nights’ detention, a guard turned up at four a.m. and clipped our fingernails, the clippings taken for DNA testing. It seemed a rather high tech for a place without even Internet. Then our bags were brought to our cells and we were told to check nothing had been taken, then and ordered to sign a document confirming that we had not been tortured. An officer from the Pakistani Civilian Intelligence Agency stepped from the shadows.
An hour later we were sitting in the VIP lounge of Peshawar airport as the civilian officer apologized for the military’s ‘heavy-handed’ treatment. It was explained that we were being flown to London via Abu Dhabi and that we had no choice.
The officer informed me repeatedly that there were no charges against us, and that we would be welcome to return. I hope so. Despite the ordeal I remain a great admirer of Pakistan and long to walk in its mountains as a free man.
Arriving
at Heathrow airport, we were met by the British Secret Service.
‘All right lads?’ said their leader, as he took us away for a debriefing. ‘Sounds like you’ve ’ad a damned hard time out there.’
After answering his questions in an interview room, he escorted us to the arrival area. Just before we walked through, he said: ‘No goodbyes if that’s OK. I’m just gonna slip away. Best if you don’t turn round. Just keep walking.’
Since my release I find myself often thinking of the solitary confinement cell where I spent so many days and nights. I can remember the smallest detail of the place. The graffiti, the stench, the sound of the industrial-sized fan which was switched off for just one hour a day, to allow the mechanism to cool down.
But most of all, I wonder.
I wonder who’s in that concrete box now and what’s going through his head.
TWENTY-NINE
Morocco’s Alpine Hideaway
THINK OF MOROCCO, and a treasure house of tradition comes to mind.
It’s a land of medieval medinas with their maze-like streets, of fabulous Almohad and Andalucían buildings adorned with intricate mosaics, and of unending beaches running along the Mediterranean and Atlantic shores. A crossroads par excellence, it’s where the Arab world meets the African and the Berber. But best of all, Morocco is a land that never fails to surprise in the most enchanting and alluring way.
Less than an hour’s drive from Fès, is the small town of Ifrane. Developed as an Alpine-style resort by the French during their Occupation, it is one of the Kingdom’s most unexpected and precious delights.
The drive from Fès to Ifrane, set high in the fir forests of the Atlas Mountains, begins with olive groves, and with roadside stalls selling honey and pomegranates. Then, as you progress upwards, the food stalls give way to others, where villagers tout fossils and nuggets of quartz, mined in the Atlas.