On time spent in a potential war zone
By Eileen Bevan
(From The Orcadian dated October 4, 2001)

Orcadian couple Pete and Eileen Bevan spent the first half of this year in Pakistan where Pete, a civil engineer and son of Archie and Elizabeth Bevan, Ness Road, Stromness, was team leader of an urban water and sanitation rehabilitation scheme in Rawalpindi, next door to Islamabad. While out there, the family took time off for a trek along the Karakoram Highway as far as the Chinese border.

Eileen, (nee Sclater), daughter of former Kirkwall draper John Sclater, writes of the time spent there, along with family Katrina and Katie Rose, and of the relief that they returned home to Orkney from what is now a potential war zone, in the summer.

The girls with the Margalla Hills in the background

It had been a long flight – nine hours of economy space, just a little tight for my five foot eight inch frame and Pete’s even taller one.

Our two young daughters, aged six and two and a half, didn’t bat an eyelid, curled up on seats infinitely more suited to their size.

With the end of the journey, begun at Grimsetter, in sight, came the light of a new day filtering through the blind. I pulled it up to catch my first glimpse of Pakistan. Mountain after mountain of icing sugar peaks met my gaze, and all from a height of 30,000 feet. It was a necessary adrenalin rush at such an early hour.

Landing at Islamabad’s International Airport felt anything but international. Arrivals was bleak with the inevitable long, slow moving queue through passport control and the seemingly endless wait for luggage to appear on dubious-looking conveyor belts.

The air was full of acrid cigarette smoke and Katrina announced with some exasperation that she wanted to go home.

Eventually our cases appeared. Within mine, amongst other items of clothing, lay a small red jumper bought in Kirkwall last year for Katie Rose. I had swithered about taking it. It was already neat, but opted to pack it, uncertain of the climate there in January.

After the inauspicious airport start, it was a relief to find a home waiting for us that proved comfortable, and with rewarding views over to the Margalla hills at the back of Islamabad.

Aesthetically, the city did little to excite me. Built in the early 1960s to a grid system, each sector had its own market with a variety of shops that stocked anything from food to lampshades.

All buildings were deliberately low-level to withstand earthquakes. In February this year we woke to feel the aftershock of a small one in Afghanistan. The house rippled slowly, creaked, then settled. I found it very unnerving to have something happen so far away and yet still reach out and touch us.

Pakistan's impressive mountain scenery

Like any new posting, it took time to settle down, although thankfully Katrina’s transition from Stromness Primary to the British School in Islamabad went smoothly. With a total of around 50 children from many countries, not just Britain, the atmosphere was friendly and the school, despite its name, was international.

Despite being so far from home shores, coincidences seemed to abound. Katrina befriended Lucy, a classmate. Her parents Liz and Dave came from Fife, but Liz’s father had been born in Shapinsay.

Liz had been a couple of years ahead of me in art college in Edinburgh although I didn’t know her then, and in another small world scenario, in May we were asked to a party of a gentleman from Aberdeen. He and his wife had been married by Father Nugent, now of the Roman Catholic Church in Kirkwall.

At that party were three Afghan musicians. Their sounds were rythmic, haunting. They sat crosslegged on the floor on deep red woven rugs, producing traditional music from pipes, a stringed instrument and something that looked suspiciously like a large biscuit tin.

Later on, we Scots amongst the crowd reciprocated with a wild, disorganised eightsome reel, music courtesy of a CD.

Our Afghan friends looked on in mild amazement at the whirling circle of bodies, and listened curiously to our home-grown music.

The evening was truly memorable because of the mix of cultures under one hospitable roof.

Outside that night a heavy damp darkness prevailed from the fall of early monsoon rains. There was no sign then of the other storm clouds that would gather ominously and hang like a shroud over our host country Pakistan, and its neighbour Afghanistan, in the wake of the New York catastrophe.

The United Nations had a large presence in Islamabad and our friends Liz and Dave, Lucy’s parents, both worked for that organisation.

Along the Karakoram Highway - a Pakastani man stops work for the camera

Dave was involved in the anti-drugs programme in Afghanistan; Liz was community liaison officer for the many ex-pat families based in the city. However, in a much more low-profile, but significantly more important role, she was also helping Afghan refugee women to produce craftwork that could be sold not only in that region, but also exported through a charitable organisation called Ockenden.

She befriended many of these women based in camps near the Pakistani border, working through an interpreter. But she told me how, on one occasion, they had asked if she would like to try on one of their ‘burquas’, the all over gown, that also covered the face, that they had to wear in public. “Never”, she had replied, vehemently, risking offence. “I couldn’t”, she related, her eyes flashing in anger. “It goes against everything I believe in – that women across Afghanistan’s social sphere should have to cover themselves, be denied education and have no access to proper jobs,” – rulings all brought in by the Taliban since 1994.

Shortly after that conversation, Katrina’s school made an appeal for clothing, blankets and medicine for the thousands of Afghan refugees who had already fled the Taliban regime and who were living in appalling conditions in camps on the border. With no proper sanitation, no adequate shelter other than tents and disease rife amongst this displaced body of humanity, the daily reports from the English language newspaper in Islamabad made grim reading.

At the time of the appeal – early February this year – the region near the border was in the grip of a severe cold spell. Children and the elderly were the most vulnerable and headlines each day were of yet more deaths.

Katrin (on the right) and Lucy in the Faisal Mosque on a school trip in March, 2001

Frustratingly, because the bulk of our belongings had not yet arrived, I had little clothing to donate other than the small red jumper bought in Kirkwall, which was already looking too neat on our two and a half year old.

Along with that we donated specific medicines requested by aid workers. It was heartening to see fellow expatriates dropping off large bundles of clothing and other contributions, and we hoped it would go a little way to alleviate the many difficulties these people faced.

In Islamabad itself, there were many Afghan traders seeking a new life away from the dictates of the ruling Taliban. These traders were superb craftsmen. Stalls in various markets all over the city would be laden with stunning silverwork, intricately made and inlaid with semi-precious stones. Lapis lazula was used extensively – vivid blues against the gleam of ornately worked silver – examples of deep-rooted culture and of skills passed on from generation to generation.

Getting away from Islamabad and into the Margalla hills was not difficult. It was a steep and sometimes precarious twisty drive upwards from the city, but in a short space of time, we were in another world.

Small dwellings, made from mud, seemed to cling effortlessly onto the sides of dry mountains. There were so many of these basic buildings as far as the eye could see, it was like a scattering of ochre confetti over the rugged terrain and from the ridges at the top, Islamabad lay far below on a flat plain, Pakistan’s parliament building clearly visable in the distance through the slight haze hanging in the air. There was no inkling then of what the events of September 11, 2001, would do to this region.

Pete along the Karakoram Highway en route to the Chinese border

From the top I thought of distant borders that these mountains rolled on to – to China, to Kashmir, to Afghanistan . . . and looked in quiet awe at the difficult terrain that people conducted their daily lives in, in that part of the world.

We left Pakistan in early July this year, travelling to Orkney for the summer break, not realising then that we wouldn’t return to our home in the shadow of the Margallas – changes in the contract from the Pakistan side meant that the expatriate input was withdrawn. We didn’t realise how fortuitous that decision would be for our family in the light of recent events.

Now the eyes of the world are on that region and somewhere on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a small refugee child is wearing Katie Rose’s little red jumper bought in Kirkwall. As America and Britain stack up forces in the Gulf and surrounding areas, its fate and that of its young owner is, as I write, undetermined.

Operation Infinite Justice? It’s a thought that haunts me.