In Xanadu (37 page)

Nur Mahal, the Light of the Palace, was a famous beauty and an exceptional and talented woman. She was an accomplished poet, an influential designer of carpets and a good shot (she hunted from a closed howdah on the back of an elephant) She also appears to have been a faithful and loving wife. Bui she was as ambitious as she was beautiful and had no qualms about using her influence over her husband for her own ends. According to Sir Thomas Roe, the English Ambassador, 'all justice or care of any thing or publique affayrs either steepes or depends on her, who is more inaccessible than any Goddesse or mystery of heathen impietye'. When her influence came to an end at Jehangir's death, she occupied her retirement by building her husband's tomb in the centre of the lovely Mogul garden which then, as now, must have been well outside the bustle of the town. She may have been involved in its design: it certainly has very similar lines to the other tomb that she commissioned, the mausoleum of her father ltmud ad-Daula, which lies upstream from the Taj Mahal in Agra.

The Itmud ad-Daula was the first Mogul tomb that
I
ever saw.
I
was seventeen, and the spring morning that
I
spent looking at it inspired in me the love of Islamic architecture that has propelled me around the mosques and tombs of Asia ever since. Driving out of Lahore towards Jehangir's tomb,
I
became worried that in comparison with the great buildings of the Seljuks, Saffavids or Ottomans that I had seen since, the brilliance of Mogul architecture might pall. But it was like a homecoming. Jehangir's tomb was a fine building, set in the middle of a Mogul garden, the climax of a symmetry of pools and canals and long, worn, redbrick paths. As the first great building that I had seen since leaving Iran, what struck me was its simplicity, both of design and material. In shape it is a low, plain rectangle, arcaded on all sides, centred on an unpretentious
ivan
gateway and flanked by four minarets. It is built of brown stone inlaid with white marble. There is no tile work, no fussy detail, no extravagance. Only the cenotaph itself is at all elaborate, inlaid with semi-precious stones and covered with kufic designs listing the Ninety-Nine Names of God.

Like its European contemporary, Baroque, Mogul architecture represents only a variation on an old, familiar theme. But while Baroque saw a swing towards extravagance, the Mogul architecture of Lahore represents a retrenchment, a reaction against the tendency to ever-greater scale, ever-greater luxuriance and ever-greater detail. Combined with the Mogul genius for landscaping, the result is not grand or sumptuous, but instead something dignified, and - in the case of this tomb -something surprisingly humble and human. It is immensely accessible architecture.

Leaving the gardens we came across what seemed to be a changing of the shifts in the beggar community at the gates. Ore group got up and walked towards the tea stall, while another party took its place. Having finished his cup of tea, one of the off-shift came over and half-heartedly tried his luck with us.

Oh sahib,' he wailed. 'My father has ill, my mother is disease."

I was just about to give him a coin, when there was a howl of outrage from the gate. The beggar scuttled off. Union regulations, it seemed, had been broken. In India I had heard stories of such things (it was said that the Rajasthan beggars flew up to Ladakh for the summer season; only the hippies underwent the four-day bus journey from Delhi) but until this moment had never believed them. The beggars reminded me, however, of the fate of Tom Coryat.

Having finally reached the Mogul's court he found himself almost destitute. Although he had found travelling in Asia very cheap, he was 'cousened of no less than ten shillings by certaine lewd Christians of the Armenian nation', and he was forced to come before Jehangir and make a begging speech.

Lord Protector of the World,' he said. 'All haile to you. I am a poore traveller and world-seer, which am come from a farre country, namely England . . . queene of all the ilands in the world....'

Jehangir took him for a holy man and gave him only one hi'ndred rupees, thinking that he, like the Indian
sadhu.
had voluntarily renounced wealth. Coryat set off back for England, but before he had left India his health broke down. He finally got to Surat but there drank 'a surfeit of sack' given him by the English merchant community. This aggravated his dysentery and he fell into a fever. He died a few days later. His letters back to England were printed as soon as the news of his death was announced. But it was tragic that he never lived to write what would certainly have been his most remarkable and - if Sir Thomas Roe was to be believed - most voluminous book: "With his most unwearied legges... [he has collected] notes already too great for portage... [some] he left at Aleppo, some at Hispan - enough indeed to make any stationer an alderman that merely serve the printer with paper....'

I had been eight days in Lahore before I finally roused myself into action over the permits. We decided that we could prepare the ground for the assault on the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Islamabad by telephone from Lahore. A couple of phone calls, we hoped, and the field could be open for us to flash our letters, collect the permits and set off up the Karakoram Highway to China. But we had forgotten the joys of the Pakistan Telecom network, and not yet met the Chinese brickwall approach to relations with foreigners.

The Begum's office contained three telephones and an angry secretary. He had black spectacles and effused boredom and irritability in about equal parts. Although the Begum had warned him the day before that I would be coming, he much resented my invasion. 'Sahib, do not put your letters on my table,' he said as I sat down. I apologized and tried dialling the number of the British Embassy. I failed to get through. I tried again. Brrrrrrrr, said the telephone. Out of the comer of my eye I could see that the secretary was watching me. After three further attempts he took the receiver from my hand with an
I-
was-doing-this-before-you-were-born look on his face, dialled the operator, spoke to someone he knew, and was put through first time.

I spoke to a weary Scots Consul whose job, so he said, now consisted in arranging for the corpses of mountaineers to be returned to England. He had received the Permanent Under-Secretary's letter and said he was happy to help us as long as we promised not to go climbing. He put me through to a liaison officer who listened to an account of our problems and agreed to telephone the Chinese Embassy.
I
next rang the Pakistan Ministry of Tourism. For a while there was no answer, then a bad-tempered voice rather resentfully asked what
I
wanted.
I
asked for Mr Muneeradin, the name I had been given by the embassy in London. The voice said Mr Muneeradin was on holiday. When would Mr Muneeradin be back?
I
asked. The voice said it did not know. Did no one know?
I
asked. No, no one, said the voice. For the third time that morning, but not the last, I explained the problem. Why didn't
I
try the Ministry of Sport? suggested the voice before somewhat abruptly hanging up.

At that moment the liaison officer rang on the second phone. The man
I
wanted at the Chinese Embassy was a Mr Qiu. He was waiting for me to call. In the meantime, said the liaison officer, he would contact the Pakistani Civil Service. I thanked him and rang the Chinese Embassy. I got through on my second attempt, but of a Mr Qiu the embassy denied all knowledge. That was the
Chinese
Embassy? I asked. And there was no one with a name even approximating that of Mr Qiu? No, said the embassy receptionist, there was no Mr Qiu, there had never been a Mr Qiu and as far as she knew there were no plans to employ a Mr Qiu.

I
considered the options. Assuming a French accent,
I
again tried the Chinese Embassy, asking for the visa section. I explained what I wanted. Was it a tourist visa that
I
wished to apply for? No, it was a Kunjerab permit. What was my group? I did not really have a group; I was part of a two-person expedition from a British university. Ah, said the visa official, in that case I needed to get in touch with the Cultural Mission. Then he too rang off.

I continued the battle after a siesta. First the Chinese Cultural Attache was asleep. Then he was in a meeting. I finally cornered him that evening. He would love to help, he said, but if it wasa permit for the Kunjerab that I wanted then the man I should speak to was Mr Qiu at the embassy.

The Pakistani Sports Ministry proved equally elusive.

Eventually the Begum put me through to the Minister himself. We had a long and friendly chat. What was my good name? Cambridge University? How lucky I was. Was I an old friend of the Begum? She was a remarkable woman. Perhaps I might be so good as to give the Minister my address? He was planning a little trip to England to visit a cousin. Perhaps we could meet if ever he found himself in Cambridge? We swapped addresses and vowed eternal friendship, but as to a Karakoram Highway permit, he was very sorry. He knew nothing about such permits. Had I tried the Ministry of Tourism?

Three days later the secretary managed to get hold of Mr Qiu and Mr Muneeradin. Both said the same thing. Permits were not necessary either for the Karakoram Highway or the Kunjerab Pass. The fools in London knew nothing. Pakistan, China and Britain were old and valued friends. Their peoples were brothers. I could go wherever I liked.

I
did not believe a word that either man said. But there now seemed no choice but to attempt to reach China and see what happened.

That evening the Begum asked her bearer to arrange two bus tickets to Islamabad. The bearer approached the cook's boy, who approached the secretary, and then disappeared off into the garden. We returned to our bedrooms after supper to find our bags packed and a small envelope containing two tickets sitting on the bedside table.

It was a cool, sharp evening when Louisa and
I
arrived in Mansehra. The town sits at the top of a small ridge in the foothills of the Karakorams, hemmed in by slopes of spruce, fir and birch. As far as Abbotabad we had ridden on top of the bus, but as the road rose into the hills, the temperature had dropped steadily. It was cold in the nights in the hills and already the tribesmen were huddling around the roadside braziers.

Mansehra was a wilder place than any
I
had yet seen. We had left the easy plains of the Punjab behind us and were now in a landscape of narrow valleys and steep, wooded slopes. The change in the human geography was even more dramatic. The neat, civilized Punjabis who had filled the bazaars of Lahore were nowhere to be seen. Instead we were surrounded by some of the most frightening men
I
had ever laid eyes on. Towards the end of the journey I had looked under the bottom of my book and noticed the size of a tribesman's feet. They were vast. But then everything about these men was outsized. They had big hands and big noses. Their beards cascaded over their chests. They grunted at each other with deep, resonant voices that any Welsh bass would have been proud of. They were, as Louisa remarked admiringly at the time. Real Men.