THE ROAD TO KALAAM

Swat Valley, 2018

By: Shameelah R. Balkhi (M.S. Yale), Durriyah Balkhi Asghar (CPA)

At 2 km above Kalaam’s bazar, the river and forest lay below us and snow covered Mount Falak
Ser diagonally opposite. Creamy, fresh walnuts fell out of the trees and cracked open on impact

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with the stone patio. Gladioli swayed in the breeze around the wooden pavilion and the soothing
sound of streams as they cascaded through the property enveloped us. I couldn't believe we had
actually made it to Walnut Heights!

We had ascended through Malakand Pass, driven through picturesque country roads lined with
persimmon orchards, maneuvered past shepherded
flocks of
sheep and
gotten as far
as Bahrain.

We had been
driving for six
hours and
Kalaam was
only 32 km
away when we discovered that there was now only a dirt
track riddled with crater-sized potholes ahead. The flood
of 2010 had washed the road away! Cut short while so
close to our destination was bitterly disappointing.

In desperation we called the number we had for Walnut

Heights. The owner told us that the road used to be in bad

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 shape but now one could get to Kalaam in 2
hours. His statement “road buhut achi ho gaee
hae (the road is very good now)” came from
having seen it after the flood, when tourists had
to be airlifted out of Kalaam and villagers had to
walk 25 hours to Miandam to bring 40 kg of food

aid back on their backs. He suggested that we

park our car at a friend's hotel in Madyan while

he had one sent to us.

The car arrived with stickers, "WARNING: 9mm"

and "dekhnae maen doli, chalnae maen goli
(gorgeous as a palanquin, fast as a bullet)!"

Our driver was polite but in a great hurry. He

rocketed his way over the dirt track - we found
out that his tyres are replaced every three
months! A place where we had to pay road tax
our driver actually extracted money out of the
official! It was all in Kohistani so we couldn't
fathom how he managed to do that. At the next
traffic jam he kept fidgeting with the automatic
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locks, turning them on and off at the rate of a click a second. When he could bear it no longer he
got out to direct traffic himself. Then he pulled out a whistle and began to use it. Of course, there
was a respectable policeman already there! Then the policeman started shouting at him because
he had taken the policeman's whistle!

As we drove through picturesque countryside the richness of the history of this area was ever-
present in our minds. "A nation that loses its history also loses its geography," said Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, but history is hard to
ignore here. The Unconquerable
Frontier that we were traveling
through was where Syed Ahmed
Barelvi, a disciple of Shah Waliullah's
teachings, had decided to launch his
struggle for the liberation of India
from. His plan was to first take on the
Sikhs and then tackle the British.

Syed Ahmed Barelvi arrived in

Peshawar in 1826. His headquarters
was first at Hund then at Panjtar

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(present day KP). He visited and preached to the people in Swat and Buner too. About 400,000
people pledged the oath of allegiance to him.
In 1829 an Islamic government was established
under his leadership. The repeated treachery
of the Khans of Peshawar prompted him to
leave the area in order to redirect his efforts
against the Sikhs of Hazara and Kashmir.

Although Syed Ahmed was soon martyred at

Balakot in 1831, the movement he had
launched flourished for more than a hundred
years. Wilayat Ali and Inayat Ali of Patna, Bihar,
steered the movement after Syed Ahmed's
martyrdom. Their home was converted into its
organizational headquarters, what Delhi had
been during Syed Ahmed's life.

Sethana and Malka were, in turn, the

headquarters of the movement in the Frontier.
Syed Akbar Shah of Sethana was a leading
figure and the treasurer of the movement.

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"Recruits and money flowed abundantly into Sithana from British India for decades after the
death of Sayed Ahmad." [Hunter, The Indian Musalmans] The movement came into direct conflict
with the British after the British took over the weakened Sikh Empire in 1849.

Although the British had managed to quell the Indian War for Independence, the Frontier refused
to capitulate. In 1863 the British decided on an expedition to burn down Malka and rout out the
"Hindustani fanatics". In the resulting campaign through the Ambeyla Pass (eastern KP) the
British lost almost a thousand men. The cantonment at Mardan hosts the graves of their fallen,
near the chapel of the Corps of Guides.

Several key figures of this movement were eventually captured, brought to trial and sentenced
to life imprisonment at the infamous Andaman Islands (Kaala Paani). Their properties were
confiscated and their neighbourhoods demolished, but the movement lived on. Historians regard
Syed Ahmed’s movement as the fore-runner of the Pakistan Movement in India.

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Our driver was of an equally independent Frontier mind! When the cars finally began to move,
he hopped onto the top of a random wagon ahead of us. Without any explanations, someone
from the wagon now sat in our driver's seat... but at least we were moving again. Our old driver
would occasionally wave to us from the top of his new ride, until he disappeared from sight.

The new driver was a "rishtadar (relative)” of the old, not that we asked who he was. We don't
think he'd known that he was going to be abandoned with us. After about another hour we came
across some young men playing cricket on the road. Our driver got out and one of them hopped
in. We were now on our third driver. Apparently, he was the "real" brother of our first driver. If
we could understand Kohistani we might have known what to expect from our various drivers'
animated phone conversations.

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It was soon pitch dark and we
couldn’t tell the difference
between road, mountain and
river! The thundering sound
of River Swat running
alongside us threatened to swallow any who accidentally veered off the narrow road into it.
Tourists driving their own cars looked extremely uncomfortable! We overheard some say, "jo log
pehli baar aaye haen un ka humari tarah rang ura hua hae (those who have come here for the
first time look as pale as us)" Sometimes we would see dots of light high up in the blackness;
village houses on the mountains probably. Was Walnut Heights just a wild goose chase?

At last! We pulled into Walnut Heights! With it, the 14 hours it took us to get there dropped out
of our consciousness. How wonderful it would be if we could end up in Eternal Gardens the same
way; worrying about the path we'd taken, realizing our blunders, but having Our Creator bestow
on us in accordance with His magnanimity and not according to what we deserve.

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Published: IBA Alumnae Magazine, Jan-Mar 2019