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Rescued from an angry crowd
© St. Petersburg Times, SAKOT, Pakistan -- Anti-American sentiments are running high in Pakistan after U.S. and British attacks on neighboring Afghanistan. Just how high, we would learn first-hand and all too frighteningly.
"It's not safe to travel today," warned the general manager of our hotel. The night before, we had encountered no trouble when we interviewed some local people for their reaction to the bombings. They had even been friendly enough to offer us tea. We decided we'd be fine, so shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, we set off with our Pakistani guide, Saif, and our driver.
Shortly before 11 a.m., we came into Sakot, a typically dusty, crowded town in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. This is the land of the Pathans, the largest tribe in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Proud and fiercely independent, they are the legendary warriors who through the ages have successfully fought off wave after wave of would-be conquerors, most recently the British and Soviets. The Pathans also are the tribe from which the Taliban, the current rulers of Afghanistan, draw most of their members and support. When you see Afghans and Pakistanis on TV vowing to die for the Taliban and terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, more often than not you are looking at Pathans. We were about midway through Sakot when we saw a large crowd -- so big as to fill the entire highway -- advancing toward us from the south. Some were carrying banners and black flags; clearly, we had come upon a demonstration protesting Sunday's attacks. Jamie had barely gotten out of the car with his camera gear when several police officers appeared out of nowhere, yelling at us to leave as quickly as possible. We jumped in the car and the driver wheeled around, speeding back in the direction from which we had come. We had gone perhaps half a mile when he pulled off the road and parked out of sight, behind a market we had visited the day before.
I was dressed in a long skirt and baggy tunic but I put on a head scarf and pulled it closely around my face so I would look less conspicuous. However, there was no disguising that Jamie was a photographer. The road had completely cleared of traffic in anticipation of the approaching march, so most eyes were focused on us as Saif led us across the street and into a building. The idea was that we would go to the second floor and Jamie could shoot through a window so the demonstrators wouldn't see him. As we entered, we were instructed to take off our shoes: We were in a mosque, a Muslim house of worship. Shoes in hand, we made our way up steep, winding steps to the second floor, which was a single, huge room with tall, barred windows on either side.
The second surprise: This was a madrassa, an Islamic religious school. It was one of many madrassas in Pakistan where the Taliban -- which means "students" -- have educated impoverished young men and recruited them to the fundamentalist cause. For a week, we had been trying to find a madrassa with no luck. Now, at the time of highest tension, we had blundered into one. Jamie and I went to a window facing south, and he started to take some photos as the demonstrators drew ever closer. I was conscious of being the only woman among at least 50 men. I was also aware that the crowd in the room was growing rapidly. We recognized a man we had interviewed the day before; he smiled and shook our hands. But other faces seemed less friendly. "The people are angry with America because America and her light forces humiliated the Muslims in Bosnia, in Palestine, in Kasmir," one man said, as I scribbled notes. Then he said something that sent a frisson of fear up my spine: "I request that you leave this place. People are emotional and they may do you some harm." By now, it was obvious that many in the still-growing crowd were angry at our presence. Jamie put down his camera and we started moving toward the stairway, but so many men were rushing up from the street it was impossible to go down. "Get out! Get out!" one man shouted in my face. A tall young man moved close and said, reassuringly: "You must not mind, there is no problem." Another man pulled out a note pad and asked where we were from. "Dubai," I said, naming the Persian Gulf city where we had boarded a flight to Pakistan. "What nationality?" "Canadian," Jamie answered. In the circumstances, it didn't seem wise to tell the truth. "Who do you work for?" Who was this man? I wondered, but I made up the name of a newspaper. As this grilling continued, we began to feel scared and trapped. There appeared no way out of this place; the mob, for it was rapidly becoming one, seemed to be getting bigger and angrier. Suddenly, we saw several policemen with rifles. They began shouting and shoving people out of the way, clearing enough of a path for Jamie, Saif and me to get to the stairs. One officer grabbed my hand and I clambered down behind him. As we finally got to the door and stepped outside, I bent down to put on my sandals. "No, no," shouted the officer, still tightly grasping my hand. "You must run." So we began running, down the dirt alleyway beside the mosque and toward the railroad tracks ahead. As we rounded the corner, I could see another crowd of men and boys coming at us from the north; we started running faster toward the south. Bare-footed, we ran and then walked fast about a quarter of a mile along the tracks, the police constantly glancing down side streets to see if there were still crowds along the main road. At last, the hordes disappeared and the officers led us along a narrow path through a cornfield toward an open-bed truck. The three of us and at least eight or nine officers got in; four more officers jumped on the bumper and clung to the sides to shield us from view. As the driver turned onto the main road, we could see that we were now well south of town. The officers, having saved us from beatings or worse, appeared to relax; one even posed for photos and asked Jamie to mail him a picture. We rode about 10 minutes before coming to the headquarters of the Malakand Agency, Northwest Frontier Police. The police ushered us first into a small, one-room building, then a few minutes later into the office of the chief constable, Wadood Shah. We had been very lucky, Shah told us: "For you the situation was dangerous because any person with white skin we think is Bush." There was a twinkle in his eye as he said this, but he pointedly noted there had been similar cases of religious profiling and hatred in the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "Many mosques were burned, a Sikh was killed because he was wearing a turban," Shah said. "People think if he is wearing a turban he must be a Muslim." As the man in charge of a huge region stretching from Sakot to Peshawar, Shah was almost constantly on the phone. He told us that the road to Peshawar had been blocked by demonstrators in 19 places and that the road to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, was closed until 3 p.m. It now being about 11:45 a.m., we would be guests of the chief's for the next three hours or so. He served us tea and cookies, then a complete lunch of rice, beef, salad and fruit. As we ate and talked, we discovered he was a thoughtful, well-educated, insightful man. In the early '70s he had spent two years attending college in New York City. "They were the best years of my life," he sighed. It was clear Shah didn't think much of the U.S. president or Bush's choice of words when he initially vowed a "crusade" to stamp out terrorism -- a word Muslims equate with slaughter in the name of Christianity. And while Shah conceded that globalization can help poor countries like Pakistan, he said many Muslims fear it is eroding the family values they hold so dear. Between phone calls, we chatted on like this until Shah at last concluded it was relatively safe for us to go. However, he felt my light-colored hair was tantamount to having "American" stamped on my forehead. "I'm worried about her," he told Saif and Jamie. "If anybody even looks at her, there could be trouble." I told him I had purchased a burqa, the head-to-toe coverup that the Taliban requires all Afghan women to wear. "Wonderful," he beamed, as I emerged from the restroom, looking like a blue ghost. "I will sell you to the Afghans and make a lot of money." Jamie put on a prayer cap and the kind of long shirt favored by Pakistani men. Our disguise complete, we got into the back of Shah's Toyota van while our guide climbed in front with the chief. "Excuse my driving, I don't drive much," Shah said as we set off for Peshawar, a truckload of police riding shotgun in front, our driver bringing up the rear. Our little parade passed through some Pathan villages that the chief feared might cause us trouble. After we made it through those without incident, he stopped a few miles from Peshawar, let us out and walked us back to our car. We thanked him and his men profusely for rescuing us from the mob and perhaps saving our lives. "It is my duty," he said. On TV we had seen that there were large anti-American demonstrations in Peshawar. We decided not to press our luck any further. "We're going to Islamabad," we told the driver. -- Susan Martin can be reached at susan@sptimes.com.
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Times columns today Susan Taylor Martin Jan Glidewell Darrell Fry |
