The ancients of Kongur - Chapter 1 - Part 3

Chapter 1: Part 3: At Tashkurgan, in the no-mans land of history and geography.  

They called him the Sultan of Tashkurgan. He accepted the title with humility, and never allowed it to take over his simple personality. His father had named him Sultan, and his grandfather from his mother’s side, had added the name, Mubarak, to indicate his happiness that his daughter had agreed to adopt this child, given to him by the strange people at Karakul. The people of Tashkurgan respected Sultan Mubarak Altaf Khan. Everyone knew him, men, women, boys and girls. He had affected their lives, directly or indirectly, at one time or the other. For, Sultan Mubarak Altaf Khan was the teacher and postmaster of Tashkurgan.

He had lived his entire life at Tashkurgan and loved the mountains that surrounded it. Everyone remembered him as part of their lives and did not seem to be able to recollect a day when he had not been in this remote part of the world. Government clerks, agriculture officers, military commanders and veterinary assistants alike, at Kashgar and in the Akto County offices knew him and relied on him to assist them with news and gossip and advice and counsel about Tashkurgan. He seemed to know everything about the place and the mountains, rivers and the villages in the remote valleys. The village secretaries would come down the hills and valleys and meet Sultan, pay their respects and seek his blessings before they would proceed on government business.

One traveled through the Khunjerab Pass on the border of China with the part of the occupied and disputed territory of Kashmir that was controlled by Pakistan. The Pamir Mountains, Tian Shan and Kunlun Shan mountain ranges seemed to dwarf the area of Tashkurgan. The Karakoram Highway had brought the amazing world of the twentieth and twenty-first Centuries closer to this remote land. Sultan often remarked on the aspect that the diverse cultures of Pakistan, India, Kashmir, Tibet, China, Afghanistan and Tazikistan converged at Tashkurgan. The world could have met here in peace, and yet, this land had only been witness to violence over several centuries.

Nations were born and newer nations took over the earlier ones. Sultan had seen history pass through this land, and he knew from the books and newspapers that he read, that modern geography had imprisoned this beautiful land. From Sost in Kashmir, the Karakoram highway came out of the Khunjerab Pass to Tashkurgan before moving northwards to the Muztagh Ata and Kongur Tagh peaks and the Karakul Lake. Sultan’s house was located at the northern edge of Tashkurgan, and he could see the massive peaks on most days from his house.

He had made himself a quiet corner, hidden behind massive bamboo clumps and other trees around his house. He would sit here, pretending that the Karakoram highway did not exist, and would keep looking at the Kongur ranges. People would visit him through the day and would not hesitate to disturb him at night with their problems and worries. He would listen to them, seated on his extremely comfortable armchair made of walnut pulp and gifted to him in gratitude by a warlord from Afghanistan. He would look at the Kongur peak, think about his village, hidden in the high valleys, think about his village elder, Mirabhe, and would give his advice to his visitors.

Sultan had lived in the villages above Tashkurgan until his father had got him married to the girl from Kongur and taken him to visit Mirabhe. He had known about the secret manner of living of his people, and of the ease with which some families lived within the different communities of the region. They were living in the modern world as was permitted by Mirabhe, and as had been required by the elders before him. It had been thought appropriate by the ancients of Kongur that there would always be families who would live like normal mortals in the modern world.

He had fallen in love with the remoteness and the solitude and the peace of the ancient village of Kongur and had visited Mirabhe with every excuse that he could think of. Of course, it had made his wife extremely happy to be able to return to her mother’s house again and again. Sultan’s village above Tashkurgan had stayed hidden in a river valley in the remote mountains on the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Nobody had ever thought of visiting the valley and they had lived in peace through hundreds of years.

The Kirghiz nomads from Karakul visited Sultan regularly and brought him news about Kongur. Mirabhe had advised him to avoid frequent travel in these troubled days when the smell of war and deceit was all around them. The nomads would carry newspapers, magazines, books and medicines with them to Karakul. Later, these supplies would find their own way to the village of the ancients of Kongur. Mirabhe’s grandfather had helped hundreds of Kirghiz nomads to escape the anger of the Tazik warlords at some ancient time. The Kirghiz had not forgotten the timely help and had always stayed around Karakul to help Mirabhe.

The nomads had called Mirabhe’s grandfather as the ‘Father of the Snowy Mountains’ and, Sultan suspected that the Muztagh Ata peak was probably named in his honour. There were other families from the village of the ancients of Kongur, invisible to the modern world, and yet, living openly in Tashkurgan. They would come to meet Sultan on a weekly basis, and would sit silently in the house, if he had other visitors. Sultan would see them and feel happy, and would assure himself that everything was good about the world, inspite of the war and violence in the region.

Sultan’s sons had been sent away in their youth to live in Kongur and had married the girls who had arrived from other places. Mirabhe had sent the young families to study in the ancient universities to the Far East, and had made sure that they would learn several languages, would become experts at science and agriculture. Sultan was proud of his eldest son, who had studied in Osaka in Japan and in Beijing and had begun to be recognized for his scientific research and discoveries in exploring the secrets of the old age gene. The world of science had wondered about his rapid progress in debunking most of the earlier theories of old age in humans.

Mirabhe had called Sultan and his scientist son, Khalid Umer, to Kongur. They had been told that Umer’s fame and progress in science was welcome, but his popularity and recognition was worrisome. Umer would have to undergo a transition and would need to change his lifestyle while retaining his interest in science. Sultan had agreed, and Mirabhe had got Umer married to a young girl from Kongur, and had asked them to go into exile for some years into the peaceful cities to the south of the Ganges. Umer stayed at Varanasi and taught at the science colleges for some decades before moving on to Lahore, Jammu and Kathmandu.

Sultan felt sorry for Umer but had kept in touch with him and had traveled to meet him on some occasions. The exile had stretched for nearly two hundred years before Mirabhe had asked him to return to the high plateau lands of Tibet and to the Pamir Mountains that Umer loved so very dearly. To his credit, Umer had never been resentful of the exile, but had gone about happily in living out several years in these different cities and had understood the people and their beliefs. Umer had taken a house near Sultan, and this had made his mother and his wife extremely happy.

Tauseef Rasheed, Sultan’s second son, had become an expert carpet weaver, in the Persian style, in absolute contrast to Umer, the scientist. Neither had shown resentment about each other. It had been an advantage, actually, thought Sultan. For Tauseef would travel regularly with his carpets, and had taken Sultan along with him, like a good rich neighbour, paying for the pilgrimage of the poor. Tauseef’s carpets were well known and his designs were extremely intricate. There were fascinating aspects of Iranian, Tibetan and Chinese cultures and religions that could be seen on his carpets.

Tauseef’s carpet manufacturing sheds had people from all faiths working within. There were the Iranians, Taziks, Kirghiz and Tibetans. These workers would come to sit around Sultan, near the comfortable fireplace in his house, and would stay contentedly without any discussion or talk. Sultan would have visitors from all religions, and there would be monks from the Bon and Buddhist faiths, maulvis from the various muslim communities, including the Uighurs and the Taziks, the Afghans and the Kashmiris. The women of the Kirghiz nomads would cook huge meals in their yurts on the vast grounds of Sultan’s house and this would be made available to all visitors, including Tauseef’s carpet workers. Sultan’s wife from Kongur would move about silently with Umer’s wife, helping the Kirghiz women feed the visitors, who would number more than a hundred on some days. Every single visitor was asked to visit again, and was welcome to eat.