Obscure Little Swat Borders on Impossible
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Section Pages . III CLASSIFIED ADS-T.V. The MontrealStar FINANCIAL-NEWS 29-50 97th Year, No. 126 MONTREAL, MONDAY, MAY 31, 1965 PRICE SEVEN CENTS Where? Why? What? Obscure Little-Swat Borders on·Impossible By PETER DESBARATS a gentle Mussolini. He is lhe Wall of Swat, Major-General It isn't really true to say Miangul Jahan Zeb, the great, that George Thomas Lanigan grandson of Lanigan's Ah- stands in the front rank of koond. Canadian poets. He sort of A Rewarding Stay sits at the ba.ck. Born in Unlike Lanigan, I can write Three Rivers, Quebec, in 1846, with authority if not inspira- he made a single major con- tion about Swat. Ed McNally tribution to English literature: and I spent a week there.We talked with the Wali. We in- The Ahkoond of Swat. terviewed the Chief Secretary. The Ahkoond is the Mona Lisa, the Taj Mahal, the Magna Carta of Canadian doggerel. On the night of Jan. 12, 1877, Lanigan was sitting at a news desk in St. Louis or Chicago - at the first hint of success he had of course emi- grated to the United States - when he received a brief re- port that the Ahkoond of Swat was dead. He started to doo- dle on a piece of copy paper: "What, what, what, "What's the news from Swat? "Sad news, bad news ..." It is doubtful if Lanigan knew where Swat was - or, as the famed versifier Ed- w a r d L ear wrote years earlier: "Who, or why, or which, or what, "Is 'the Ahkond of Swat? "ls he tall or short, or dark or fair? "Does he sit on a stool or sofa or a chair - or Squat "The Ahkond of Swat?" .. Journalist Inspired But ignorance of his subject . never fazes a good journalist. As Lanigan warmed to his work, he began to write with We met the Commander of s o mething approaching in- the Royal Bodyguard. We Main Street, Swat: A typical scene in the "metropolis" of Mingora. spiration: chatted with the Dentist of "For the Ahkoond ! ·mourn Swat- there is only one. We "Who wouldn't? visited the Bar of Swat - also "He strove to disregard the unique. We encountered doz- message stern, ens of Swatis, And we re- "But he Ahkoond't. turned with enough material "Dead, dead, dead; to write and draw an accurate "(Sorrow Swats!) picture of life inside Swat. "Swats wha hae wi' Ah· Of people, Swat has six koond bled, lakhs-600,000 Yusufzai tribes- "Swats whom he hath oflen men. Of lawyers, politi- led cians, press agents, psychia- "Onward to a gory bed ... " trists and nuclear physicists, And so on, for 52 brilliant it has none. Of income taxes, lines, down to the final im- none. There are no courts of mortal words : "The great law, no newspapers, no radio Ahkoond of Swat-is not!" or television stations, no air- Then George Thomas Lani- ports, no railways, gan wrote "30" at the bottom There is a golf course. You ofhis verse and turned to can see it from the capital more serious writing all of city of Saidu Sharif. ahout six which was r e a d quickly; miles away. But the bridge wrapped around the day's between is washed out and garbage and forgotten. But you have to drive 50 miles to the Ahkoond survived to give reach it. It is said to have one him a kind of minor immor- member, Miangul Aurangzeb tality, as did the newspaper Khan, son of the Wali and the which he helped to found, Heir-Apparent. known today as THE MONTREAL To the west of Swat lies STAR. Dir. About 40 years ago, Dir Ed McNally, The Star's car- was ruled by a dastardly Na- toonist, and myself owe a lot wab whose favorite sport was to Lanigan, not to mention our hunting in Swat. He hunted livelihood. Because of him, we Swatis. But today the two discovered the last corner of states co-exist peacefully, not the Garden of Eden that Pro- only with each other but with gress has left on this earth. It Chitral to the north and the was Lanigan's poem which other neighboring areas of sent us halfw,ay around the Gilgit, Hazara and Mardan. globe to find out, once and for Borders On Impossible all, who, or why, or which, or what is the Ahkond or Ah- For the average Canadian koond or Akhund of Swat. reader, this locates Swat geo- Lanigan was right about one graphically. But it is rela- thing. The Akhund (that's the tively unimportant that Swat .way they spell it in Swat) is borders on Dir or the domains not. Saidu Baba, who inspired· of the Mather of Chitral. What Lanigan, was the last Akhund matters is that Swat borders of Swat. But in other respects, on the impossible. It verges the poet was guilty of gross on .fantasy. It is only a stone's i n a c c u r a c y . He wrote, throw from Shangri-la or At- "Mourn, city of Swat, your lantis or the Wizardom of Oz. great Ahkoond is not." He re- In the history of mankind, ferred to the "Metropolis of Swat is a brief and beautiful Swat." error. Fifty· years ago, it Swat is no earthly city. It is didn't exist. It probably won't a State. It is 100 miles long be there tomorrow. But today and 50 miles wide. From its it thrives, against all the laws capital city of Saidu Sharif, of economics and politics, at from a palace in the centre of the top of West Pakistan, only the city, from a desk in the a few miles from the Russian centre of the palace, it is border, farther away from the ruled single-handedly by a twentieth century than the man of medium height and South Pole. round features who looks like Swat will vanish because it is too impossible and wonder- ful to be permitted to live in this age of jet travel and transistors. Already the lush valleys are filled with the gasps, admiring and asthma- tic, of elderly American tour- ists who are "doing Swat" - to death. The 20-000-foot peaks of the Hindu Kush have been scarred by the first skiers. There are schools and hospi- tals. Swat is dying. It is only a matter of time until the P,eace Corps arrives and finishes it. But this spring, the nomad families were still driving their cows and goats up from the hot plains of Pakistan, through the Malakand Pass and the Valley of Swat to the high pastures beyond Madyan and Bahrain. A man still had the right to carry a rifle - and to administer his own jus- tice with it. In the meadows of Swat the opium poppies bloomed like lotus flowers. The Wali was in his palace and all was right, for the time being, in this small world be- low the Himalayas. Tomorrow: The Great War. of Swat. .