Traffic in Pakistan drives on the left, British-style. Jahangir kept the truck in the right-hand passing lane, where the asphalt was generally better, and traffic swarmed past us. Even so, the truck -- which traveled at no more than the speed of a fit bicyclist -- jarred violently over the tiniest bumps, and in certain gears the engine itself shook the cabin. Outside, the rice fields and mango orchards of rural Sindh scrolled by. It was late in the afternoon, but the day's heat continued unabated. Possibly as a result of the busted muffler, the engine's exhaust rose up around the back of the cab, heating up the back wall, its glass window becoming too hot to touch. More than once, after the heat and motion lulled me to sleep, I woke gasping for air and soaked in sweat.
It was better to sit up in the middle and talk, as Ahmad rolled a spliff of hash and passed it to his older brother. Jahangir was 34 (though he looked older) and had a son, a daughter, and another son who had died in infancy, he told me; Ahmad, 26, was unmarried. They had grown up in the Khyber Pass town of Landi Kotal, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, where they lived in a large compound with more than 100 members of their extended family. Jahangir had bought a truck four years ago, after a 10-year apprenticeship as a conductor. The brothers had started off hauling oil tanks for NATO's supply line, which had been good money for them, netting upwards of $500 a run as often as twice a month. Then in November 2011, Pakistan closed the border to the supply line in response to an errant U.S. airstrike that killed 24 of its soldiers. After five months of waiting, Jahangir decided to switch to hauling private containers, which was much less lucrative but at least it was work.
It would take us between four and five days to get to the border. Besides the physical dangers of driving through the hazardous traffic and mountain roads, the threat of an attack by bandits or the Taliban, and the risk of being kidnapped for ransom, by either our hosts or someone else who realized I was a foreigner, there was also the fact that any Pakistani police officer or soldier would be extremely nonplussed, to say the least, to find a Canadian journalist in a transit truck. Fortunately, I had been told the police were interested in extracting bribes only from the truck driver, not his passengers. The first real challenge would be the Kohat Tunnel, a 1.2-mile passage that cuts through the mountains south of Peshawar. After multiple militant attacks in the tunnel, the Pakistani Army introduced checkpoints with stringent searches on either side. Soldiers did not take petty bribes, and they were checking the documents of everyone who passed. After that was the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a territory strictly off-limits to foreigners, just as the Torkham border crossing was afterward. A special permit called a "no-objection certificate" was required, but despite months of coaxing the civilian press office, I still didn't have one. We were going so slowly, however, that I'd have a few more days to think about what to do.
As darkness fell, we lurched on slowly into the night, our headlights illuminating an arc of pavement on the unlit highway, throwing shadows against the lush tropical orchards that hemmed us in. Traveling in their own pools of light were fellow trucks, sometimes with little motorcycles drafting behind them and occasionally a fast-moving vehicle, a Corolla or the new black Hilux pickup of a landlord and his men. Rural Sindh was a dangerous place, the worst stretch of road before the tribal areas. At night, the bandits came out. On the edge of the highway, a police pickup and cops in slovenly black uniforms, cradling AK-47s, lurked like predators. "Sometimes they change their clothes and rob vehicles," Jahangir said.
The sun had set hours ago, but the night was still stifling hot, the air heavy with the scent of diesel exhaust and fetid rice fields. The road was potholed due to the monsoon rains, and the cabin lurched violently. Jahangir smoked joint after joint and blared cassettes of old Hindi music to stay alert, swaying his shoulders and waving his hands to lines like "Those who love cannot know fear/And those who fear cannot know love." I looked at my watch -- it was well past midnight. The lights from the highway swam in the liquid arc of the windshield. With the heat and the motion and the blasting music, it was impossible to sleep. There was nothing to do but stay up, watch the road, and try some of Jahangir's hash.
Next: Paul Salopek on his seven-year journey to retrace the footsteps of early humans.
SUBJECTS:
