[FONT=Times New Roman]Ziarat’s thinning junipers
- The memory of a faint smell of juniper in the air still lingers from the 1963 visit. This time you took one deep breath after another, but that delicate fragrance would not come back. The juniper trees are thinning. Those along the roadsides display deep, random gashes where they have been cut for firewood
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ON a recent visit, Ziarat seemed less green than on a previous visit God knows how many years ago. That was probably in 1963 when a group of Lahore-based journalists was taken to attend the Sibi Durbar and an excursion to Ziarat was part of the programme.
It’s all in a bit of a haze now. Lourdes Hotel in Quetta is still there, having lost much of its old-world charm, but its satellite in Ziarat has been sold off. The memory of a faint smell of juniper in the air still lingers from the 1963 visit. This time you took one deep breath after another, but that delicate fragrance would not come back. The juniper trees are thinning. Those along the roadsides display deep, random gashes where they have been cut for firewood. It has long been the received wisdom that the juniper forest around Ziarat is the second biggest in the world (the biggest is probably in France). At the rate at which depredations are being made, the honour may soon be lost.
But the night sky over Ziarat retains its glittering brilliance. The stars hang over your head, and you recapture some of the excitement of childhood in tracing the Great Bear. With the hill station largely deserted with the approach of winter, the place is still and quiet and most of the holiday homes and rest houses are empty, specially on weekdays. But Ziarat is now a district headquarters, and its small bazaar bustles with activity during the day. It was just before the nazim elections, and the gentleman who owned the main PCO was also in the running, darting in and out between handling customers.
You take a drive to the mazar of Baba Kharwari (Mullah Tahir), Ziarat’s patron saint (‘Ziarat’ means mazar in Pushto). The grave is well looked after, occupying a place separate from the remains of an ancient graveyard. Another 20 minutes from there is a popular picnic spot, Chutair, where a thin mountain spring draws visitors to explore forbidding crevices between the gaunt hills. Advertisements for a café are chalked on the sheer face of a rock, and you try but cannot figure out how anyone could have possibly climbed there to write his slogan.
On the way back to the municipal resthouse where you are staying, the regulation halt at the Residency. The Quaid’s bedroom is as it was during his sojourn there in September 1948, assures the guide, one of whose uncles, he says, was Mr Jinnah’s personal khidmatgar during the leader’s last illness. The Residency’s wood verandahs are a sight to cherish.
The road between Quetta and Ziarat is much improved, but a 20-km stretch is still being recarpeted. The entire way is dotted with apple orchards, as are the environs of Ziarat right up to Kach and beyond. It is said that a gentleman called Pista Khan had begun it all in the 50s by transplanting soil from the plains. Pista Khan has left a lovely legacy behind. The temptation is too great to be resisted to stop on the road next to an orchard, give a furtive glance around to see that no one is looking and pick an apple or two. It isn’t as sweet as you would have liked, but any fruit picked straight off a tree tastes better than one bought.
As you descend towards Quetta, the plains outside the city are full of Afghan refugee camps. Most of the refugees are now preparing to go back, and as one encampment after another is dismantled, its denizens gather up their belongings and wait in a group for transportation. Private buses are lined up nearby to transport the refugees home, with their goats and small bundles of clothing. So this chapter, too, is slowly closing.
P.S.: The Karachi-Quetta Balochistan Express doesn’t have a dining car. The railways staff say that nobody is ready to accept the catering contract because there isn’t enough traffic. But when the issue was being