A law unto itself

It’s been exactly a month since I landed in Pakistan and only now do I get the feeling of being in a foreign country. For once, I am clueless about the language and for once, I look and dress totally differently from the locals.

We experienced some overwhelming hospitality when we landed in Lahore but the Peshawari warmth is cut from a different cloth. At Lahore, most people transformed their outlook from acting normal to being numbingly hospitable. At Peshawar, the initial reaction was more dead-faced but the final action just as stunning. One taxi driver didn’t want any money; another, Naeyk Alam Khan, insisted that he paid for all the items we bought and finally refused to charge us for the whole trip.

Khan took it up as a mission to show us around the city. After a failed visit to the museum (closed on Sunday), he offered to take us to Karkhana Market, a place he termed unique. Cruising through the smooth roads, with digital clocks at every traffic signal, we enjoyed the sun sinking under the imposing mountain range, a refreshing breeze blowing, and a quaint sight of donkeys pulling carts and zooming past.

Karkhana Market is known for several things, least of all for a place where one can buy, hold your breath, guns. It’s a truly astonishing sight with rows of pistols, rifles, air guns, machine guns, Kaleshnikovs and zillion varieties of firearms lining the walls.

Look into the glassed shelves and you get bullets, cartridges, magazines, cases, spares and the rest. Turn around and you see imperial swords – lengthy, curved, sharp and lethal – daggers, stilettos, butterfly knives et all. In one of the shops, a couple of men were diligently making guns – filing, sawing, shaping and oiling.

Walk a few metres and there is more lawlessness – shops openly selling hashish at absurdly low prices, some trading in smuggled goods (Rolex watches were available for Rs 150!), others dealing in pirated CDs, others selling fake soaps and shampoos.

What was the best sight of them all? As we were leaving the market, still reeling from the brazenness of it all, one noticed, just a few metres away form the centre of anarchy, a police station with several guards chit-chatting outside. Probably one can’t blame them. When in Peshawar, one might as well do as the Peshawaris do.