Travels in a Dervish Cloak

by Isambard Wilkinson

Overview

Spellbound by his grandmother's Anglo-Indian heritage and the exuberant annual visits of her friend the Begum, Isambard Wilkinson became enthralled by Pakistan as an intrepid teenager, eventually working there as a foreign correspondent during the War on Terror. Seeking the land behind the headlines, Bard sets out to discover the essence of a country convulsed by Islamist violence. What of the old, mystical Pakistan has survived and what has been destroyed? We meet charismatic tribal chieftains making their last stand, hereditary saints blessing prostitutes, gangster bosses in violent slums and ecstatic Muslim pilgrims.Navigating a minefield of coups, conspiracies, cock-ups and bombs, Bard is reluctant to judge, his ear alert to the telling phrase, his eye open to Pakistan's palimpsest of beliefs, languages and imperial legacies. His is a funny, hashish- and whisky-scented travel book from the frontline, full of open-hearted delight and a poignant lust for life. Like a cat with nine lives, Bard travels and parties his way to the remotest corners, never allowing his own fragile health to deter him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780600871
Publisher:	Eland Publishing
Publication date:	09/28/2017
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Isambard Wilkinson was born in 1971. As a young boy in Ireland, he listened to family stories of adventurous botanists and artists, sailors and soldiers who travelled through China and Africa, India and Albania. It fired an urge to roam. Expelled from school at 15, after university he was refused entry into the Royal Marines and instead worked for Country Life magazine before leaving to travel throughout Pakistan, an ambition curtailed by kidney failure. After a stretch on dialysis and his first kidney transplant, he became a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph in Spain, and then in Pakistan, where he completed his travels, the subject of this book. Following a second transplant, he now works for AFP in Hong Kong.

Table of Contents

Glossary 9

Entrance: Preamble 17

Chapter 1 A Visit to the Begum 24

Chapter 2 A Capital Place 31

Baluchistan: Black Sheep

Chapter 3 On the Trail of the Nawab 47

Chapter 4 In the Lair of the Nawab 54

Punjab: Chummcha, Chaudhry and Chilli

Chapter 5 Ground Realities 67

Chapter 6 The Demi-Monde of Zeenat 78

Chapter 7 My Feudal Lord 98

Chapter 8 A Close Shave 102

Chapter 9 Sparrow Brains and Ketchup 108

Sindh: Saints and Slaves

Chapter 10 Heath Robinson Country 121

Chapter 11 The Real Pakistan 127

Chapter 12 Season Change 136

Chapter 13 A Rigid Celibatarian 142

Chapter 14 Prophecies 148

Chapter 15 Return of an Empress 153

Chapter 16 Letting Go 157

The Mountains: A Lost World

Chapter 17 Corruptus in Extremis 165

Chapter 18 Mirth and Murder 169

Chapter 19 Infidels 174

Chapter 20 Fratricidal Tendency 180

Chapter 21 Old Man of the Mountain 183

Afghania: Bullocks and Wasps

Chapter 22 Bogeyman 193

Chapter 23 Rum, Bum and Rebab 198

Chapter 24 Passing up the Khyber 209

Chapter 25 We Have Come to Correct Things 219

Exit: Last Amble 231

Acknowledgements 236