At first glance, you might not think that the bespectacled man in khakis and a shirt, pottering about on the premises of Ayun Fort Inn with a trowel in hand, was Chitrali royalty. It was his idea, he said, to take down the thick, high walls that protected his ancestral home in bygone days, stone by stone. It was a bold, but brilliant move, as now the edge of the royal garden falls away revealing a panoramic view of the majestic mountains all around.
I climbed the stone steps and made my way over to a rustic bench to sit down and look around. From the pictures on Instagram, I knew it would be a beautiful place. What I didn’t expect was the way my heart would feel squeezed by happiness and gratitude for the exquisiteness of it all. I wiped away my tears before anyone would notice.
Expert gardeners bring out the shy fangirl in me. After all, my favorite Youtuber is a 65 yr old Celtic woman who grew her own woodland on three acres of marshy land in Ireland. I approached Maqsood ul Mulk as he strode around with his help the next day, to talk about his work. He divides his time between Islamabad and Ayun, coming here every so often to make sure everything is blooming. He spares no expense procuring seeds from Europe, and he plants with excitement and enthusiasm to see if he can succeed in growing non-native flowers in the soil here.
“Chitral and Karachi are connected,” he remarked when he got to know where we were from. “They are on opposite ends of the country, and both are equally neglected by the government.”
It was kind of nice to hear him say that because of the forlorn feeling that crept into my heart as I stood at the far end of the garden gazing at the landscape all around me. I wasn’t ‘from here’, I thought, so none of this was mine. I was just a visitor from a harsh, ugly city far away. The forlornness was banished when another thought immediately followed the first one. Here I was, a soul on planet Earth, beholding mountains that had been around for millions of years. There were no humans around at the end of the Palaeocene…. therefore this land was as much mine as anyone else’s, and I could keep coming back here as often as I liked.
We were urged to go visit the fruit orchard just below the garden, and so we did. That was where we first met Bruno, the prince’s gigantic dog with tiny ears and a huge smile, who immediately took it upon himself to show us around. The orchard was full of tall mulberry trees, the source of the delicious jam we ate with our parathas and cream for breakfast. I had never before seen or eaten sweet shehtoots in such light shades of pink and purple, straight off the trees, while Bruno munched on the ones that had fallen to the ground. How very surreal for a tree-starved Karachiite to be strolling about in all this abundant greenery….where a hundred year old gargantuan Chinar guards the edge of the orchard, overlooking the river and surrounding wheat fields far below. I spotted bright yellow birds flying over the fields, later learning they were called Mayun in the Khowar language, or the Eurasian golden Oriole. Bruno flopped heavily to the ground next to my feet, while I sat on a bench and breathed it all in. Then he got up and accompanied us back to the orchard gate when it was time to walk back up, vanishing the same way he had materialized. Such a gentle giant, I thought. I had no foreshadowing of what he would do to me later that night.
Being in the mountains is a good opportunity to stargaze, since the amount of light pollution is far less than what I’d find back home. So I stepped out of my room around 11 pm, all set to spend some time just looking up. No one was around and all was quiet, except for the sound of the weeping willow rustling in the breeze. I walked out towards the middle of the garden, annoyed with the bright light on the porch, wishing it could be switched off. Turning my face away from it, I looked up and around, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and for the stars to reveal themselves. To shield my eyes from the porch light even more, I held up my shawl around my head. That was better, but somehow, I was beginning to feel very uneasy. More than awe, I felt a sense of fear take over. At first, it was only because I’m not used to being out in the open all by myself. This was soon followed by a more visceral sense of terror at my absolute aloneness in the entire universe, deepened by the presence of the looming, ancient mountains around me.
I heard the sound of panting just a split second before I felt something heavy land on my back, followed by a rumbling growl. I stumbled and turned around to see Bruno. He jumped on me as I faced him, tugging at my clothes, my shawl, and I thought, oh my God, he thinks I’m an intruder. How stupid of me to be standing here in a shroud.
“Bruno, it’s me, remember me? Stop it Bruno, staaawp!” I tried keeping the panic out of my voice as I tried keeping him at bay with my arms, but he was too excited to recognize me, or indeed stop mauling me. How could such a sweet dog turn on me like this? I refused to believe he would actually hurt me, while at the same time my already fearful inner voice was saying , “you’re toast.”
Still inching my way towards the porch, it seemed so far away. Any minute, I’d feel his teeth sink into a body part. Heart in my mouth, I started to call out for help, feeling so weird and dramatic as I did so, while continuing to fend him off and keep moving. Finally, I called out Qasim’s name, the manager at the fort.
Suddenly, Bruno stepped away and stood still, looking towards the door, as if he was waiting for Qasim to appear. Heart hammering, barely able to breathe, controlling the urge to run, I started to make my way towards my room, the door of which was on the left side of the porch. Surprisingly, Bruno’s exuberance calmed down completely and he accompanied me, almost sheepishly, all the way to my door.
I got away with some scratches on my arms and a shawl that smelt of doggy drool. No one heard anything. It took about an hour for my shakiness to dissipate as I narrated what just happened to a concerned Huz. But it took Qasim’s sincere apologies, his assurance that Bruno was just playing, and the trip to Bumburet the next day for all my wariness and misgivings to vanish and my equanimity to be restored.
munira's bubble 