Quetta in the 1970s-1980s: The Cars

Toyota Corona Mark II (1974)

Dedication: This one is for the two car fanatics, Asim and Ameer.

(Note: short video at the end)
"A car is like a mother-in-law - if you let it, it will rule your life."     Jaime Lerner

“Pardey mein rehne do, parda na uttawo” sang Asha Bhosle through the dashboard speaker connected to the portable car vinyl player as we, my uncle Samad Ali driving, cruised along Zamzama lane (Chiltan road?) in the direction of Pani Taqseem in the cantonment area of Quetta City. I think it was the spring of 1971. The car we were in was an off-white 1968 Toyota Corona. This is one of the few memories that I have of my late uncle, a pilot in the first fighter squadron---the No. 9---of The Pakistan Air Force, and especially of his car. I was barely five then! And this was also the last time I was with him: he was martyred a few months later, in the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971. His Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was shot down in Indian airspace in the middle of his eleventh mission. That story I will explore in a future blog post, Inshallah (God willing). For now, let’s turn to the cars of the old days, to the decades of 1970s and 1980s.

Two Japanese brands ruled the car landscape of Quetta, or of Pakistan in general, during the 70s and part of the 80s, too: Toyota and Datsun. The latter had not yet evolved, or morphed, into Nissan. That happened towards the end of 1980s or early 1990s, as we also witnessed another Japanese manufacturing giant, the home appliance maker National, transform itself into Panasonic. There was, of course, Mazda, the third big automobile maker from Japan. Suzuki also had some presence, mostly in the form of its ubiquitous mini-truck, the small Carry “pick-up” which came in one color only, white. Japanese truck manufacturers like Hino and Isuzu had not yet entered the Pakistani market which was dominated by Bedford Lorries, the commercial vehicle wing of the British manufacturer Vauxhall Motors. Nobody used the brand name for the lorries; they were universally called “Rockets” by their local owners and drivers.

My first car ride was not in my uncle’s 1968 Toyota. It was in my grandfather’s 1958 Chevrolet Impala. A pistachio-green Chevy with huge whitewall tires and tons of chrome, it looked so huge to us kids. We loved it because it was perfect for our game of teelo teelo, a local version of hide-and-seek. The car did not so much offer nooks and crannies to hide in, but was perfect for running around, escaping from and tiring down the seeker in the hide-and-run-when-found game. And then there was the old Willys Jeep which my grandfather and his younger brother used to drive to the coal mines in Mach-Bolan.  Both were in the coal business.

Most of the cars that I still remember can be now safely categorized as classics. In addition to the four headlamp ’68 Corona, there were the Datsun Sunny series cars, the Toyota Mark 1, the Mazda Luce 1500 and 1800 and the Corollas, especially the ’73-74 models which people were driving well into the late 1990s. There were also some non-Japanese models, such as the Italian made Fiat 124 (1968-72 models ) and the Opel Rekord, both tough mules. The noisy Fiat resembled the ’68 Corona in design, especially the front lamps and the grille. My friend Farooq’s father owned one (Farooq was also close friends with my cousin Misbah). He, the father, was a not-so-noisy man with piercing eyes, a man that I could not imagine behind the steering wheel of any other car: the Fiat fitted his personality like a glove. Farooq used to live next to Tata’s general store on Toghi Road. That Fiat was often parked on the street outside his house five days a week and on the other two days, especially in winters, people had to give it a push for ignition to happen. Jumper cables were not common then and also because there were not many cars around.

The Datsun Sunny, especially the humpy 120Y, was another mule of a car that equally resisted visits to the garage and the gas station. Although not good in the design department, it was simply the best car when it came to fuel economy and durability, and that is why the B110 Sunny 1200 model (1970-73) earned the label “Karachi Taxi”. Exclusively in black with yellow rooftop, they were ubiquitous on the roads of Karachi. Even now, they can be seen in some parts of the port city. 

The Toyota to rival the Sunny in toughness and durability, if not in fuel economy, was the Corona Mark 1 (1973). Slightly bigger in size, this car also lasted forever. They were still around, as late as 2007, when I visited Quetta. The most popular color was beige. Arbab Asif Hazara (a NAP politician) and my school friend Ejaz ul Hassan’s uncle in Tel Gudam (a Toghi Road mohalla or neighborhood) were proud owners of this hardy perennial machine. With simple, solid body lines, this car had a beautiful front grille and it looked muscular when equipped wide radial tires.

The Mazda cars in the Quetta of '70s were not so much about fuel economy as about design and comfort. Mazda had a good reputation for suspension and design. It made some of the sexiest cars then. The Luce 1500 and 1800 (also called Mazda DeLuxe) were real beauties of the day. The sleekness in car design that became synonymous with brand Mazda some years later, thanks mostly to its legendary sports car the RX-7, could already be seen in the Luce models. The proportions, the body lines, the cool grille and headlamps, and the slim Alfa Romeo style tail lights—everything was perfect about the Luce. And to top it all, it had the most beautiful wood paneled dashboard that I have ever seen in a Japanese car. The car sat low, lower than all the other Japanese models available then. I had a special affection for the metallic blue Luce 1800 that my uncle Sadiq owned. We would spend hours on Sundays washing and waxing it with the finest car wax , the softest of yellow waxing cloth in combination with silky white sootar (soft cotton waste from the textile mills) that were sold at the auto spare parts shops on Wafa Road.  Every time I see an RX-7 here in Japan (where I live now), a Mazda icon that I have always loved, I cannot help thinking about the Mazda Luce in the Quetta of ‘70s.

Mazda also made some really tough cars to match the Datsuns and the Toyotas. One such car was the Mazda 808 Station Wagon, the little sibling of the more powerful Mazda RX3 Sports Wagon, another beautiful Mazda (the RX3, that is). Nobody is in a better position to confirm that claim than my childhood friend Sikander, whose father owned one. It was a red wagon and if I remember correctly, the car stayed with the family for more than a decade, maybe two decades. Sikander used to race around that car like some stunt car driver, but always out of sight of his observant father. Sikander was an excellent driver, no doubt about that, but he was rather harsh on that car. Any other car would have long ended up as scrap metal in the city's only kabari (Quetta's main scrap metal market) but that red Mazda survived Sikander’s brutalities with grace. He could not be blamed too much, anyway. Movies like The Moving Violation, and before that, The Italian Job and later the hit David Hasselhoff TV series, Knight Rider, were all the rage then. (All Fast and Furious movie fans reading this, you have got to watch that movie, The Moving Violation. Guys, that’s where it all started!)

Now let me come to the machine that I think defined the ‘70s of Quetta and its real car enthusiasts. I think none of the cars mentioned so far, not even the much admired Luce/Deluxe, can ever be compared in any meaningful sense with this classic. In fact, it would be outright disrespectful to talk about this car in the same breath as all the others that were around then. And the car is…the Toyota Mark II (1974).  It was actually Toyota Corona Mark II but the “Corona” bit was always left out: Mark II, just like that. Now, think for a moment of a Porsche 911 Turbo, a Lamborghini Aventador, a Ferrari  Enzo or F40, or even of a McLaren, a Koenigsegg or a Bugatti, imagine what these cars mean to their admirers and owners, and you can get an idea of what the Mark II meant to its owners and admirers then. This is not an exaggeration at all; I am saying all this from experience, real lived experiences, if I may say that to make my point about the Mark II. My uncle Sikander (or maybe it was his friend) actually drove one all the way from Germany to Quetta! He just wanted his Toyota Mark II in Quetta, not any German car which he could have easily bought and driven to Pakistan upon his eventual return from that European technological powerhouse best known for its superb cars. That’s the kind of following the car had then. The car meant power and comfort, first and foremost. It was a heavy, muscular gas guzzler, and it definitely had the lines and the elegant form to rival any other car in those departments then. The interior was plush: all leather and wood paneling in the GL and coupe models. The coupe, with the wide Good Year radials with white lettering, was a real killer. It may well be one of the most beautiful two-door cars to have come out of Japan, as some car connoisseurs have also claimed. 

The 1980s arrived with the beautiful Toyota Corolla 1980, a car that looked like the re-incarnation of the ‘68 Corona, with four headlamps and a plain grille. With it was introduced such goodies as power windows and hydraulic steering and bumpers. A year later, the Corolla 1981 was released with tiny, square headlamps. It was an ugly, Ladaesque thing: a stupid attempt to improve upon the 1980 model. The makers soon realized their blunder and a year later released the Corolla 1982 with wide, rectangular head lamps and beautiful tail lights. That model was a big success. It was also the 1980s when Honda properly launched its line of cars in Pakistan, or maybe they arrived earlier but that is when they started to become visible In Quetta, especially the Civic and the Accord models. Both went on to become success stories in Pakistan, just like elsewhere in the world. The Civic continues to compete with Corolla for market share in the compact car category in Pakistan. Honda cars may have been success stories everywhere, but for yours truly they have no appeal. I have never liked the brand. I guess part of the reason is because they were not around when we were growing up in the Quetta of 1970s and so I cannot connect with the cars in any meaningful way, the way I can with Toyotas and Datsuns (Nissan). The company’s motorcycles are another matter, though: I love Honda bikes. Another important thing that happened in the 1980s was the launch of diesel engine SUVs, especially the Mitsubishi Pajero (always called "Pijaro" in Pakistan) and the Toyota Land Cruiser. That story is for another day.

I have skipped over two Toyota models of the 1970s: The ’74 and the 1978-79 Corollas. The story of the ‘74 will need a full, separate blog post. Called by different names---some good and some rather obscene that cannot be mentioned on this PG rated blog, but all implying durability and good re-sale value---it was not just a car, but an institution in its own right. The 1978-79 Corollas were in an altogether different class. They were the exact opposite of the ’74 Corolla. With poor re-sale value, they were---especially the ’79--- the cars of choice for car junkies, the fanatics who are deep into customization and remodeling. With minimal body fittings and big, wide tires with white lettering (always called radial tires by the locals) the plain looking ’79 could be transformed into a mean-looking machine. The ’79 Corolla had a stylish grille.

Cars used to be simple then. They were, first and foremost, mechanical contraptions, devoid of all the “smart” electronic aids and wizardry that one sees in today’s cars. The only electronics under the hood and inside the cabin were the ignition system, lighting and things like radio, heating (no A/C), wiper and indicator switches etc. all dependent on one 12V hard rubber lead plate battery. No EFIs, just the old style carburetors mechanically connected to the camshaft and the governors that controlled the air-fuel ratio for desired combustion rates.  Concepts like “hydraulic” and “power”—power this and hydraulic that---had not yet entered the vocabulary of car sellers and buyers. It was usually the radio, the upholstery, and in some cases the car vinyl player, that would turn a standard, no-frills model into a GL which stood for grand luxury. In short, cars were cars first than anything else; they were definitely not your personal drawing room stuffed with all the entertainment gizmos. And driving used to be a real experience of man-machine interface---real synergy, pure symbiosis----requiring different skills, physical strength and a full-time, 360 degree awareness of what was going on around you, all with the help of a tiny rear view and two fixed side view mirrors. Sorry, no rear view monitors or navigation system then.

James May, the co-presenter---alongside the loud-mouthed Jeremy Clarkson---of the well-known TV motoring show Top Gear once said, “a car isn’t a classic just because it’s old. To be a classic, a car has to tell us something of its time”. And tell they did a lot, those Quetta cars of the 1970s---the 120Y, the Luce, the 70s Corollas, the Mark I and the Mark II. Built to last, and not planned for obsolescence, all of them embodied the ethos of their time, which could be seen in their simple yet elegant designs, in their durability and individuality, in the craftsmanship that had gone into their making and in the rewarding experiences of driving (minus the cruise control) on the open roads of the time that they offered to car enthusiasts. No wonder, they are still around and much loved!

For more, please click:

Regal Cinema, Quetta

The Battle of the Kawasakis

On Fasting

St. Francis" Grammar High

Dervaish's Quetta Youtube Channel (Click)

Regal Cinema, Quetta: The Old Turkey Buzzard

Sonay ki Talaash starring "Gary Gory Pack" and Omar Sharif

(Dedication: In the memory of my late uncles Samad Ali, Muhammad Hussain Mamo, Sadiq Ali and Sikander Ali, all of whom were great movie lovers and dedicated patrons of Regal Cinema Quetta in particular)

Quetta now has its own brand new multiplex cinema, the Weplex Pak Forces, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, including top of the range Dolby Digital Acoustics System 7.1. It is said that this multiplex boasts one of the largest curved screens, if not the largest, in the entire country. Shopping malls are popping up everywhere in the city, many of them equipped with multi-screen theatres showing the latest on offer from Hollywood, Bollywood and Lollywood. Just last year, one of the oldest cinemas on Toghi Road where we used to live, Delight Cinema, was demolished to make way for a brand new, multi-storied shopping mall. But it is not the new multiplex theatre or the iconic Delight Cinema of Quetta that is the focus of this blog; here, I will focus on an equally, if not more, historical landmark of the city, the king of cinemas in Quetta: Regal Cinema.

It must have been one of those lazy, late afternoons in the autumn of early 1970s when the skies of Quetta turn into magnificent blue and the shadows grow longer and longer with each passing day as the crisp and dry breeze brush against the skin. My late uncle, Sadiq Ali, was getting ready as I watched him run his comb through his oil and water soaked hair followed by the fingers of his other hand, trim his moustache in the style of the day and wash and wipe his face in front of the old corridor sink. Looking sideways at me, he said, “Ready?”. “Yes”, I replied. And so, we stepped out of the house to meet up with his waiting friends outside. There were Ishaq, Faqir, Arbab, and if my memory is not failing me, Sgt. Idrees and some other friends, too. It was movie night. And movies, especially English "cowboy" movies (westerns), almost always meant going to the famous Regal Cinema.

Regal Cinema was behind the main Jinnah Road, at the corner of Shahra e Adalat---I think that is what the street was called then---across the street from Hotel Metropole and in front of the old taxi stand. The adjacent intersection on Jinnah Road was called Regal Chowk, named after the cinema. I am not sure if it was an official designation or not, but that was how it was known by the Quetta waal. The cinema was one of the old-style, single screen movie houses with differentially priced seating and separate areas for families and the ladies. The stall tickets were the cheapest, right in front of the screen which usually put a strain on the neck because of continuously looking up at the screen and where sometimes benches were also placed, while the gallery seats (enclosures for families and the ladies) were pricey. This was way before the shopping mall housed multiplexes with airplane style business class luxury seats and high quality, high-definition (HD ) visuals and sound. No popcorns or ice-bars were sold then, but steaming hot chai, peanuts, shinay, paan, pakora and samosa usually hawked by boys inside the main theatre hall during the interval.  In summers, there were cold drinks—cola, soda pop or simply bothal, as they were called. The choice was limited to Coca Cola, 7-UP, Fanta and sometimes the local brand Apple Sidra, my favorite. The drinks, served in thick glass bottles and not in aluminum cans, were sold by hawkers who did not hawk their goods by the usual hollering, but who used to announce their presence inside the theatre hall by making a rattling sound with their metal lid openers against the bottles they carried in front of them in the sling supported wooden crates. Nowadays, like everything else, cinemas have also become “egalitarian” with uniformly priced tickets and with no gender segregation. Progress, taraqqee!

The cinemas in Quetta were grouped, or hierarchized one might say, according to the movies they showed. While Imdad Cinema showed both quality Urdu and English movies, Regal was exclusively English. Rahat, Prince and Ismat Cinemas were mostly for Pakistani Urdu movies and Delight and Paradise were the bastions of Pushto and Punjabi movies with huge, colorful wall posters carrying the pictures of such perennial stars as Badar Munir, Musarrat Shaheen, Sultan Rahi, Mustafa Qureshi, Ali Ejaz, Anjuman and Mumtaz. The plot-less, cheap production Pushto, and often Punjabi movies, too, were almost always house-full shows, mainly because they showed a lot of sexually suggestive scenes, like song and dance scenes in pouring rain in which the heroine would wear a white or a light colored dress! The hoi polloi loved those movies. What else was there to entertain them? No VCRs and no Internet then. This is why I have used the word hierarchized above: people with a more refined taste or artistic sensibility and the education and learning that went with it, or it implied, would usually prefer to be entertained at Regal Cinema or Imdad Cinema.

It was a totally different time then, and like everything else that carried the ethos of that era----some of which I have explored in my previous blog posts (Here and Here)----going to the movies was not just for killing time, or for time-pass; it was not just a mere visual and auditory feast, but a holistic, existential experience, meaning that the movies were savored and consumed with all of one’s senses and faculties; like good food, the movies too---and the movies were always good!---would leave a pleasant after taste in one’s being, long  after the watching experience. Going to the movies was, above all, a social event, even a periodic religious one I would say, like some eagerly awaited pilgrimage to a sacred site.

And so it was on that autumn evening for my uncle Sadiq and his buddies---and for me. The movie that we were going to watch on that day was one that would remain etched in my memory forever. In a sense, it would become part of the historical legacy of Regal Cinema; it would define an era, an entire generation of cinema goers in Quetta, in the same way that years later the Bollywood blockbuster Sholay (starring Amitabh Bachan, Amjad Khan, Heema Mailini and Dharmendra) would define another era, the age of the VCR and the VHS video tape. It was a “cowboy” movie, a western movie, titled MacKenna’s Gold, or Sonay ki Talaash in Urdu. Starring “Gary Gory Pack” (Gregory Peck), Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas (of TV series Kojak fame), Eli Wallach, Julie Newmar and Camilla Sparv, the movie’s plot revolved around the main characters, all bickering and fighting with each other while looking for a hidden trove of gold and the Indians or the Apaches (the “Jungalees”) trying to prevent them from accessing the treasure buried on their sacred land. The movie starts with a Jose Feliciano title song called “Old turkey buzzard” that shows the big winged North American scavenger flying over the beautifully cinematographed barren lands down below (Utah valley? Arizona?). For many years after the movie was first shown at Regal Cinema, that particular “buzzard” song would be sung with many different accents and tonal variations by movie lovers of the “cowboy” variety which was the most popular genre of Hollywood movies then.

Gary Cooper in The High Noon

Regal Cinema had the honor of showing such great movies as The High Noon (starring Gary Cooper), Shane (Alan Ladd), The Drumbeat (Alan Ladd), Guns of Navarone ("Gary Gory Pack", Anthony Quinn, David Niven) The Great Escape (Steve  McQueen), The Magnificent Seven (Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson) and The Dirty Dozen (starting the great Charles Bronson). Before the rise of action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood in the 1980s, there were the gun slingers John Wayne, Gary Cooper, “Gary Gory Pack”, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Charles Bronson. The last, “Char-luss Braansun”, was especially loved by the fans, so much so that his large sized posters and locally drawn portraits could be seen on the back hood of many an auto-rickshaw and on trucks, too, in Quetta city.

"Char-luss Braansun" aka Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson may have been an actor of B-Grade movies in Hollywood, but he surely was the hero of heroes in Quetta of the 70s and the 80s.

Regal is no more. I am not sure about the exact year, but my guess is that it was torn down in the early 1990s. On its site now sits a huge concrete and glass block with offices and shops inside, I believe. I have not been inside the building but from outside it’s a sad, dull looking structure, like a gravestone to the buried corpse of the iconic Regal Cinema, the Old Turkey Buzzard of Quetta. 

For more, click: Quetta, City of Karezes

St. Francis' Grammar High, Uncle Marx

Hussainabad, the place, the people and their values

The Rental Libraries of Quetta

The Battle of the Kawasakis

On Simplicity

Loss of symbolism

On Bandagi

                                                 Old Turkey Buzzard (Mackenna's Gold, YouTube)

Dervaish's Quetta Youtube Channel (Click)

Verse 'N Voice: Quetta, City of Karezes

The City of Karezes (Quetta)

By Dr. Javed Iqbal Sayyid  
(translated from the original Urdu  by the poet, with slight modifications by this blogger)

Oh, the city of hundreds of beautiful faces[1]!

You may remember
How this land basin of yours
Was ever filled with love.
And the people
of all the colors of roses
used to live here.
Some had grown from your soil
along with the pine trees.
Others who came to this land
were molded
into the same clay,
their ancestors
buried under the same clay
of your water and soil.

Oh, the city of “shinas”[2]

you know it very well
that like the snow-clad
tops of Mt. Zarghoon
whatever they were or not
your people
were loyal to you.
They were never ungrateful
unlike the shrieking cranes
flocks of which always flew
over your vale at sunset
and which the children
always longed to see
perched on one of your blossoming almond trees.

Oh, the city of my friends,

You must not have forgotten
that all our residents
knew each other
as if they were
the members of the same clan.
Like the frozen lashes
of icicles
hung from your
roof tops

They lived,
And died together.

Like those cracking sheets of ice

on which my friends strolled
and melted with
the slightest warmth of love!

True and pure of heart as they were,

they harbored no ill-will against any one.

Oh, the city of six tongues,

please note that
despite this diversity
every one spoke in the same dialect,
the distinct dialect of Quetta.

Free of any grammatical restraints
this common dialect of your people
was authentic and unpretentious
words flowed out naturally,
growing like wild flowers
and the abuses of friends in it were like those
intoxicating vines of grapes
which forced them to call for more and more
and they got more in return.

Oh, the city of my beloved ones

I still remember
with hearts being generous
city lanes also seemed spacious
when the buildings were not high
the sky always accompanied us
it would descend on the far end of the road
over the gigantic pine trees
just to be with you.

But oh

The city of karezes!
Today,  with this old map of yours,
when I went out to look for you,
I saw that all the spots and sites
of my childhood memory had been erased,

Those sky high pine trees

had been cut down,
And those rose vines that covered
the walls of the houses were
replaced with steel-nails.

When young, where we used to

pluck delicate wild flowers in the open,
there instead I saw solid, colored bricks
displayed over
the same walls.

Seeing all this

made me feel as if
this was done just a day before,
as if someone with a piece of coal
had drawn a cross on my bare chest;
as if all the titles and the sub-titles
of my childhood tale
were instantly washed away.

As if someone

had suddenly fallen into a deep karez!

But oh! The city of my loved ones

the only consolation is
that my friends
with their hard work
have installed new plants of silver and gold,
have elevated their old tin-roof huts
to multi-story market places
and fortresses of their own!

Oh, the city of Dokani Baba[3]!

may God bless you still more
with your abundance.

I pray that each of your abodes

gets filled with wealth.

I pay my compliments for the fame

you have earned.
I congratulate you for your unprecedented growth.

And now that I am leaving,

I make a humble request:

Before it is too late

please take good care of yourself,
and take good care of my friends,
lest their hearts
which are like the
fragile mirrors of white ice,
one day become hardened
like your tiles of marble!

(Javed Iqbal Sayyid, July 1996, Quetta)

P.S. Prof. Dr. Javed Iqbal Sayyid, former Vice Chancellor of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), a friend of friends, a man of many talents (from boxing to poetry!) and, above all, an illustrious son of Quetta passed away in January 2019. Allah Bakhshay. May he rest in peace.

---

[1] In the original Urdu version, these faces are compared with the light pink color of rubarb ( called rawaash in the vernacular), a local sweet and sour vegetable suitable for salads.

[2] Shinay are small,  green dried berries with oily rind sold in heaps at dry fruit shops or hawked on carts on the streets of Quetta.

[3] Dokani Baba’s real name was Abdul Qudus. He was one of the Sufi elders of the city who used to wander around on the streets of Quetta, always wearing the same clothes all year long. People used to offer him food and money, but he always refused. It is narrated that one day he asked for some paisas from a shop keeper. The shop keeper, showing him his empty cash box, said that he did not have any and that baba should wait for a while till he gets some customers. The baba asked the shopkeeper to open his cash box again and when he did he found the box full of crisp bills, of currency notes! From that day onward the old malang became known as Dokani Baba.

Quetta, City of Karezes by Javed Iqbal Sayyid (on YouTube)

Hussain Abad, Quetta: the place, the people and their values

Faqir Jango of Hussain Abad, Quetta.

“We are who we are because of the places in which we grow up, the accents and friends we acquire by chance, the burdens we have not chosen but somehow learn to cope with. Real communities are always local-places in which people have put down roots and are willing to put up with the burdens of living together. The fantasy of virtual community is that we can enjoy the benefits of community without its burdens, without the daily effort to keep delicate human connections intact. Real communities can bear these burdens because they are embedded in particular places and evoke enduring loyalties. In cyberspace, however, there is nowhere that a sense of place can grow, and no way in which the solidarities that sustain human beings through difficult times can be forged”  

John Gray

"We have too many things, and too little gratitude."
Abdal Hakim Murad

Note: Short video on Hussainabad at the end.

Haider Surkhai. Faqir Jango. Shaukat Cowboy. Eechak. Seyyed Tawoos Agha. Babay Patayn. And so on. All these names are of the people whom we identified as our own, as the people of Hussain Abad, a neighorhood where we grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. Hussain Abad is a mostly Hazara mohalla (neighborhood) off the main Toghi Road in Quetta. I am not sure about the origin of the name; maybe it was named after the first person who set camp there; since the Hazaras belong to the Shia tradition of Islam, it is more likely that the mohalla was named after the third Shia Imam Hussain (AS), the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Wallahu alam. God knows better. In this blog, I will reflect upon the old days in Hussain Abad---1970s and 1980s---some of its well-known residents and the customs and mores which defined the community then.

The residents of Hussain Abad were then commonly known by the Hazaras of other mohallas, especially by the slick Nichariites and the brash (or let's say blunt, brutally honest) Seyyed Abadis, as the “Shash Maina” which literally translates into “Six Monthers” or “Six month old”. For those readers of this blog who are not well acquainted with the Hazaras of Quetta and their ways, this appellation was both an honorific and a somewhat derogatory designation at the same time. The Hussain Abadis, having arrived into this world from the wombs of their mothers three months earlier than others of the species (hence the sobriquet “six monthers”!), were admired, or envied, for their precociousness, wit and wisdom, resourcefulness and other such qualities that usually define the better segments of a community. At the same time, and rather paradoxically, they were also the target of caustic taunts---especially of the irreverent Seyyed Abadis---for having not advanced beyond the age of six months, postpartum (post-birth)! In other words, they were often accused of immaturity. Those TNT-loaded barbs were especially lobbed at them by the Seyyed Abadi fans at the football (soccer) matches between the two teams during the All Hazara Football Championships often held in dry Quetta summers. Local elections for the provincial legislative assembly were the other such occasions for such a belligerent display of communal rivalry.

Hussain Abadis at Hanna Lake, Quetta, mid 1970s.

On a recent visit to Quetta, I went to check on the old mohalla of Hussain Abad, especially the street that we used to live in. Once there, I was totally lost: almost nothing of the old street could be seen! I had difficulty orienting myself and tried hard to locate the exact location where once stood the old house with the huge mulberry (shahthooth) tree---our house. Gone were the small wooden doors with sun-beaten dried paint that we children used to strip off the door surfaces mischievously. Those small doors with squeaky hinges and rusting bolt-type locks with chain latches that doubled as knocking devices were almost always half open; simple yet elegant, they never failed to remind one of the organic ("wood is always alive!" as someone has said) and unpretentious nature of not only the structures that they were meant to gate and protect, but also of the people who inhabited those quarters. In them one could see and feel what the Japanese call wabi-sabi. In place of them now stood wide metal gates fitted with high security prison grade remote operated locks and flanked by reinforced concrete walls into which the hinges that supported the thick, heavy gates sank deeply, as if trying to impress upon the mortal observer that both the structures and their residents were there to stay indefinitely, as in death-defying indefinitely. Forever! I just stood there, in front of one of those cold, lifeless monstrosities for a long time, thinking about the old times. In exact contrast to what occupied those spaces once, everything now looked so…inorganic, so un-charming, so arrogant, gaudy, nay, ugly!

As with the buildings, so with the people. Looking strangely, suspiciously, at me as I walked past them---still somewhat lost and confused---the cold, unfamiliar faces seemed equally unfamiliar to each other as well. The fruits of development, progress, or "taraqqee", I thought. Hence the booming market for NGOs and their armies of "community developers"!

As I turned the corner to get back on the main Yazdan Khan Road, my eyes suddenly caught sight of an abnormally thin man with an equally emaciated face half of which was covered with a scraggly beard. He was just standing there, almost motionless. He was clad in all white, head covered with a black and white keffiyeh, of the type that always reminds one of the great Palestinian freedom fighter, Yasser Arafat. His eyes that seemed to have lost their shine decades ago met mine and that brief moment during which we locked eyes seemed like a very long time: decades of memories quickly rolled down in front of my eyes, in that familiar yet strange space between us. Still looking at him, I halted once and then slowly moved closer to him until I was standing at an arm’s length from him. I knew the man. Yes. I had always known him. “Recognize me?”, I asked him. A few seconds passed. Nothing. His eyes were still searching for something. Finally, he extended his right hand to me and smiled, more with his eyes than with his mouth. I took his hand and told him who I was. He nodded once, twice and then doing it continuously, he squeezed my hand hard in his as the smile spread all over his face, the shine returning to his eyes. “Yes, I remember you. Yes, I do” he kept saying. This was Ahmed Ali, son of the late Haji (Mullah) Ghulam Ali who was a meticulous man, a rather brutal disciplinarian and a great teacher of Islamic subjects to the boys and girls of Hussain Abad. After a very long, long time, I had met Ahmed Ali, or Ahmed qun quni of Hussain Abad, as he was known to all of us.

The community, early 1970s

Hazaras usually have (or used to have) a tag or appellation attached to their proper names, the leaving out of which often causes great inconvenience and even confusion in communication. Their use equally becomes the cause of embarrassment for both the speaker and the listeners, especially if the person referred to, or a relative of his, happens to be present among the audience. A paradox, a dilemma. This is because the appellatives are almost always some kind of humorous pun or negative comment on the person’s physical appearance, unusual habits, some peculiarity of character or anomaly in familial background etc.  For example, take this qun quni. It means talking in a peculiar way whereby the words are not pronounced full and are instead uttered in a semi- or un-chewed, mumbling manner making a twangy and buzzing sound. So, to qun qun is to half-speak words with a deep nasal twang that further makes sentences indistinct and speech fuzzy.  As a true blue Hussain Abadi, yours truly also had one of these tags attached to his name, one which specifically referred to a body part, to a sort of flaw in that part: his pair of jumbo ears! And so did many of my Hussain Abadi friends: Ibrahim, Zulfo, Sikander, Muhammad, Ghazanfar (Ghazzo), Samad and Raza. Nobody was exempt. Although I recognized Ahmed before he could open his mouth and utter something in that peculiar style of his that had earned him that label, I suspect he recognized me primarily because of my XL-sized, poppadum flappers!       

Hussain Abadi "Shash Mainas" in winter, early 1980s.

Hussain Abad was, first and foremost, a real community, that is, community in the old, traditional sense of that word. It was a different era. It was a time when the cancer of modern alienation and anomie, the logical products of modern lifestyles of hyper-consumerism and dog-eat-dog capitalistic individualism that are part and parcel of a vulgar worldview the defining characteristic of which is a business-school instrumental rationality with zero regard for moral-ethical means-ends consistency, this diseased value system had not yet taken root in the traditional Quetta communities and, therefore, the communities like Hussain Abad did not have any need for noisy NGO missionaries and sloganeering civil society activists----the "humanitarian" hustlers and "poverty alleviation" charlatans almost always pushing some Godless, neo-colonial agenda----to teach them about the benefits of community living or about "community development". In Hussain Abad in particular what that essentially meant was that neighbors cared for and shared with each other. Sharing was especially a big feature of community life in Hussain Abad then. There wasn’t a day when we would not send or receive something---dishes, chapati, paratha, fruit, halwa, shir birinj (dessert), kulcha, bosragh (cookies)----from the neighbors. The plates and bowls that were used for sending something never came back empty. This exchange of goodies would continue all year long, the items changing with the passing seasons and with the events that dotted the lives of all the families of the community. The bonds among the community members, and the mores that underpinned those bonds, were of such a nature that there were times when kids would actually go to a neighbor’s house with a request like the following: “My mother says that because of such and such reason, she has not had the time to cook something for dinner. Would it be okay to borrow some food from you tonight?” 

Haider Ali marhoom (Khuda biyamurza, RIP). Hussain Abad in the late 1970s.

In Hussain Abad, weddings, funerals, and all the other big events in life were always collective community events with everybody lending a hand and chipping in in one form or another. Happiness and grief were shared with equal readiness and generosity of spirit. Neighbors not only smiled with you when it was time to smile, but were also equal, caring partners in your grief and sorrow. There was Haider the butcher (aka Haider Surkhai, khudabiyamurz, may his soul rest in peace) who was a familiar face at all such events. He was both adored and feared by the children. A fast talking man with ruddy complexion, he would sometimes chomp on raw sheep or goat liver or kidney to the delight of the watching kids. There was Eechakk, a short man who never walked but always ran; it was so difficult to keep pace with him. A sort of handy man, he had an equally popular presence at all community events. There were babay Pataiyn (Pataiyn’s father) and babay Maqsood (Maqsood’s father, to some he was babay Najaf, his other son), the two general store owners of Hussain Abad. The former, a short and plump man with the voice of a giant, had the best roasted chick peas and peanuts and the latter, a lanky man with an angelic beneficence sold the best rewri (sticky candy coated with white sesame seeds), khinjakk or shinay (a local dried fruit of the berry family with oily rind) and kishta (sun-dried apricots). There were Salman the tandoor walla (naan or bread seller), and babay Barani, the tonga walla who used to take kids to school on his horse pulled carriage (tonga).

But if there is one personality who is justifiably qualified to be identified with Hussain Abad, to be the face of Hussain Abad so to speak, I would say that honor should go to Faqir Jango. There is so much to say about this doyen of Hussain Abad (at least to three generations of its residents!), but what brings to the mind of any Hussain Abadi who hears his name is a pair of sunglasses. And not just any sunglasses but a pair of classic RayBans: to say Faqir Jango is to visualize a pair of original Raybans Aviator with dark tinted glasses. This man, alive and kicking as I write these lines, with his unique communication style and his limitless store of witty anecdotes and original jokes, had the uncanny ability to engage people of different age-groups in hours long sometimes informative and often entertaining conversations. Except for the terribly freezing rainy-snowy winter days, on a typical evening in the decades of 70s and 80s in Hussain Abad, it would be impossible to miss the sight of Jango telling his jokes or narrating some anecdote, surrounded by boys and men of all ages. The usual venue for such live information sessions and verbal performances would be the street corner, in front of babay Maqsood’s general store. Years later, after I had left Quetta and after I had read enough about and by (via his illustrious student Plato or Aflatun) the wise old man of Greece, Socrates, I often thought of Faqir Jango and his captivated audience at that street corner in Hussain Abad. Definitely no Socrates to his captured flock, Faqir Jango had the same power to cast a spell, and the charm, too, of the Athenian sage.


(to be continued…)

Hussainabad: The Video

Note: Many of the people mentioned in this blog post are no longer with us. By writing about them, it has not been my intention to show any kind of disrespect towards any of them or to make fun of or ridicule anyone. This blog post and others that will follow are an attempt by this blogger to recall times past and to try to show how things used to be then in Quetta. My aim is not to romanticize wholesale (not everything was perfect then!) but to tell stories about certain people and aspects of life in Quetta of the recent past. In keeping with Hazaragi tradition, the readers, especially the Hussain Abadi readers of this blog---the shashmainas---are requested to offer a fatiha, or prayer, for all the deceased mentioned in this blog post. May all of them rest in peace in their final abodes and may we have the wisdom, the good sense, to also see the true and the authentic, the good and the beautiful, in the imperfect past that we often disparage and hastily and unthinkingly chuck away as we, with equal haste, embrace everything new and glittering so uncritically and indiscriminately. Khuda Biyamurza, as we say.

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For the interested reader, more about the yesteryears,

1. The old rental libraries of Quetta

2.  Quetta in the 1980s: The battle of the Kawasakis

Dervaish's Quetta Youtube Channel (Click)