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Out of India ... On Foot

It’s not every day that one gets to walk across the international border between two unfriendly countries in the grip of a major bilateral crisis. But that’s what I did late last year when I walked from India into Pakistan. It was Thanksgiving—the day after a wave of terrorist attacks began in Mumbai. I was visiting friends in the region where I had lived and worked for six years as a journalist.

The Wagah border, named for the village that straddles it, is the only official land crossing between India and Pakistan, countries that the 24-hour news networks won’t ever let us forget are “nuclear-armed neighbors.” The village lies in fertile farmland between Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province, and Amritsar, the Sikh religion’s hub in northwestern India. The two cities are just about 50 miles apart. When British colonial rule ended in 1947, creating Pakistan as a homeland for Indian Muslims next to independent India, Punjab was split in two, and Wagah, an unremarkable village along the Grand Trunk Road, sat on the dividing line.

Air travel has made the act of crossing boundaries perfunctory, mundane. But on foot, you can’t help but think about how magical it is to walk from one country into another. And this is a storied border. Over the years, its daily flag-lowering ceremony has become such a popular spectacle that bleachers have been set up to accommodate the crowds of Indians and Pakistanis who gather to watch and cheer on each side. The border guards of both nations put on a show-stopping performance at Wagah late every afternoon, full of choreographed stomping and fierce gestures, and the crowd goes wild.

At the end, when the guards shake hands and fling the gates shut, spectators rush from the stands to talk to each other across the few yards of No-Man’s Land separating these two countries. Sometimes they just stare.

Back in 1947, people thought things would be different. They hoped the border would be much like the one between the United States and Canada—easily and frequently crossed by people who speak the same language and share much in common. Instead, India’s 1947 partition sparked perhaps the largest human migration of the last century, with some seven million people leaving one country for the other—and led to a horrific spasm of violence, mostly in Punjab. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims all slaughtered each other—a million dead in the end. India and Pakistan ended up fighting three wars and continue to view each other with distrust and suspicion, rattling sabers over the disputed region of Kashmir and other irritations—the most recent being the Mumbai terrorist attacks, for which India blames Pakistan, and Pakistan denies responsibility.

So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived at Wagah about 15 hours after those attacks began. What I found, to my relief, was a scene of bustling normalcy. After I got out of my taxi on the Indian side of the border, I walked past dozens of huge trucks laden with vegetables, all lined up and waiting to cross over. In the past, they had to hand off their goods to porters, who carried everything across by hand. Now the trucks can rumble right on in after clearing customs. A very tall Indian porter spotted me and grabbed my 50-lb duffle bag, hoisted it on top of his head and loped away, shouting, “Come with me--hurry! The border’s closing!”

I sprinted after him and found myself in a crowded, noisy arrivals hall filled with Indian and Pakistani passengers from the cross-border bus, a service that began in 1999 when relations were in a thaw and has operated in fits and starts since then, subject to diplomatic ups and downs. (Oddly, citizens of these two countries can’t actually walk across. Only foreigners can do that, and I was the last one of the day.)

The porter steered me to the front of the queue where I shoved my passport into a window, among many other arms and hands doing the same, all of us trying to get the attention of a calm-looking immigration official. Once my passport was stamped, the porter guided me back outside. We walked a couple of minutes, and before I knew it, he was bidding me farewell at the painted white line demarcating the narrow No-Man’s Land between the two countries. He handed me and my duffle bag to a plainspoken, white-bearded Pakistani porter. (“You come from a big, powerful country. So you please give me a big, powerful tip.”) He and I walked side by side into the other country. And just like that, I was in Pakistan, where things were so quiet I could hear the birds twittering in the late-afternoon sun. I set my watch half an hour earlier to conform to the local time.

Whenever I’d done this before—and this was my ninth crossing--I’d been ushered into various rooms off the veranda of a colonial-era bungalow where I’d sat and chatted with Pakistani officials to complete the formalities. The entire crossing process could take a couple of hours, what with all the conversing and waiting around. This time there was a much more impersonal arrivals hall with X-ray machines and counters. It was vast and vacant, and built, I suspect, to match the building on the Indian side. But there were still traces of the old hominess. An immigration official walked by wheeling a baby in a stroller—the child of a colleague, he told me with a smile. A money-changer waited nearby, urging me to give him a little business and wondering if there was anyone else coming across after me—he looked relieved when I told him about the busload of passengers. The Pakistani customs official explained apologetically that the X-ray machine wasn’t working, but the main thing he needed to know was did I have any alcoholic beverages in my luggage? I told him no (the truth), and that was that. My passport was stamped and I was on my way. 

The first time I crossed this border, back in 1989, I was headed in the opposite direction. I left Pakistan with a group of American friends and we bounded into India as if we’d just entered the Emerald City, dazzled not by the sign welcoming us to the world’s largest democracy, but by a billboard advertising beer--something we hadn’t seen much of in prohibition-bound Pakistan.

Thirteen years later, in the summer of 2002, a time when India and Pakistan had massed a million troops along their border and fears of war were so serious the U.S. had ordered “non-essential citizens” out of India, I made the crossing again. (It was easier and quicker than going by air, since the two countries had called off all direct flights.) Given the grave state of relations between the two countries, I figured I might be in for some aggressive questioning.

 “Are you coming back?” the polite, middle-aged Pakistani immigration officer asked while he thumbed through my battered passport. I told him I lived in Pakistan and planned to return within a week. “Then please bring me two tubes of Colgate toothpaste from India,” he said.

I pointed out that he could easily get Colgate in Pakistan.

“Please,” he said, exit stamp hovering above my passport.

Fine. Then, in the customs room, “I need medicine from India,” a young employee said sadly, after a perfunctory rummage through my luggage. “Medicine not available in Pakistan.” He wrote down the name of the drug,  Penagra. When I asked what it was for, he raised his elbow and winced. A painkiller, I thought—poor guy, dealing with all these heavy bags.

Returning a week later, I stopped off at a pharmacy in Amritsar. I handed over the slip of paper with “Penagra” written on it. The elderly, long-bearded Sikh pharmacist glanced at me and tossed a few boxes of pills on his table. “These are expensive,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “What’s this medicine for, anyway?”

He looked at me balefully. “Sex!” he growled.

I didn’t spot either of those border officials from 2002 during my most recent crossing. But I hope they eventually found what they were looking for. Clean teeth. Good sex. No matter what side of the border you’re on, the fundamentals still apply.

-Hannah Bloch


   

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