Topi Shah-Naz Hayat Khan. Autobiography. Paperback, 113 pages, ISBN = 1890711055. Published Empyrean Quest Publishers 11-14-97. Price: $7.95 US. To Purchase Abbey Homepage.

The author, Shah-Naz Hayat Khan, shk_md@pipeline.com , 03/30/98
I thoroughly enjoyed writing it
I wrote this book, because I knew I would have a great time writing it. These are stories from my homeland, mostly in a humorous vein. I also wanted to share with all, a different perspective of a distant land where a centuries old feudal system, goes hand in hand with modern times. A land where life is noble, chivalrous and full of contradictions.

Customer Comments

leorient@hotmail.com from USA , 05/06/98, 5 out of 5 stars:
Tragic & hilarious, at the same time. Couldn't put it down!
This author does not waste words. Written with an infectious enthusiasm, it's just as well that the book was large in substance not size, because I had to read it cover to cover, in one sitting. The characters are vibrant and alive, some of their escapades left me rolling with laughter. Some incidents are poignantly tragic, making it a skillfully woven and balanced compilation.The backdrop is a tumultous time in India's history but fortunately, this book is not a history lesson. At a swift pace we are transferred from camel plodding, horse chargeing days to the present and some familiar figures are dealt with rather irreverently. I strongly recommend Topi... At the end of the book, I almost wished my plane was flying to Topi, Pakistan!

bhem@hotmail.com from Nicosia, Cyprus , 03/23/98
Excellent piece of work.
Good work. Keep it up. You have opened new ways to see Pakistan.

Excerpt:

copyright 1997 by Shah-Naz Hayat Khan.

One--Coming To Topi

They came to the village in the days of horseback, or maybe they rode camels. Horses or camels, what difference does it make? Either was possible. Rummaging through the forbidden contents of three or four wooden boxes lying in a store room, I found a document declaring that Great-Grandfather had leave to send seventy of his camels through the state of Umb, tax free. That was how trade was carried on with India in those days. The metallic round container with a porous lid, which had carefully borne the once-valuable document, though still sturdy, was rusted into ugliness. The license for free passage had been a token of friendship from the Nabob of Umb. Great-Grandfather was often his guest. In fact, at one of the dinners he liked a particular kind of halva so much, that the Nabob presented him the secret recipe.

It is easy to spot an outsider from the way he utters the name of the village. We pronounce Topi as 'Toopai' and they say 'Toopè', or if the visitor happens to be a Punjabi, he goes 'Topee'. Not that we had always lived here. We came a long time ago. No one now knows when. I do know, for that's what I have been told, that we are from the clan Sanakhel of the tribe Yousafzai, descendants of the prophet, Isaac. Occasionally, Moses is mentioned as one of the ancestors. Maybe that's true, for most of us are beak- nosed, and they do mention Egypt in the songs and stories at Kissa Khawani Bazaar in Peshawar. Quite puzzling, considering until recently most Pathans hadn't ventured beyond the confines of their own territory. The rest of India was another land altogether. Of course, they invaded it, ruled it, and some tribes had even settled there for good. However, Egypt was so far that most wouldn't have known where it was. They were the 'lost tribe', some conjecture. In which case, they were very lost and had strayed afar. On the other hand, Kissa Khawani Bazaar is not a very reliable source of history. A tourist once questioned the much-mended and worn teapots and cups in the teashops. He was informed that they had been damaged during Alexander the Great's invasion. Then one was sold to him at a hefty price.

'Blue-blooded' is the term which some relatives occasionally, but proudly drop. There must be at least a hundred thousand of the prophet's prolific progeny in our land. They hold their heads high, pull back their shoulders, and strut, thanks to the claim. We are from Topi, though hereditarily distinct from the village, except for one other family. After about seven generations of intermarriages, the two families have come to 'daggers drawn'. Well, not exactly at 'daggers drawn', but more like a cloak and dagger situation. There is a rumor that the other family was behind Grandfather's murder. Seven people were sentenced to death and hung for that. The two families were very civil when they inevitably met, but true love was no longer lost.

Someone wrote a book about the Yousafzais, who an uncle declares as 'the thoroughbreds amongst Pathans'. That book won a presidential award. However, another uncle thinks the author somewhat rootless, writing so much about our tribe in an effort to become one of us. That is not possible. We are never supposed to boast of our roots. As my Father once said, "Only the rootless mention their roots." All this makes for an interesting amalgam of pride and humility.

What about this 'lost tribe'? Plenty of names following Isaac and his descendants are lost for good in the murky obscurity of time. Maneer Khan is the first name to come out of this mist. In all likelihood, he was not the first to arrive in Topi, but he became Malik of the village. So, all taxes were rendered to him. These taxes were used for municipal purposes, including procurement of weapons and horses for fighting. His eldest son, Muhammad Khan, inherited the Maliki. However, at that time Topi was doing poorly in their war against the invading British. Having gained sufficient ground, and in order to get the rest without much ado, the British invited the clans of Yousafzai to a truce, a 'jirga', as it is called in our 'Pushto' language. They promised they would allow all titles and positions to be maintained.

Muhammad Khan did not go to the meeting. "Why should I meet with the heathens and spoil my piety," he said, "What do they know who Muhammad Khan, the Malik, is? So, let this brother who is my namesake go instead." At that moment, the mantle of Maliki went out of our family and clan to the clan of Barakhel. He must have deemed it a small price to pay, compared to the humiliation of compromise in adversity.

The loss of Maliki did not appear to bother his son Daulat Khan either. Daulat means wealth, and true to his name, he was the richest man in Topi, which made him the richest man in a wide, wide territory, as Topi is the center of all Yousafzais. 'Topi' means cap or 'turban', which in our land is a symbol of honor and respect. He once buried a fortune at his home, announcing that when found seven generations could live well off it, doing nothing else. It has not yet been found.

During holidays, in grade three or four, I decided to look for the treasure. Much to my Grandmother's dismay, I enthusiastically began digging at a randomly selected spot which wasn't too stony. When about half a foot deep, Grandmother's protests finally prevailed. Still, the hole was not a complete waste of effort. It was very close to my aunt's vegetable garden and she wanted some sort of fencing around it, to keep out the poultry and our two pet cranes. Firdaus Kaka, who has been serving the family since he was a young boy, enterprisingly used the hole for planting one of the fence posts. 'Kaka' in Pushto language, stands for 'uncle', and he is called so out of respect. He wears more than one hat, being my father's most trusted servant in the village, manager; and, (when required) gardener, cook, or farmer.

When I was around three, I had a terrible earache. In addition to being seen by a doctor, my Mother and Grandmother charged Firdaus Kaka to take me to the grave of a holy man. After a prayer, he anointed my ear with mustard oil taken from one of the small earthen lamps lying in the square niches of the gravestone. I am not superstitious at all, still the earache was gone.

Firdaus Kaka is also respected because, despite his position, he is a Pathan. His father came to Topi from a village close to the mountainous Mansehra. As the order goes in Topi, all Pathans, rich or poor, are equal. This equality however, is not extended to those who are not true Pathans, like the barbers, weavers, dancers, priests, cobblers, and ironsmiths. They have an identification by trade of their forefathers, even if they no longer practice it. Not that they are maligned, but somehow they are deemed unequal. Pathans are landed, and all these trades are beneath their dignity.

Around the time of Grandfather Muhammad Hayat Khan, for want of a direct heir, the Maliki was passed on to yet another family, related to the heirless Malik. Hayat Khan sued to get the title back. He did not succeed. It was unlikely that he would have reclaimed it, since amongst others, he had 'daggers drawn' against the British. He once tried to raise an army, complete with soldiers, officers and noncommissioned officers. In addition to the British, this did not bear well with my Grandmother and other ladies. You see, an army has to be fed, and this non-martial duty fell upon the women. Every day the army practiced their parade, played war, and ate. And every day the ladies and maids of the household arranged their meals.

Come to think of it, the Pathan ladies were not exactly non-martial either. In the neighboring village of Koota, which is much smaller than Topi, it was Field-Marshal Montgomery in his younger days who rode proudly with his troop through the narrow streets. He was soundly pelted with stones by women who climbed on roofs just for the purpose. Montgomery contemplated opening fire at the women, but he was warned by one of his men that if he dared do that, they would never make it alive. So instead, they galloped out of the village as fast as their horses could carry them.

Somehow, the army from Topi never went to war against the British. Hayat Khan, however, visited the jail a couple of times. This was a punishment he earned for not missing any opportunity to make the foreigners feel unwelcome and breaking English law. In sixth grade, he ran away from school, as they taught English there. He didn't hate learning otherwise. After all, he subscribed to about a dozen newspapers from all over India. Grandmother also loved reading those papers. They came from places like Delhi, Agra, Lahore, Benares, and Calcutta. Long after they became defunct or the subscriptions stopped, she'd proudly list their cities of origin and repeat tales she had read. Grandmother couldn't resist anything readable, including old newspapers which had been used by the butcher to wrap the meat he was selling. So, when the meat came home, she would insist on preparing it for cooking herself. This meant that it was soon forgotten as Grandmother peered through blood stains at the incomplete story in the wrapper. Unlike Grandfather, Grandmother led a peaceful and conciliatory life.

Several times, Hayat Khan invited popular politicians to Topi and they made speeches against foreign rule. He once joined hands with another politician, we will call 'the antagonist', from a place called Charsadda. All went well initially, but differences arose and they parted ways. One grievance in the list of differences (for differences have a way of compounding once they arise) was that 'the antagonist' was more loyal to the Hindus than his own people. And frequently, Hayat Khan used a publication written by the estranged comrade to make his point. It's also rumored that differences arose when, contrary to an understanding, 'the antagonist' did not come forward to post bail when he was arrested. Later, Hayat Khan joined another party, the Muslim League, which, sometime after he was killed, succeeded in creating the state of Pakistan. The 'antagonist' became a popular communist leader of the new country.

"It's red, it's red; Asia is red!" was one of the vociferous slogans of the demonstrating students belonging to his party. They flexed their muscle and poured out into the streets, indulged in a little destruction and, much to the delight of many participating and nonparticipating students, shut down the university. Moscow was where they went for higher education, all expenses paid by the hosts. There, they frequented the best hotels, out of bounds for the average comrade. They returned home sick of and sneering at the Siberian strawberries, something of a delicacy for the hard-pressed natives. Their degrees, be it medicine, engineering, or what have you, were as good as guaranteed. Not too much effort was required, thank you, but all that is gone now. The communist 'antagonist' of Hayat Khan lived to be around a hundred and when he died, he was buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, after a mammoth funeral procession.

Actually, Pathans prefer to be called 'Pukhtoons' or 'Afghans', which describes their national origin, but somehow the first name has stuck. To them, 'Pathans' is a somewhat undesirable term, as in Hindi it means those who kidnap women. I can't imagine why they got that name! It was thought 'the antagonist' politician's burial in another country was an attempt by his descendants to further secure some of his politically-obtained land there. The departed lies buried in that gifted state, while his descendants continue to thrive. As is the norm in our lands, leadership, even if political, is inherited.

During discussions, like Grandfather, my Grandmother and Father expressed extreme reservations about those 'politicans'. It was pointed out that they were given a chance to rule the province, but had done nothing commendable. Not even a constructed road, school, or anything smaller, owed its existence to them. Grandmother recalled how they suddenly showed up to pay their respects at Grandfather's grave, years after he died. Their party was holding a gathering in Topi, and the political nature of the sudden recollection of the Khan's death was painfully obvious. However, that didn't deter them.