The Mountain and the Dry Desert Are Mine

[Illustration by Winnie T. Frick.]

In Gwadar, the first thing that struck me was the hills. The color of bone, they line the coast, hacked into straight lines as if hewed by human hands or mining. But it is harsh winds that have chiselled these sharp squares and turrets. In the local Baloch language, Gwadar means “gateway of the wind.” Below the hills, barren scrubland stretches out, a sandy moonscape under white hot sun.

We had just touched down at the airport, a dusty strip of tarmac serving as a runway, fronted by a blocky concrete building with a sniper positioned on top. “This will be an international hub—the biggest airport in Pakistan,” said the army official escorting us.

There were more than twenty of us, a delegation of journalists flown from Islamabad to Gwadar to see the outpost touted by officials as the next Dubai or Shenzhen. We filed into the waiting armored vehicles, discombobulated after a bumpy three-hour ride on a military jet, strapped in like extras in a war movie.

Glistening aquamarine sea stretched out on one side of the twisting road to the hotel, the colors saturated in the heavy sun. Traditional fishing boats, dhows, bobbed in the distance. Some half-built boats stood on the beach, turned vertical. Sudden bursts of life punctuated the long stretches of unpopulated land. Children and wiry teenagers in graying white vests, splashing water on their arms from shallow rock pools. A group of different-colored goats, leaping over the uneven surface of the beach, hair shining damp from sea spray. A man sitting in a cart pulled by a donkey, beneath a propped-up dhow.

As we turned, the beach gave way to sparse scrubland, the angular hills looming in the distance. The occasional hollowed-out brick structure served as a shop, the blue and red of the Pepsi logo daubed on its side, men in traditional clothing outside on stools. As we approached the hotel, signs of activity became less frequent, and then nonexistent. This was a sensitive area, close to the paramilitary Frontier Corps’ base and the site of the town’s only five-star hotel.

The Pearl Continental is perched at the edge of a precipice, atop a hill that looks as if it could disintegrate in heavy rain. The hotel is a boxy structure, all squares and oblongs like the hills surrounding it. This alien fortress on its perilous earthy mound looks down at the army base immediately below and at Gwadar town, an impoverished fishing settlement some miles away.

If Pakistan and China’s plans work out, this will be the unlikely epicenter of the new world order.

This plain and open field are mine
The barren plain and desert are mine
The hyacinth and the sweet basil are mine
The mountain and the dry desert are mine
This system and order are mine
I am the king of the homeland
—Gul Khan Nasir (1952, “Baloc u sa ir”)

here is a saying in Balochistan that every good tribesman should memorize thirty , or verses, describing legends and transmit them to his sons. This way, the oral tradition lives on. In the modern era, poets have written down their compositions, rekindling ethnic Baloch fervor and chronicling continued revolt against colonizers with designs on