Journey of a Lifetime

By Ajaz Haque

Inspired by the flow of tourists from Europe to Asia, author Ajaz Haque and his friend Bilal planned in 1963 to hitchhike from Asia to Europe. By doing this, the teenagers charted an unprecedented course, hitchhiking from Lahore, Pakistan, to Stuttgart, Germany, while carrying nothing but dreams. With hardly any money and only ambition in their pockets, they embarked on a journey about which they had hardly any idea.
In 1964, their journey led them to Iran, where they encountered an unexpected roadblock due to passport restrictions in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Austria. They were dejected in Tehran, but their fortunes took a remarkable turn when they spotted a world map on a nearby newsstand. In a flash of inspiration, they decided to bypass Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, opting for an alternate route through Greece, Italy, and Switzerland, a choice that turned their mission impossible into a feat. Along the way they experienced the warmth and hospitality of Turkey, suspicion in Greece during the Cyprus conflict, a progressive and fast-developing environment Italy, and the beauty of Switzerland. Their story shares the unfamiliar cultures and cuisines they encountered, the challenges of indecipherable languages and survival, and finally accomplishing their mission and experiencing the elation of making it to Stuttgart, Germany.
This personal narrative recalls a vital journey taken in one man’s youth in the 1960s and explores the way it affected the rest of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781665758246

Ajaz Haque

Ajaz Haque was born to a middle-class family in Lahore, three years before the independence and partition of India. He holds a BA in economics and political science and is currently retired from a career in finance and banking that spanned the globe. He has three adult children and five grandchildren, and he lives in Toronto, Canada, spending winters in Dubai and Lahore.

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Copyright © 2024 Ajaz Haque.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5823-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5825-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5824-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024905484

Archway Publishing rev. date: 04/10/2024

Dedicated to my late wife

Tahira Masood Haque

who gave me 34 years of blissful married life, as my partner my soulmate and mother to my three children.

and

To Daanya, Amaal, Zeena, Zayn & Gabriel

Our grandchildren who bring enormous joy to our lives on a daily basis

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1 The Planning

2 The Shock

3 The Journey Begins

4 Zahedan Bound

5 Mashhad

6 Tehran

7 Disappointment and Elation

8 Tabriz

9 Hitchhiking Begins

10 The Greek Embassy

11 The Nightmare

12 The Joy of Italy

13 Switzerland

14 In Stuttgart, finally

15 The Return Journey Begins

16 The Kind Priest

17 Erzurum

18 Qazvin

19 Back in Lahore and the Soft Admonishment

20 Law Studies and the Disillusionment

21 Brutal Murder

22 Back to Europe

23 Isfahan

24 The American Diplomat

25 Bilal the Playboy of Gmunden

26 Vienna

27 On to England

28 Arrival in London

29 Bilal Deported from U.K.

30 The CA Studies Begin

31 London

32 The Journey Back Home

33 Goodbye Bilal

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the years my late wife Tahira and my children Saira, Irfan and Adnan asked me to write my travel story and while I thought about doing so, but never got down to it. More recently, a friend who is herself a published author asked me to put pen to the paper and have the story published for the wider audience. Finally, the person who really moved me to write, is a dear friend Zuree Tahir, who hit the right note when she said write it for your grandchildren and leave something for them to remember you by. That really drove the point home and inspired me to sit down on the computer and start describing the events of over fifty years ago.

Once I started writing, the events of 1964/65 came in front of my eyes as if it was only yesterday. I was amazed at the clarity of day-by-day events in my mind. The only thing I had forgotten were the names of little border towns, but Google Maps helped revive my memory of those places. I was pleasantly surprised that the ups and downs & the joys and sorrows of the journey were vividly implanted in my mind.

For this story to have come about, I am immensely grateful for the encouragement and support of my family especially my two daughters in law; Warda and Cecile and friends. Zuree Tahir’s enthusiasm and editing, Tassawar Ibraz’s edits & critical comments were of immense value.

Finally, I am grateful to Fatimah Garrison and Deena Capron of Archway Publishing for the help and support in guiding me through the publishing process.

This is a true story of an exciting part of my life and I am happy to share it with the readers. I hope they will find it as interesting as was my experience at the time. Finally, I hope some young people reading the story will be encouraged to discover those parts of the world that they have always wanted to discover but have never plucked the courage to get up and go.

1

THE PLANNING

A ugust 12, 2011, I am sitting by Bilal’s bedside at Toronto Western Hospital, various machines around his unconscious body are giving read outs of his oxygen level, blood pressure, heart rate etc. He was brought to the hospital the night before in precarious condition and the doctors declared that his life was at an end as the auto immune disease, which he had suffered for the last few years had consumed his lungs. They said he will slowly slip into death after his oxygen level drops below a certain l evel.

Sitting by his bedside I am reciting Surah Yasin – a Koranic verse, Muslims recite when a person is near death, in the hope that the patient’s last journey becomes easier. It is also a plea to the Almighty to forgive the sins of the dying person. Only two months earlier, I sat by Kamal’s bedside at a different hospital reciting the same Koranic verses before he succumbed to lung cancer. Kamal was Bilal’s younger brother by two years. He was a serious smoker and despite pleas by his family refused to give up. So much so that when we visited him in the hospital a few years earlier after his heart bypass surgery, he was smoking on the balcony adjacent to his room. Bilal gave up smoking many years earlier.

Seeing Bilal in his last journey brought memories rushing back to the time when the two of us planned and executed a daring journey. It was 1963 and the hot summer of Lahore, Pakistan was at its peak. College had just broken up for two-month summer vacations. The usual hangout for most young people was the Main Market, a circular shopping centre in the posh new residential area of Gulberg, where a cold coke cost five cents and ice-cold beer from Gulberg Wine Store twenty-two cents. Opposite the wine store was a four story Zonobi’s Hotel with a large parking lot at the back. This hotel had become the popular spot for hitchhikers, road travelers and hippies traveling east from Europe. Lahore was the first major city after Tehran and a respite for the weary western travelers. They often stayed here a couple of weeks, recouped and resupplied before heading to India.

Lahore is the second largest city of Pakistan, and the capital of Punjab province which is the largest province of Pakistan accounting for 56% of the country’s population. Lahore is located in the Northeast of Pakistan approximately 1,000 km north of Karachi & the Arabian sea, it sits at 715 feet above sea level. Lahore is an ancient city with its history and rich culture, its exact origin is not known, but some historians claim it to be several thousand years old and others date it to between 100-600 CE.

With its rich history, Lahore is the cultural capital of not only Pakistan, but of the entire Indian subcontinent. Lahore has one of the oldest universities established in the subcontinent. Its famous National (previously named Mayo) College of Arts is an important seat of learning. Rudyard Kipling lived in Lahore and edited the daily newspaper ‘Civil & Military Gazette’. There is even a gun named after him which rests outside the Lahore Museum. The famous Lawrence of Arabia who had a big hand in the demise of Ottoman Empire also lived and married the daughter of the owner of Nidos Hotel in Lahore.

The first slave dynasty ruler of Delhi, Qutb-ud-din Aibak, (of Aibak Minar, Delhi fame) died playing polo in Lahore. He ruled Delhi from 1206-1210, over 300 years before the first Moghul arrived in India. His mausoleum is located adjacent to Anarkali Bazar. Mughal Emperors frequented Lahore. In fact, Emperor Jahangir would travel 350 miles from Delhi, his seat of Government, on horses and elephants with a large number of soldiers and spend six months at a time in Lahore. The fable of Anarkali was also born in Lahore, Anarkali (literal translation, pomegranate flower) was a courtesan in Moghul Emperor Akbar’s court, he took a liking to her and named her Anarkali, but she committed the cardinal sin of falling in love with his son Salim, who later succeeded his father as Emperor Jahangir. This angered Akbar and as the fable goes, she was entombed alive, her mausoleum sits inside the premises of Punjab Civil Secretariat. Jahangir enjoyed his extended stays in Lahore and established the first red light area in the subcontinent named Heera Mandi (literal translation: Diamond Market) which was a place of dance and culture and prostitution. Many a young men and teenagers of Lahore and surrounding areas lost their virginity in Heera Mandi. Many a foreign visitor show keen interest in seeing it firsthand, surprisingly women more than men took interest in it. A French female author Claudine Tourneur d’lison has written a book on Heera Mandi exploring its history and culture. It exists to this day but has shrunk considerably after the Government ban on prostitution in the 1970s & 80s. The impact of the ban was that prostitution substantially went out of Heera Mandi and into the society. With a lot of new money, brash businessmen were only too happy to become their patrons. Emperor Jahangir and his wife Noor Jahan are both buried in Lahore. Jahangir’s son Shahjahan (who was born in Lahore Fort and later built the Taj Mahal) created the magnificent Shalimar Gardens in the Eastern end of Lahore.

The early history of Lahore is obscure, inauthentic and attributed to myths and tales. Virtually no historical reference of the city is available in travelogues, history books and archaeological excavations Historical chronicles do not provide any account of such a city when Alexander’s forces traversed Punjab in 4th century B.C. There could have been a small town or settlement of Hindu Shahiya dynasty at the place where modern day Lahore exists, and of which a little reference is available in the travelogue of Chinese traveller Hieun Triang who visited India in 630 A.D. However, within the next few hundred years, Lahore would blossom into a cultural capital of the Indian Subcontinent. The name of Lahore sparkled in historic references in 1021 A.D, when Mehmood of Ghazna conquered it from Trilochan Pala, King of Hindu Shahyia Dynasty of Kabul. His famous confidante slave Ayaz remained in charge of the city and he was the person who actually built city of Lahore to the zenith of an important town with a mud citadel around it. Lahore for the first time found the importance of the capital of Ghaznavid dominance east of Indus in 1036 A.D. and Ayaz later called Malik Ayaz, the founder of modern Lahore was appointed as Governor or Hakim. The first historic reference about Lahore is also found in a Muslim historian Al Beruni’s book Tarikh-ul-Hind. Thus, the modern, metropolis and cultural capital Lahore is a born Muslim city. The archaeological excavations made in 1959 in front of Dewan-e-Aam, Lahore Fort authenticate this view. The tomb of Malik Ayaz, the founder and first Governor of Lahore metropolis is in Rang Mahal area.

Lahore witnessed turbulence, peace and tranquillity, cultural festivity, conquers devastations and destructions in different period of history. But it always remained important after its birth as metropolis in eleventh century. Its strategic importance had never even been ignored and it remained a provincial capital till date. Lahore attained its magnificence during Mughal period from 1521 to 1752 A.D. It fell to the forces of Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1572, there was a period of Chaos and confusion. Lahore escaped the horrors of Nadir Shah paying a sum of 20 Lacs but was plundered and looted by Sikh Sardar Lehna Singh of Bhangi Misal for more than 30 years. There comes Ranjit Singh and fifty years’ SIKH rule from (1798 – 1848). The Sikh rule after Ranjit Singh was turbulent and factional fighting destroyed peace and prosperity of Lahore and then finally the British took over it in 1848 and after 99 years of British rule Lahore became second largest city and cultural capital of Pakistan.

All major monuments, buildings, Havelis and gardens of Lahore are of Mughal period, during which Lahore touched its glory. The only contribution of Sikh period is Ranjit Singh’s Smadhi. British ignored the walled city of Lahore and created a new Lahore on its southern side. This includes The Mall, Civil lines and Cantonment. They constructed several buildings with an architecture blended with Muslim and Gothic motive. The walled city of Lahore, the original seat of political authority and cultural traditions is one of the most colorful cities of the region. A few like Isfahan and Delhi match a little to its excellence. The walled city has pages of history imprinted on its buildings, monuments, mosques and maize like network of streets. Colourful cultural life has shades of almost every ruling elite and generation like music, food, dance, political awareness, religious sentiments and poetic flair of common people.

This colourful social life of the walled city is on its rapid decay and unauthentic, irregular growth of buildings and plazas is replacing old ornamental beautiful buildings and has also played havoc to the picturesque beauty of walled city. (Source: Walled City Lahore/history of Lahore).

A mythological legend, based on oral traditions, states that Lahore was named after Lava, son of the Hindu god Rama, who supposedly founded the city. Lahore Fort has a vacant temple dedicated in honour of Lava. Likewise, the Ravi River that flows through northern Lahore was said to be named in honour of the Hindu goddess Durga.

Ptolemy, the celebrated astronomer and geographer, mentions in his Geographia a city called Labokla situated on the route between the Indus river in a region described as extending along the rivers Bidastes or Vitasta (Jhelum), Sandabal or Chandra Bhaga (Chenab), and Adris or Iravati (Ravi). The oldest authentic document about Lahore was written anonymously in 982 and is called Hudud-i-Alam. It was translated into English by Vladimir Fedorovich Minorsky and published in Lahore in 1927. In this document, Lahore is referred to as a small city with impressive temples, large markets and huge orchards. It refers to two major markets around which dwellings exist, and it also mentions the mud walls that enclose these two dwellings to make it one. The original document is currently held in the British Museum.

Lahore also boasts one of the oldest Heera Mandi (literal meaning Diamond Market or Red-Light Area) of the subcontinent. Heera Mandi, located in Lahore, Pakistan, is a historically significant neighborhood with a complex history. It is renowned for its association with the performing arts, particularly classical and traditional music and dance, as well as its reputation as a red-light district. Here is a brief history Heera Mandi:

The roots of Heera Mandi can be traced back to the Mughal era, when Lahore was a prominent cultural and artistic center in South Asia. During this time, the area now known as Heera Mandi was home to courtesans and musicians who entertained the Mughal nobility.

Heera Mandi became a hub for the performing arts, with courtesans and artists receiving patronage from the Mughal emperors and nobility. The area was known for its cultural richness and artistic talent.

With the decline of the Mughal Empire and the onset of British colonial rule in the 19th century, the social and cultural dynamics of Heera Mandi underwent significant changes. The British introduced regulations and policies to control prostitution and the performing arts, which had a substantial impact on the area. Heera Mandi faced a decline in its cultural significance during the colonial period, as British authorities imposed restrictions on traditional art forms and practices. However, after Pakistan gained independence in 1947, there was a resurgence of interest in preserving and promoting traditional music and dance. Heera Mandi has remained an important center for classical music and dance in Pakistan. Many renowned musicians and dancers have emerged from this area, contributing to the country’s rich cultural heritage.

While Heera Mandi is known for its cultural contributions, it is also known for its association with prostitution. Over the years, it has developed a reputation as a red-light district, where sex workers operate. The coexistence of cultural heritage and the sex trade has been a complex and controversial aspect of Heera Mandi’s history. In recent years, there have been efforts to transform Heera Mandi into a more culturally oriented space, focusing on reviving traditional art forms and promoting the area’s cultural heritage. This has included organizing music and dance festivals and providing support to artists. Today, Heera Mandi continues to be a place of cultural significance and complexity. It is a reflection of the historical and social changes that have shaped Lahore and Pakistan over the centuries, from its Mughal origins to its modern role as a center for both traditional arts and the sex trade.

(Source: