Peshawar: City of Flowers or Backwater Timbuktu?

At one time Peshawar was known by her monikers the City of Flowers and the City of Seven Colours. In a not too distant past, the arrival of spring was heralded by flower sellers balancing large baskets of roses on their heads and walking through the labyrinthine streets of the old city and shouting “It is the spring of roses, come and get fresh roses.” Peshawar was a model city; fragrant, clean, its inhabitants civil and the officials courteous. Not any more.

Times change, because they must. With the increase in population and static or declining civic services, any town is bound to stretch to its limits and fray at the edges. But to allow a city to burst at the seams by willful neglect is unpardonable. I am appalled at the total disregard for our past on the part of our leaders and officials. Greed and expediency have replaced thoughtful civic responsibility. In the name of so-called progress the city is being plundered and paved over. There are, however a few precious exceptions and I shall talk about them later in this essay.

An amazingly fertile city

The old walled city, barely five or six square kilometres, is small but with huge historic footprint. It has produced many famous people in almost all areas of human endeavour. Within the city walls were born the likes of Yousaf Khan aka Dilip Kumar, Prithivi Raj, the patriarch of the Kapoor acting dynasty, actor Premnath, famous movie script writer Khatir Ghaznavi, singer Akbar Sarhadi and the famous singer and musician Professor Miran Bakhsh.

Peshawar was also the birthplace of Ahmad Shah Pitras Bokhary and his younger brother Zulfiqar Ali Bokhary and the great Hindko poet of the 19th century Sain Ahmad Ali. And of course Ahmad Faraz, the poet- extraordinaire of Urdu, grew up in Peshawar. The list is decidedly incomplete.

There are many others who were not born in Peshawar but either lived here or assumed Peshawari identity. Madhubala, the heartthrob of India cinema of the 1950s, and actor Gul Hamid, recipient of Sitara-e-Hind in the 1930’s, were connected to Peshawar. Just outside the southern city wall lived Rahman Baba the great Sufi poet of Pashtu language in the village Hazar Khani.

The old walled city, barely five or six square kilometres, is small but with huge historic footprint

There was an endearing tradition in the family of actor Raj Kapoor, started by his father Prithivi Raj Kapoor and his grandfather Basheshwarnath Kapoor, that whenever a member of Kapoor family would build a home in India, they would pore a burlap-sack full of Peshawar earth in its foundations.

How many of our leaders and officials know the history of my city? Precious few I would wager. They all echo the old Indian song from film Anpardh:

Sikander ne Porus se ki thi larhai, jo ki thi larhai toa mein kia Kaoron.

(Alexander the Great had fought a pitched battle with King Porus. And if indeed the battle took place, what you want me to do about it?)

The Kissa Khani Massacre and a young boy caught in the melee

Peshawar was also in the forefront of the struggle for independence. On the 23rd of April, 1930, the British police opened fire on peaceful Khudai Khidmatgar demonstrators in Kissa Khani Bazaar, killing by some estimates hundreds of unarmed civilians. It was a defining moment where agitation against the British rule spread across India.

An 8-year-old boy found himself in the middle of the melee and when the bullets starting flying he ducked under a storefront across from where the Martyr Memorials (Yaadgar-e-Shuhada) is located. A local policeman saw him, yanked him out, slapped him on the back and ordered him to get lost. The boy ran home – located in Mohalla Khudadad through the back alleys. If a stray bullet had killed the young boy, as many boys died on that fateful day, the world would have been deprivedof the legendary Yousaf Khan aka Dilip Kumar. Dilip Kumar himself narrated this to me.

A murder most foul

In the heart of the city, at the confluence of the bazaars of bird sellers and cloth merchants, in the grain market there stood a giant Pipal tree. The tree had stood tall and proud for almost 2,000 years on the bank of Bara River, which flowed through the middle of the city as recently as mid 1800s. The Chinese pilgrim Huen Tsang passed through Peshawar in the early part of the seventh century and wrote about the tree and statues of six sitting Buddhas at its base. Emperor Babur, on his way to Delhi in 1504, saw the tree and mentioned it in his autobiography.

As children we played under the tree and at dusk caught lightning bugs. Its enormous branches shaded four bazaars, and a million birds roosted in its ancient limbs. In the mid-seventies the tree was chopped down. The people of the bazaar, it was said, were fed up with the filth caused by the birds. The noble tree was cut flush with the ground and on its top cabins were built. A living history was butcheredin my city and no one took note or protested. Incidentally the bazaars are filthier than ever.

The old walled city, barely five or six square kilometres, is small but with a huge historic footprint

Hulagu (Halaku in Urdu), the Mongol warrior, put Baghdad to the sword in the 13th century, killing the Caliph Al-Mustasim and hundreds and thousands of his subjects. History remembers him not because he butchered innocent people – for there have been many like him through the ages – but for the fact that he destroyed the great library of Baghdad. In my city the later day Hulagus eliminated two thousand years of living history and no one gave a damn…

A dyed-in-wool Peshawari, Dr. Sayed Amjad Hussain is the author of five Urdu and two English books about the history, culture and linguistic legacy of the walled city of Peshawar. He is an emeritus Professor of cardiovascular surgery and an emeritus Professor of humanities at the University of Toledo, Ohio, USA. He is also an op-ed columnist for the daily Blade of Toledo and daily Aaj of Peshawar