Land Of Beauty, Land Of Pain Quotes

“Parvez, do you happen to know what the collective noun is for a group of rickshaws?” ​“Can’t say that I do, Saleem, but I imagine we could make one up.  A rattle of rickshaws?  A melodrama of rickshaws?” ​“A mayhem of rickshaws?  A pandemonium?” ​“Pandemonium is good, I like that one.”
― Matthew Vaughan, Land Of Beauty, Land Of Pain: Seeking The Soul Of Pakistan

“Well Saleem, things in Pakistan have changed a lot since those days.  Roads in major cities are much wider these days due to a much higher rate of car ownership, and the road surfaces are generally smoother as well, so the odds of having to swerve between somnolent camels and pot-holes big enough to contain Donald Trump’s ego are somewhat reduced…”
― Matthew Vaughan, Land Of Beauty, Land Of Pain: Seeking The Soul Of Pakistan

“​There was more.  My own visa had not been renewed and nobody seemed to know why.  My family and I were booked to fly out of Islamabad in a week and we didn’t know if we would be able to return.  Three of my children were born here and all of them grew up here; this is the only home they have ever known and we were being forced to leave.  The government had been cracking down on foreign visas and dozens of NGO workers, missionaries and diplomats have faced difficulties in extending their stay here.  The government seemed intent on cutting Pakistan off even further from the rest of the world, seeking to protect its national security by building a wall around its frontiers as tall and as impenetrable as the ramparts of Rohtas.”
― Matthew Vaughan, Land Of Beauty, Land Of Pain: Seeking The Soul Of Pakistan

“​I stood there, on the gatehouse with the floodplain of the Kahan River in front of me and with raindrops softly pocking the stone parapet around my feet, and I looked and I thought.  Pakistan is a complex land, far more complex than its portrayal in the media would suggest, and Rohtas is the perfect example of its convoluted, tangled past.  It was built by a Pashtun hailing from the other side of the subcontinent in order to prevent a deposed fellow Muslim ruler from returning from exile and to keep another Muslim tribe suppressed and docile.  It contains the private residence of a later Moghul Emperor’s Hindu general and an abandoned Hindu temple, all but swallowed up by an encroaching jungle, and was later captured by the Sikhs who ruled over a large swathe of what is now Pakistan from 1799 to 1849; the nearby gurdwara testified to their presence.  Even the style of the fort’s construction told the same story: it contained elements of Persian, Afghan, Hindu and Turkish architectural forms.  The fort is a relic from a previous era, a time before the concept of the nation-state, a time when empires rose and fell, when warlords could carve out kingdoms for themselves which might last for a decade or for three centuries, a time of profound cultural and religious ferment.”
― Matthew Vaughan, Land Of Beauty, Land Of Pain: Seeking The Soul Of Pakistan

“As we walked along the ramparts we could see them going about their business – veiled women walking here and there, men riding motorbikes or cars, people going to visit their neighbours – and I marvelled yet again at the uniqueness of life in a place like Pakistan, where a community of several hundred people live, work, eat and do their laundry inside the walls of one of the most historically significant military fortifications in south Asia.”
― Matthew Vaughan, Land Of Beauty, Land Of Pain: Seeking The Soul Of Pakistan