Piecing Together Old Bahawalpur

Unlike most Pakistani-Americans, my family does not come from the typical trio of big cities, Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, where the majority originate. I come from Bahawalpur which for most Pakistanis must connote rural, remote and, at worst, backward. For me, however, it has meant being unique and, if I may use an unpopular orientalist sounding term, exotic. After all, which other part of Pakistan once issued its own postage stamps and currency; which other area had its own flag, army, navy, and royal family? Always frustrated with the dearth of English writing on the area and continually finding that the images I'd constructed through stamps, old photographs, and books about Maharajas too abstract, I decided, some years back, to give tangible form to my impressions by myself exploring on foot what remained of Bahawalpur's royal past.

My search began in 1988 at the old royal palace, Sadiq Garh. My visit was arranged through a relation, Sultan Khan, who happened to be a member of the same Daudpotra clan as the Amir, sometimes called the Nawab, of Bahawalpur. Uncle Sultan lived in a village outside Sadiqabad on the border of Punjab and Sindh. He brought me to Sadiq Garh in his small white Suzuki. The purpose of our visit was to get permission to visit the old desert fortress Derawar, whose interior, still owned by the old royal family, was off-limits to the general public. We drove through the guard post up front and wound around a driveway with brambly bushes-a jungle of weeds, growth, and possibly snakes. The current Amir Salahuddin Abbassi, also the last with the legal right to the title, was in Islamabad where he represented the locality in parliament.

The Amir's younger brother, Falahuddin, a Cornell trained architect would receive me in the only room open to anyone at Sadiq Garh. He told me he'd been in Lahore for several years but couldn't really make a go of architecture eventhough he'd had his own firm and all. Instead, he'd returned to his lands and was making enough that way to carry on as the grand son of a former 'native prince.

The palace was closed. We could only imagine what was happening to all its priceless furnishings. A Cadillac remained in working order, but what of all the old cars I'd heard about-the fleet of Bentleys and Rolls Royces ? An old servant appeared. His decrepit old khaki uniform was vintage. The fez he wore marked him off as a very old palace servant. Perhaps he was the last that remained in full uniform. My grandfather, a Captain, used to wear the same sort of pin on his fez--one with two pelicans and the Bahawalpur state seal. I imagined him walking these grounds forty years ago--to his office inside the now closed palace.

Falahuddin asked me a few questions about what I was studying. I told him my heart was in history and philosophy, but fate would surely carry me to more practical vocations. I sought to share his grief for failing in architecture, but got no further than providing an opening for the next Siraiki exchange between Uncle Sultan and Prince Falahuddin.

Sultan told me that as a child he had been, along with his family, a regular guest at an adjacent guest house. As we exited the palace, we could see its mud walls. The guest quarters were on a large plot of land. Compared to the noisy bazaar outside, it seemed a tranquil expanse of high ceilings and wide verandas. I imagined Sultan as a child visiting Dera Nawab with his parents, a fellow Daudputra, but not a family member. What was the protocol, the language, the ambience? I could only imagine and reconstruct a sunny rural scene of chiefs and their wives carrying young children. There must have been animals for milk and transportation. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Nawab and a few others had motor cars, but everyone including local Sardars traveled by horse, camel, or bullock cart.

Prince Falahuddin had given us permission to visit the inside of Qila Derawar. We set off by jeep across the desert from Ahmedpur the next morning. There was no road, only desert scrub, dunes, and a telephone line to follow till Derawar. At some point, in the middle of our journey, the Cholistan desert on all sides, the driver accidentally ran over a dog. The jeep lurched up and I could feel a bump as we passed over what I hoped was a rock. Looking through the back window, surprised, I could see the dog quickly scampering away to the rear.

Derawar appeared suddenly. Its walls were high and its many ramparts perfect semicircles. Three years later during my first visit to Jaisalmer (directly across the desert and now in India), I'd remember Derawar's walls as exact replicas of Jaisalmer's. I learned then that Derawar was built in the 13th century by the Rajput clan that ruled Jaisalmer. It was taken by its current owners, the Abassi clan, after a battle in the 18th century in which Jaisalmer's Rajput rulers were defeated and driven eastward to their current location.

We climbed up many stairs to get to the interior of the fort. Their was little left except one ornately painted room, a cannon, some underground passage ways, and many strewn bricks. From the fort's high walls looking north, we saw the remains of a resevoir that provided the Amir's camel riding troops, garrisoned at Derawar till 1953, with water. On the Eastern edge of the settlement was a royal tomb.

The tomb was well kept, its blue tile work in good condition. One final grave remained inside for the last Abassi Amir, Salahuddin. After him, all descendents will be buried elsewhere, probably around the perimeter.

The graves contain thirteen generations of Abassi Nawabs and their wives. On the outside, in a burnished marble crypt, lay an English women who married Salahuddin's grandfather, the sex crazed prince V.S. Naipual describes fancifully in his 1999 book Beyond Belief, Sadiq Muhammad Khan V.

A short sun-burned man, someone I take to be a guard or caretaker, eyes me nervously. I am too close to the royal tomb; perhaps he thinks I will try to jump inside. He gestures to shoo me away. Instead, I look at him and wait, thinking of taking his photograph. Like the taller man who opened the huge door leading into the fort, this man is employed by the Abassi family to protect the site from looting. His job as a guard, for which he appears very underpaid, involves piling prickly sticks along the perimeter wall. I watch as he returns to his children playing in the desert sand. There, I take his photograph; he is with his children, sitting on a charpoi next to a makeshift room of piled brick that is their home.

Waking up the next morning, my interest in the past barely piqued, I set off by foot from Ahmedpur to Sadiq Garh. I hope to meet some Abassi descendents and see what they are like. Dera Nawab Sahib, the small town containing Sadiq Garh palace, was built as an enclave for the Nawab, his family, and included barracks for the Nawab's large personal army. The last Nawab's death in 1961 provoked a family feud, still unsettled, over rights to his large estate. For the last thirty nine years, Sadiq Garh palace has been almost entirely sealed pending a resolution. As a result, the many descendents of the Nawab now live outside Sadiq Garh in large villas surrounded by sumptuous mango orchards. These havelis are barely visible until a front gate opens to divulge or imbibe some small, but snappy Japanese automobile.

Alone and unhindered, I wander through the open outer gate of one of the nicer havelis. With the sun at its peak, the shade of the open garage was the perfect place to rest. Outside the gate, in black letters, I see the name Sahibzadah Aziz Abassi. The turbaned gardener lets me rest in the shade. I ask him who lives in the big house. He tells me that Prince Haroon el-Rashid's son lives inside. Remembering that Haroon el-Rashid was the younger brother of the last Nawab and, for some time, Pakistan's Ambassador to Italy, I wonder what his son turned out like. Before long, a small white Suzuki enters. A very tall white distinguished looking man in tailored blue trousers and an open white shirt gets out of his car. With a posh British accent, he introduces himself "Hi I'm Aziz Abassi, How can I help you." I tell the gentleman that I'm simply a visitor poking around Dera Nawab looking to meet people descended from the Nawab. Aziz Abassi tells me that I've come to the right person, though his mother, an Italian, was not an Abassi which explains his looks. He invites me inside, but feeling awkward about trespassing and loitering around the gate; I decline, thank him, and leave.

I decide to abandon attempts to meet any Abbassis on my own. It is better to be introduced. I approach an aunt, well connected in Bahawalpur, with my idea. She offers to take me to meet Prince Abdul Hamid Abassi, a son-in-law and nephew of the last Nawab. We drive to a large bungalow in Bahawalpur's oldest and poshest locality-Model Town A. The house is old and white, built like many of the British Dak Bungalows for traveling civil servants and canal engineers. The interior is crowded with children's toys, a TV is blaring somewhere, there is no obvious place to sit. I see none of the elegance I sensed around Aziz Abassi's villa. I find a seat that looks like it is for visitors. An old bearded man in a prayer cap walks in. He is wearing a kurta shalwar and slippers. He looks much like the old men I see at railway stations selling food, beverages, and good luck charms. This is Prince Abdul Hamid. He is stroking his beard as my Aunt explains my interest in Bahawalpur's history and the Abbassi family. The old man has been married many times. He has several sets of children all from different wives, though he has never married more than one woman at a time--his ex-wives are all deceased. I am shown an old album of photographs. They are private shots of the men in the Abbassi clan posing together. I wonder how all his wives died. Abdul Hamid has a serious and proud look on his face.

Two of Abdul Hamid's children walk in. One is a shabby looking man with curly hair in his late twenties or thirties. He sells cloth in the bazaar, but could pass for a rickshaw driver. He plays with his keys as I look at him. The other son is quite young, barely 10 or 12. I am amazed at the difference in their appearance and age. They could not have been born to the same mother. Our rendezvous has climaxed and Abdul Hamid is ready to roll out what I sense is his standard Abbassi story. He is on a train listening to the conversation of strangers in his compartment. They are discussing the Nawab and whether or not his reign was rightfully guided in the Islamic sense. Abdul Hamid feels obliged to interject: "Sadiq Muhammad Khan was an enlightened Muslim with heroes like Nelson, Napolean, and the Mughals." It is time to leave. My aunt and I get up. Abdul Hamid requests an extra copy of the photographs I take and says he is eager to see what I will eventually write.

Returning to Ahmedpur, I approach my uncle Ibrahim whose fine memory has earned him a reputation for being a historian of sorts. I ask him if he remembers any stories from my Grandfather about the Abbassi family. He prefaces by warning that my grandfather won't tell you about this one, but I will. Colonel Majid, like Abdul Hamid, was a son-in-law and nephew of the last Nawab and a close friend of my grandfather's. Majid was married to the Nawab's favorite daughter. After the marriage, he fell in love with another princess from the State of Khairpur. The princess from Khairpur and Colonel Majid took their romance abroad, leaving for an extended stay in Paris. Rumors began in Bahawalpur of an adulterous romance between them. The Nawab became suspicious and, knowing of Majid's friendship with my grandfather, began to ask for information. My grandfather said nothing. He had become a messenger and confidant to Majid and he kept the romance hidden from his employer, the Nawab. The romance was eventually uncovered and my grandfather's reticence to speak had cost him further promotions. He had lost the trust of the king and would remain a captain for the rest of his career. Shortly before his death, I asked him to tell me about Majid, but all he would say was that he taught Majid the military mapping skills he'd learned as a trainee at Belgaum India in 1927.

My Grandfather's generation has largely passed. There are very few left with personal memories of the Nawab or his state. Derawar and Sadiq Garh are both crumbling as are the countless other palaces and villas that make this part of Pakistan unique. A call to preserve Bahawalpur's architecture is long overdue, but given the expense involved, it is perhaps more realistic to urge others to seek out and record what barely remains.