Pak Tea House

Book Review by Fiona Torrens-Spence

Author: Fauzia Minallah

In the past travel writers have been dismissive of Islamabad, passing it off as ’sterile’ and ‘dull’; somewhere to be got through before visiting the real Pakistan. And the local joke ‘Islamabad, twenty minutes from Pakistan’ also belittles the country’s capital city by implying it is essentially foreign to the rest of Pakistan; a soulless, high rise city full of diplomats and other feather bedded foreigners.

As Fauzia Minallah writes, Islamabad and its surrounding villages have both a soul and an immensely long and fascinating story. It is sometimes hard to locate historic sites and harder still to find information about them so I wish that I had been able to read Fauzia Minallah’s book before living in Islamabad as I know I have seen many sites around Islamabad, such as the prehistoric shelter which can be seen from the Kashmir Highway, and entirely missed the story behind them.

I would recommend any visitor to Islamabad to invest in a copy of her book, particularly if they will be living in Islamabad for long enough to get out and about and explore. The book has the best map of Islamabad and surrounding areas which I have yet seen. The map explains the city’s grid system and how it extends beyond the currently developed areas and shows the location of the places she describes in such a way that it would be comparatively easy to find them on one’s own. (Maps of the surrounding areas of Islamabad were non-existent when we lived in Islamabad which filled me with sadness as I am a very visual person.) Her book also has a very good timeline which puts the sites she describes into a historical framework.

Fauzia Minallah’s book has beautiful photos of Islamabad and reproductions of the paintings of the well-known Islamabad artist, Gulam Rasul illustrating the exceptional beauty of “the garden city” and its surrounding villages. The photography and arrangement of the art work is a tribute to Fauzia Minallah, who is a well known artist in her own right successfully exhibiting throughout Pakistan and Europe. (more…)

– Mahmood Aslam Pakistan

Dear friend of heritage and history,

Good news…

Due to your prayers and great efforts government of NWFP has now decided to save most of the buildings which are included in this stream..

Please spread the word among your contacts , friends and media men, so that the way they stopped looting of Patriata forest in the name of “new murree”, similarly they also stop murder of pristine and innocent little Thandiani..

Thank you very much for your time.

Save Thandiani

by Environmentalist

I ATE lunch and read a book in the sun last Sunday. Then it got cold and I moved inside, but the lights were off. I therefore left home for the office, hoping to find it better endowed.

As I left the dark neighbourhood, I passed by a gas station near the vacated Margalla Towers (destroyed in the earthquake) with at least a 75-metre long queue of cars waiting to fill up with CNG. I thanked my lucky stars for not having spent Rs40,000 for a CNG kit on which so many people are now dependent. Clearly, we have a major energy crisis.

Opposite the Margalla Tower is the Fatima Jinnah Park. Earlier in the day I visited it to update my September 2007 report: ‘Fatima Jinnah Park – Metaphor For Pakistan’s Problems And Their Solution’. A great deal is happening in there, with the first phase of its ‘beautification’ almost over and the next phase about to begin. This work is the brainchild of Mr Kamran Lashari, CDA chairman, with design consultancy by the architect, Mr Nayyar Ali Dada.

The first thing you notice as you enter the newly constructed area is a paved walking path. It is made out of very uneven stones on which people can easily trip — many already have injured themselves, I was told by my guide. Give up plans of bringing your friend in a wheelchair for an outing here, and don’t wear heels. The standard of the floor stonework is poor all over and this extends to the vast new car park that has been laid out. If so many people are expected, how can only six new toilets under construction suffice? (more…)

By Dr Ali Jan

I was sitting in my cosy chair, feeling smug and sipping coffee in the evening when I received a distressing phone call from a friend, Arbab Haleem Khan, who gave me the news of some shisham trees being chopped down, “in the Cantonment, on The Mall near the Combined Military Hospital at 5 pm, on Jan. 24,” according to him. My heart broke and it felt like I had been personally robbed of something very precious.

In British India, the term “cantonment” meant a permanent military station or settlement where the soldiers lived, not in private houses, but in barracks, quarters, forts or occasionally camps. After defeating the Sikhs and occupying the old town of Peshawar in 1849, the British founded a new cantonment, turning it into a boulevard city lined with exquisite trees. The extensive infrastructure, built during that period is still in use. They introduced city planning, set up housing registries and byelaws, named streets, and later built elaborate road systems, bridges, railway lines, airfields, and so on.

Peshawar is now officially South Asia’s oldest living city, according to experts, boasting recorded history going back more than 2,600 years. The Vale of Peshawar lay at the heart of the ancient Gandhara (”Land of Fragrance and Beauty”) between the first and seventh centuries, AD. “Like a painting . . . as far as the eye could see were fields of blossoms. In spring near Peshawar the fields of flowers are very beautiful indeed,” gushed Emperor Babar in his memoir. (Babarnama 1526 AD). The Moguls called it “City of Flowers.”
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by Green Sufi

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Trees are being cut down in cities everywhere in Pakistan, by the hundreds. Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad seem the worst hit. But I’m sure it’s all over.

This is the way of the modern city alas.

Although many factors are behind it such as greed, and fantastic manias of the Development Authorities, odd notions of “progress”- mostly implying shiny metal and glass structures with a few manicured shrubs in front of them- I think the fundamental problem is a Sickness of the Soul called modernity. So the loss of trees is a loss of Barkat [blessing] in our lives. (more…)

ISLAMABAD, Jan 21: The city managers, who have already been accused of butchering thousands of trees that came in the way of various development projects, have axed about 100 more trees in a fresh sweep at the recently dualised Ibn-i-Sina Road.

Over 20-year-old and over 50-feet tall Eucalyptus trees were cut one by one by in front of many people who condemned this act of the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

The authority had already chopped down hundreds of different species of trees on the same road when it was under process of dualisation. It had allegedly cut over 10,000 trees from different locations to widen roads and sometimes in the name of termite attack or weakening of trees that could make people vulnerable to any accident. (more…)

From the daily DAWN

CHITRAL, Jan 21: The local population has been educated and made aware of the global importance of the protection of the endangered snow leopard as a result of which people are now much more sensitive about the issue, an official of the Snow Leopard Project (SLP) has said.

Talking to Dawn here on Monday, he maintained that the villagers used to kill the animal by using automatic weapons when it attacked their cattle, but today the situation was quite different. He said that many projects launched to ameliorate the target population had quite positive and encouraging results.

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by Arif Pervaiz

You don’t need to be an urban planner to figure out that our cities are socially and environmentally unsustainable. At the heart of our urban mess is a paradigm which is geared towards making a city suitable for cars rather than people.

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