PAKISTAN is not new to Jürgen Wasim Frembgen. He has visited the country many times and written at least five books on different aspects of social, ethnic and cultural lives in different parts of Pakistan. And he has more than a hundred publications — not all of them in book form — in his first language, German.

Frembgen, who prefers to be called, at least in Pakistan, by his middle name Wasim, claims to be a “Sufi at heart”. He wears many hats: he is the chief curator of the Islamic collection at the Munich Museum of Ethnology; a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Munich; he teaches at several German universities, and has been a visiting professor at prestigious educational institutions in Pakistan.

What impresses this reviewer the most is that he introduces different regions, at least one of which is inaccessible to most Pakistanis, and their cultural features in an absorbing style. A case in point is his invaluable work The Closed Valley: With Fierce Friends in the Pakistani Himalayas.

Not many people are aware of Harban valley, nestled under a mighty mountain, and the fierce people who live there in the fortified village. But from 1989 to 1997 he has paid as many as five visits to the valley. When asked at the book’s launch at the Karachi Literature Festival last month why has he not been to Harban since 1997, Wasim said that the place has become much more dangerous. On his last trip he was caught in a blood-curdling crossfire between two feuding tribes. It was sheer good luck that he and his two friends escaped unscathed. He gives graphic details of the frightening experience in the last chapter of the book.

Most of The Closed Valley is dedicated to Wasim’s first visit to not just the Harban village but also to the remote corners of Gilgit-Baltistan. Armed with a letter of introduction by a judge hailing from Harban village, he undertakes the perilous journey, where in addition to frequent landslides and rock falls, there are also menacing dacoits.

Wasim claims he is the first European to have gone to Harban and its environs. He is eyed with suspicion during his trip — even his new friends and protectors are unable to understand, let alone appreciate, his ethnographic and anthropological credentials; for instance, they are unaware of what a museum is. It is a world without electricity, telephone and computers, cut off from the rest of the world or, shall we say, the rest of Pakistan. Of the various languages spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan, the one spoken in Harban is called Shina. Very few people can understand, let alone express themselves, in other languages; not even in Urdu.

A highly male-dominated region, the women appear like shadows when they leave the confines of the house. Eye contact is impossible with strangers. In a strict joint-family system, contact between husbands and wives are discouraged except for the purpose of procreation. Wasim writes in detail about the so-called family honour and the bloody feuds that are passed on from one generation to another.

The religion practised with much fervour in Harban is based on strict Sunni beliefs, which has acquired much strength due to the efforts of the Tableeghi Jamaat. On one occasion, when he is asked why he calls himself Wasim, he acknowledged acquiring the name when he became a Muslim. He avoids telling them that the man who converted him was a Sufi saint because the extreme beliefs of the people in Harban clash with the much more accommodating traits of Sufism.

Wasim introduces some queer characters. The strangest of them all is one who is called Majzoob Baba. The author narrates, in interesting details, his meeting with Majzoob Baba and drifts into the past, when the members of the Tableeghi Jamaat persecuted Baba. The writer laments increasing deforestation in the region and says that this part of Pakistan ranks second in the world in the destruction of woods and trees. The first, according to him, is Kenya.

The Closed Valley is indeed highly informative about the remote parts of Gilgit-Baltistan, in general, and Harban, in particular, for not just foreigners but also most Pakistanis living in the rest of the country.

The Closed Valley: With Fierce Friends in the Pakistani Himalayas

(TRAVELOGUE)

By Jürgen Wasim Frembgen

Oxford University Press, Karachi

ISBN 978-0-19-9-940023-2

124pp.