I head out to see about the Jaffar Express, (not the one I missed but the next one) which should be in Multan today on its way to Quetta. I take a raksha to Multan train station, which is easily among the prettiest train stations I’ve seen anywhere, featuring cupolas and blue decorative tiles, and buy myself a ticket for the 8pm train, my third ticket on as many trains to Quetta. There’s plenty of time until departure, so I head off to explore this very crowded and colourful city.

We come to a walled old quarter from where I decide to go on foot. I ask the rakshawallah to wait at one of the large gates and carry on down the ring road which runs along the walls. Multan is very old and like Peshawar, has a lived-in charm with attractive yet decrepit buildings. But what sets Multan apart entirely from other Pakistani cities I’ve visited so far, or, any other South Asian city in fact, is its generous use of decorative tiles. These are called kashi, glazed ceramic tiles decorated with complicated geometric or floral patterns and vibrant colours, set around an entrance or on the facade of a building as a mosaic. Entire structures can be covered in them and they are usually blue. They get their name from Kashgar, in Eastern Turkistan, now a part of China’s Xinjiang province, where they are believed to have originated. I’m not convinced that’s true, though, considering tile mosaics were used in Iranian Elamite structures as well, and Iran, in fact, is where the usage is full blown, covering complete urban landscapes like gorgeous Persian carpets. Here in Multan, they are evidenced mostly on Sufi mazars, but not exclusively, they can even appear on old buildings that are hidden away from sight, in an alley somewhere, falling apart but still fabulous for their tile work.

Multan’s got a great story. For starters it’s one of the places where the Rigveda may have been composed, although the fact that there is no way of knowing where or when the Vedas were composed nearly nullifies this claim. A less flattering version has it as the place where Satan landed on earth after falling from grace. Some say the arch was perfected here and that the first book on architecture was also written here, but I’m quite sure Vitruvius, the acknowledged inventor of the arch, would have something to say about that. It begins to get clearer after 326 BC when Alexander the Great, on his return home, decides to do a bit more plundering in Asia and attacks Multan. He was wounded very seriously here and his soldiers, believing Alexander to be dead, slaughtered the city’s inhabitants with genocidal intent. The Khuni Burj or Bloody Tower in the walled city is where it all happened.

A travelogue of the writer’s journey through India, Pakistan and Iran

Multan became the first major South Asian city to be incorporated into the Muslim realm, when the teenaged Muhammad bin Qasim defeated Raja Dahir around 712 AD and added Sindh to the Ummayad Empire. Many people died then too, but the Aditya Sun Temple, said to have been built by Krishna’s wayward son Samba, was left unmolested, as was the population’s faith. The altogether more brutish Mahmud of Ghazni was far less considerate, and he smashed the temple in 1026, killing thousands of people and forcing the rest to convert. He also ransacked Mathura, Krishna’s city and a sort of Medina for Hindus, destroying most of it and making off with all the loot.

I walk around the old city taking pictures. People here are less eager to be photographed than they are in Peshawar, and I’m able to take in the place at my own pace. They aren’t any less polite though, and people offer me tea and call me in to their shops to satisfy their curiosity about the obvious out-of-towner. I stumble upon an abandoned temple that’s being used to store grain, walk down really lovely alleys with rows of garishly painted townhouses, and follow winding mazes that open out to courtyards of Sufi mazars. The atmosphere is gentle and sublime and people carry themselves with a dignified modesty, keeping their voices low but their esteem high.

It’s remarkably different from the testosterone driven schoolboy complex in Lahore and Islamabad, and I’m able to let my guard down without feeling like I’m being sized up or set up to become the butt of a joke. An impromptu ‘guide’ gives me a tour of the mazar, pointing out the graves of magnificent men whose names I can’t remember, their tombs lovingly decorated with tiles, fragranced by incense and adorned with flowers. Some of the smaller graves in the outer courtyards have earthen water urns placed by their feet. People come, most in some emotional state or another, and sing, wail, pray or just sit in complete stillness next to the sarcophagi. I’m not sure I understand why they feel these great but dead men can take the weight off their hearts as they perhaps could have done while they were still alive, but they come to them anyway and it seems to work.

I’m intrigued by this need, this reliance on stations, symbols and ceremonies to prop us up and give our invisible faith some sort of corporeal shape. It’s as though we need to have tangible anchors which we can throw into the terrifying vastness of an intangible eternity, allowing us to make believe we can halt a while and hold off this inexorable tide that steadily drags us out. Or perhaps, as I was thinking in Bodh Gaya, these places have some sort of residual spiritual energy. The pigeons certainly seem to think so; there are always loads of them at all of these religious places, but I suspect the feed that’s scattered by the caretakers every day biases them just slightly.

While wandering I find myself on the outskirts of the city, on a slightly elevated plain, looking out over low rise rooftops. In the distance a big green dome catches the sunlight and dominates the skyline. Multanis say it’s the tomb of Shams-i-Tabrizi, the great mystic who taught Jalaluddin Rumi the religion of love, but it probably isn’t. There are legends about Shams everywhere; he was a qalandar, a wanderer, originally from Tabriz, but spent most of his life moving from city to city in search of minds that would inspire him, being finally satisfied with Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi, in Konya. He disappeared after the Maulana’s disciples plotted to kill him for what they perceived as an unhealthy relationship between the two men, and because they felt jealous of their closeness. Some say he came to Multan, and when people here refused to give him fire to cook his fish, he called the sun closer to help him do the job, turning Multan into the furnace it can become by the middle of summer. All fantastical and absurd, but with qalandars and the like, you can never be sure.

What is certain is that the tomb beside me belongs to the Sufi Shah Rukn-i-Alam, and it stands firm in all its solidity, wearing, according to some, the world’s second largest dome on its tiled and decorated head. It’s squat but massive, and the single white hemisphere contrasts nicely with the mostly aquamarine and yellow ochre building. Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq had it built for himself between 1320 and 1324, but his son Muhammad bin Tughlaq gave it to Shah Rukn-i-Alam’s family in 1330 and interred his father in the very simple tomb at Tughlaqabad Fort instead. This splendid structure now contains many graves (73, by some accounts) belonging to the Sufi and his descendants. By the entrance, a hawker sells pani puri and I gorge on about 20 of them, the tamarind water lubricating my parched mouth, while watching a colourfully dressed family glide by looking like a flock of rainbow lorikeets. They step and speak lightly, and from certain angles, appear to be moving along on a conveyor belt.

I enter the complex and notice it’s nearly time for afternoon prayers so head towards the domeless mosque inside the grounds, which is dwarfed by the mazar beside it. I pray and then make my way into the mazar through large, beautifully carved wooden doors where incense and perfumed oil lamps produce an almost overpowering olfactory experience. A very blissful looking man in a green cap sits against a wall participating in what looks like sohbet, a spiritual discourse, with another man whose back is towards me. I want to capture the moment with my camera but the man in the green cap wags a finger at me forbiddingly. I gesture a ‘why not?’, but he just shakes his head politely, offering no reasons.

I go further inside and see numerous graves surrounding Shah Rukn-i-Alam’s fenced off and draped sarcophagus, which sits directly under the large dome. It’s adorned, like most mazars are, with a chador bearing gold lettering in Thuluth script, lots of tinsel, streamers, flags and something that looks like tiny paper pom poms on a string. The area is crowded with graves made of plaster and arranged in rows like pews, all running north south across the east west orientation of the room, faithful to an Islamic interpretation of Feng Shui. There’s a very beautiful mihrab in the western wall as well, made of blue tiles and elaborate woodwork. It’s the first time I’ve seen a mihrab in a mazar, and wonder why it’s there. The room is dark, and slightly dismal, and there are people wailing and singing over the saint’s grave. I don’t particularly enjoy the atmosphere so leave in a hurry. It’s much nicer outside and I wander around the courtyard for a bit before heading towards the other white-domed structure, further ahead.

This smaller dome covers the tomb of Bahauddin Zakariya, Shah Rukn-i-Alam’s grandfather. Bahauddin Zakariya was a heavyweight Sufi of the Suhrawardiyya order, a tradition that was founded in Baghdad by an Iranian mystic in the 12th century. He was a disciple of the founder’s nephew and wandered for 15 years before settling in Multan to spread his teachings across South Asia. The Suhrawardys depart drastically from established Sufi principles like detachment and reclusiveness, and promote social and political involvement on an international scale.

The above excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘Crosshairs across Worlds’.

Excerpted with permission from
Right to passage
By Zeeshan Khan
Sage Yoda Press
ISBN: 978-9351508946
390pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 11th, 2016