Among Muslims: Meetings at the Frontiers of Pakistan

by Kathleen Jamie

Among Muslims is the account of Kathleen Jamie's time travelling alone and living among the Shia and Ismaeli Muslims in the Northern Areas - the part of the former state of Kashmir now administered by Pakistan and one of the most volatile borderlands in the world. Yet there was much that seemed oddly familiar: staying with women in Purdah reminded Jamie of her own family past; the intense religious ceremonies brought back memories of Orangemen marching through Glasgow. This is a superbly written, entertaining and important book: a narrative of people and local life, that crosses Western and Islamic cultures. Originally published as The Golden Peak, Jamie returned to Pakistan to write an Afterword and Preface for this new edition.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Pakistan, Memoir, Adventure, Asia

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Kathleen Jamie is a poet, essayist and travel writer, one of a remarkable clutch of Scottish writers picked out in 1994 as the ‘new generation poets’ – it was a marketing ploy at the time but turns out to have been a very prescient selection. She became Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Stirling in 2011.

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....

Reviews

[W · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scintillating travelogue.In the early 1990s,this young woman travelled alone through Pakistan's Himalayan regions.

The landscape she travelled through is awesome.Breathtakingly beautiful,but a challenging route to travel.Roads are not in great shape,and basic tourist infrastructure is lacking.I went to some of those places,but she went a lot further.

On her part,she was willing to travel on foot,by bus,jeeps and rafts.Interacting with locals,she was welcomed into their homes.

It is a beautifully written book,with plenty of humour.As one reviewer put it,"To share a journey such as this is an enriching experience."

Of course,personal safety for a single female embarking on such a journey would become an issue too.A few days ago,I read a newspaper article about a Pakistani woman in her mid 20s,hitching rides to travel through these areas.Well,good luck to her !

[Di · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is up there as one of my favourite travel books.

Perhaps it's the fact that a young female English poet goes wandering alone in Northern Pakistan and meets with and lives with all kinds of local people.

It's a book of truth. She doesn't choose to travel at that pampered distance from the people. She talks of the displacement, the loneliness and the pleasures of this kind of travel. Loved it.

[Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish poet and writer. She writes lyrically and captures the spirit of people and places. I read her book Surfacing in 2021 - it’s on my list of favorite books. I was looking at her list of books to choose another read and saw she wrote a travel book about going alone on the Friendship Highway to the northern, remote volatile territory in Northern Pakistan in 1990 and again in the year after 911. People were so hospitable to her. Visits their homes. Hangs out with women who become good friends. Accepted by the men in the village. Not hassled.

The book - darn the rest disappeared after I saved it here on GR. And I didn’t write it off line to have a copy.

If you are interested in finding out more there are a couple of superb reviews under community reviews.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It begins with Jamie meeting some Pakistani men in her town of Fife. They were seated just outside the Coop all wearing brightly coloured cloth and anoraks to keep out the Scottish cold. It bought back memories of her visit to the northern town of Gilgit a decade before. She says hello and they explain what they are doing and the next thing is that they are being welcomed into her home. They are on a peace walk and Jamie tries to find them accommodation for the night before they move onto the next town; it is sorted in an unexpected way. They spend some time with them the following morning and she passes her book on to them of her account of staying Pakistan. It had been out of print for a while and as they walk back into their house the phone is ringing. It is another publisher asking if she would like to see it reprinted and more importantly would she like to return there?

Ten years before, to get to Gilgit she had to travel along the ironically named ‘Friendship Highway’ a road built between China and Pakistan who shared little love. Passing through customs took hours as the Chinese scrutinised their passports in detail. After a long time had passed they were herded back on and continued their journey onward.

Eventually arriving in Gilgit, she heads to the Golden Peak Hotel. It used to be a palace for the Mir in its heyday but it has no elegance or beauty that you’d expect from a palace. After resting she heads out to the bazaar to get a feel for the town. She sees no women out and about, apart from one begging by the post office. It is a cacophony of noise from people, animals and vehicles along the long main street. It becomes a daily habit and Jamie becomes to get a feel for the town dynamic. This part of Kasmir is a tense place too, there had been massacres there before and she would hear the sound of mortar fire in the distance on occasion.

She gets to know the people a little and then she has an invite to stay in the home of a local family. She accepts the invitation but is nervous about being there, but slowly her fears were allayed as she became accepted by the women there. Her presence in the town though attracts attention, she is watched by someone from the security services, it offends her host tremendously and he sets about sorting it out.

The place had got under her skin and when home in Scotland, a whiff of spice would take her back there immediately. A year later she is back again. It is still an assault on the senses, crowds of people thronging as she headed to the bus station. Climbing aboard the de-luxe service bus she realises that the luxury level is determined by the gaudy paintwork and the amount of decoration. Being a lone Western woman she is allowed to sit at the front. Well away from the wandering hands. The journey was terrifying and delayed but eventually, they closed in on Gilgit. She couldn’t wait to see her friend, Rashida and settle back into life there once again.

A decade later, Jamie has changed, married now and with children too and she is wondering how all the friends that she made on those original trip have changed too. The journey there is not without its drama, but she cannot wait to be there once again. It is still the centre of Intrigue and she, according to her host, is the only Westerner in the region. The reunion with Rashida is charged with emotion and joy. It was good to be back.

I did really like this book as Jamie is a wonderful writer. You can trace the foundations of her later works quite vividly at times, partly by the warmth of her character and her attention to detail to the things happening around her as she moves around the town. Her deep curiosity is very vivid too, and the prose is such that you feel that you are standing alongside her as she observes the ebb and flow of people in the market. She is intrigued and interested in the differences and similarities between her and their cultures. She is fortunate that in a lot of this she is considered an honorary man and can spend time with male and female without any of the usual discrimination that takes place. This book is a wonderful insight into a region beset by trouble, but with a population that is trying to live its life in some form of normality.

[Marianne · Rating 1 out of 5]

First two chapters are good. The rest is like treacle. I wanted to learn something. It’s about roads and mountains and transferable characters.

[Jessicahumphries · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written as a sort of memoir or journal of the author's experiences with people she meets as she travels in Pakistan. It was somewhat reflective of my own very limited experiences with students from Pakistan that I have had the privilege of knowing. I love that the author is a woman and therefore is admitted by friends into the confidence and very private lives of Muslim women and their families. She even includes in the extensive epilogue how the original printing hurt her relationships with some of the women because they felt ashamed of what she wrote of them, but how she loved those very experiences because it shows how similar and human they are and helps her to connect with them, even with some different cultures. She learns about herself by learning about about the Pakistani people.

[Parvathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an unusual and bold journey. A young Scotswoman chooses to travel alone, (first in the early '90s and she returns 10 years later in the afterword), in one of the world's most volatile and remote regions - the Northern Areas, part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Kathleen Jamie is a poet foremost, and there is lyricism in her descriptions of the harsh but beautiful landscape of the Karakoram, its villages and towns, its people - the Shias, the Ismailis, above all the women (invisible in public spaces, fascinating in private). She meets a belief system that is so very counter-intuitive to her Western sensibilities, yet she strives to find common ground, amazed that she so rarely feels unsafe. It's a gentle book about a harsh place, reminding us of a common humanity - and worth a read in these troubling violent times.

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really love Kathleen Jamie's travel writing. That poet's eye for detail, that precise yet lyrical way of describing landscape, that interest in people and instinct to find common ground between seemingly disparate cultures.

I'm not wholly convinced by some of the parallels she draws between Scotland and Pakistan - I don't think you can call Scotland's relationship with England anything like Pakistan's relationship with India (or the Northern Areas' relationship with the rest of the country) and, frankly, I find the political narrative of poor wee Scotland being oppressed by the English aggressors very tiresome - but I appreciate what she's trying to do. Links, similarities, shared humanity, humour, a questioning spirit.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of this book was written in the early 1990s, but the author after 9/11 was asked to look again at re-printing the book. She has added an introduction and new epilogue that work very well with the book. I had not read the original book. Kathleen Jamie first visited the disputed Northern Area of Pakistan. Despite her and other concerns of traveling as a single woman in this area in the early 1990s, she found it easy and was welcomed by both men and women. From it, she was able to paint an intimate picture of life in the towns and villages of this region. The last chapter includes her return ten years later. While the tensions are high because of 9/11, she found the welcome similar to what she experienced in the earlier visit.

[Zora O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous writing -- evocative but also very simple. Jamie is so generous to the people she meets--and a great example of how women travel writers get to see a lot more, as they have access to both male and female spaces.

This was first published in 1992 (this edition has a new foreword and epilogue, added in 2002), I guess back when a travel book could be just a description of travels, and didn't have to be a massive inner journey too. It's so rare to read any travel book, especially one by a woman, that doesn't have some justification at the beginning. She just goes. Ahhh.

[Kristian Kalsing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love travelling and I love reading the accounts of other people emerging themselves in other cultures. My wife and I went to Pakistan in July and out of the 60+ countries I have spent time in, Pakistan is probably the most friendly and hospitable place I've ever visited. Unfortunately, not many travel there, but Kathleen Jamie did and she's written a beautiful book about her experiences.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enthralling account of a young woman travelling alone through sometimes dangerous territory. Beautifully written.

[Gaynor Miles Clark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting beginning . More of a Travelogue. Descriptive but emotionless.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book took me forever to read because it wasn’t interesting and I felt it was disjointed. I was hoping to learn something but I learned absolutely nothing.

[Aimée · Rating 4 out of 5]

Themes include tackling the bad of old whilst preserving it, education and.modernisation At the cusp of change; outlooks re safety and the stressing of options of choice in west compared to these places she visits; women in Muslim countries particularly Shia; acceptance of different cultures and religions.

Some interesting experiences of things and in places that most of us will only ever read about at a time before change totally sinks its teeth in. It's in Pakistan and Batistan region.

I imagine its the original book that went out of print with an added prologue and epilogue. The latter being a revisit, which I wish had not been so brief (the visit itself). For me it didn't quite reach some of the other 'chapters', but that's how it goes. The writing is very good, with moments of sublime.

[Goldenwattle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about Kathleen Jamie's journey's in Pakistan in the 1990s.
I did do something similar in the 1970s, travelling on public transport in wet season on dirt roads, staying with locals, but only for a month (my holiday leave from work), and mine was in Borneo. I was taken places that many other tourists might not be; such as up the calling tower of the spectacular mosque in Brunei. I don't know if I would be game to do this in Pakistan.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative writing, describing Jamie's solo journey into rural Pakistan, high in the Himalayas. She involves herself in the lives of those whom she meets, particularly enjoying her contact with the women leading far more secluded lives then her own. A real insight into a very different world.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gorgeous book, a real eye opener. I much enjoyed the writing style as well as the insghts into the woman's world of this very mountainous part of the world. I applaud her appetite for adventure and exploration.. Of course the travels are interior as well as exterior.

[Harpreet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it more than a decade back. I can still picturize her bus ride, the room she stayed in, the golden peak in sight. So, you bet a beautiful easy reading travelogue.

[Jyoti51 · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is a pleasingly clear writer. This travel at this time, now unimaginable - it seems so distant now…

[Gail Kennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful introduction to the people and the land of northern pakistan. she's a wonderful guide and companion so warm and intelligent and gently humorous..and such a good writer.

[Yoonmee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good travel writing by a Scottish poet. Could have been more background information about Pakistan.

[MsEleanorMae · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read.