Tales from Export Sales #17: Moghuls, Mongols and La Papa

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
-----Ithaca, Cavafy

. . .hello's are goodbye's, and the laughs are the sigh's, and the show disappears with the note, 'until next time'
-----Miserere, The Cat Empire


The trip was to Pakistan. I had spent a few days reading the graphs to a bunch of bored Paskistani’s and I had to get out of hotel foyers and coffee breaks, and being consistently congenial. So with one of the employees from the distribution company I jumped in a cab and went to Lahore fort.

The sign above the Alamgiri gate read, children-5 Rps, adults-10 Rps, foreign tourists-200 Rps. So we shelled out the cash and got in.

Immediately inside a guy approached us. He was wearing thongs (yanks read flip-flops) hovering over us and as far as I could make out wanted to take us on a guided tour. He reeked of sweat and shit, and his English was gibberish, yet the prosody of his speech sounded like a BBC history documentary.

We hired him and he began at the top of the ramp above the gate

-This at here is the munition part of fort when from where the Englishman he was when playing war here from eighteen hundred forty-eight seventeen until fifty-three [sic].

Then we walked on and I was trying not to get too close to this guy because of his stink. I asked how long it took to ride by Elephant from Lahore fort to Shah Jahanabad. He said

-about three or maybe forty on foot days with elephant [sic].

We walked up to the rooftop above Diwan-e-Khas where some ‘artisans’ where doing blasphemous restoration on some Pietradura work.

He said

-this is here where Shahab-ud-Din Shah Jahan would hold with the ladies of very many beauties and colours all in here in the baths and with magistrates above inside[sic].

The lack of comprehensible information was starting to piss me off so I tuned him out off my inner camcorder and looked out over the old city. The eagles hanging in the sky above the fort invited the spirit to venture with them back to a time where man in search of posterity built buildings and made great voyages. He killed with swords, he walked or he rode on an elephant and he changed landscapes and built edifices so that their ruins could inspire and evoke past life memories.

Next morning I took an early flight from Lahore to Islamabad. A stranger called Lafita Habazool had wound up at the Passport control at Islamabad International airport, with me. Islamabad International airport is organised such that there is only one departure at a time. I was in the queue parallel to Lafita, and Lafita too was bound for Denmark.

He was stately, plump and wearing the traditional Khaddar garb. The sweat that lined his brow could have been because of the sweltering heat or collateral damage from the pretty petty officials scrutinising his travel documents. He was trying to explain that he only spoke a smattering of Urdu but was fluent in one other language. . . Danish. I saw a Danish passport so said to him in the other language

-hot weather in these parts.

He said

-yeah, and they are not very good with foreign languages.

The petty officials were cute and one of them asked if I could translate for them. Lafita told me his date of birth in Danish and I translated it for the girls. They then asked him the purpose of his visit and I again translated. I’d never felt so ridiculous and necessary at the same time.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

There was another meet in Goa, so Mads and I went out and read the charts, as only we can.

We went out for a group photo, and a large girl in a Sari said that she wanted to stand next to me

-because I was like, a male model type.

I turned and said to Mads

-Did you hear that? I’m a male model!

He said

-Yeah, I heard it. She said a male mongol!

And so Mads had outsold me once again.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

There was some sales in Rome so I put my hand up for it. My sister had just been to a wedding in the south of France so we decided to meet in the city to which all roads lead. I walked into the hotel. Ten seconds later my little sister walks in and a joyous reunion. We dropped our stuff and went out to dinner.

One can argue about the gourmet traditions of the world, but it is a fundamental truth that a humble tomato never tastes as good as it does in Italy. So we gorged ourselves on Carpaccio de Gamberoni, Viletto, limoncellos, and traded details from the past six months of our lives.

The next day we roamed around Rome. We had a bit of lunch and walked up towards Quirinal hill. On the Via Nazionale there were some security stooges in a black Mercedes. Further up beside the Villa Colonna we could see a crowd assembling. I went up to one of the bystanders at the Palazzo del Quirinale and asked whom they were waiting to see. He told me that it was,

-La Papa e La Presidente

La Papa. . .? La Presidente was patently obvious, but I was having translation problems with ‘La Papa.’ I asked my sister and she saw it immediately as Joe the Rat, or His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. My sister had a serious looking camera around her neck, so I grabbed that and with the rest of the paparazzi, pelted down the steaming pavement while clicking away at the camera. The thrill of the chase was dizzying, but the pope mobile too fast and the streets of Rome too damn hot, so I gave up.

Sorry to be leaving my sister, and Rome, and in no small way, Export Sales, I jumped in a cab the next day and drove to the airport. Rome’s airport, Fiumicino has a sign on the roof. It is kitsch and Italian but well worth taking to heart. ‘IF MUSIC BE THE FOOD OF LOVE,’ in blue, and then in red ‘PLAY ON.’ I agreed with this in principle, and colour scheme, so went into the lounge and watched as two guys wearing matching ‘Saddam Hussein’ t-shirts drank cappuccinos.