Page 324 - Leadership in the Indian Army

tourists."

The British had built it as a hill station near their military headquarters

in Rawalpindi, he said, for the Victorians to escape the heat. You could

still spot a few relics of the colonial times, Tariq said, the occasional

tearoom, tin-roofed bungalows, called cottages, that sort of thing. The
town itself was small and pleasant. The main street was called the Mall,

where there was a post office, a bazaar, a few restaurants, shops that

overcharged tourists for painted glass and handknotted carpets.

Curiously, the Mall's one-way traffic flowed in one direction one week,
the opposite direction the next week.

"The locals say that Ireland's traffic is like that too in places," Tariq
said. "I wouldn't know. Anyway, it's nice. It's a

plain life, but I like it. I like living there."

"With your goat. With Alyona."

Laila meant this less as a joke than as a surreptitious entry into another

line of talk, such as who else was there with him worrying about wolves

eating goats. But Tariq only went on nodding.

"I'm sorry about your parents too," he said.

"You heard."

"I spoke to some neighbors earlier," he said. A pause, during which

Laila wondered what else the neighbors had told him. "I don't recognize

anybody. From the old days, I mean."
"They're all gone. There's no one left you'd know."