With an ad duly placed, a string of phone calls followed. One city ‘begum’ asked all the right questions, plus a few that were hard to understand
A BEAUTIFUL mountain morning, sun shining, birds singing, a gentle breeze whispering through the apple orchard and I couldn’t relax and enjoy it.
Filled with trepidation, whizzing round the house with vacuum cleaner in one hand, a duster in the other and a head full of ifs and buts.
The invigorating mountain air and healthy lifestyle has to come to a reluctant end. It is a wonderful life for some, but health problems, exacerbated by the high altitude, mean that we have to move to lower claims in order for my other half to function as normal. So, house for sale ad duly placed, in Dawn of course, a string of phone calls followed and today was the day for the first prospective purchaser to come and look around.
The precise voice on the phone had warned me that I was dealing with a ‘begum’ of a particular brand, a city ‘begum’ not a mountain one. She asked all the right questions, which is more than some of the other inquirers did, plus at a few that were hard to understand.
“Do you have a phone?” for instance, when we were talking on the infernal thing.
“Do you have electricity?”
“No servant quarter?” Shock! Horror! Sheer disbelief that we have neither a servant or a quarter, and absolute astonishment that I do the work myself.
“I’ll be in a Land Rover,” she told me. “A four-wheel drive.”
“Great,” I replied. “You’ll be able to get within 200 yards of the house.” I’d already explained that the road is currently under construction. Wow, we waited seven years for road access and now that it is finally in the offing, we won’t be here to luxuriate in it! No more climbing up and down the mountain hauling supplies on my back, no more hiring mazdoor to carry gas cylinders and firewood, but that is now besides the point. Promptly at 3.30pm, I sat at the side of the main road waiting for the Land Rover which turned out to be a Range Rover with a driver that had enough trouble navigating the main road, let alone a mountain track. I felt it better to leave him and the vehicle half way up the mountain, and walk the remaining kilometre home.
“Where have you left your transport?” asked the begum in confusion.
“I don’t have a car,” I told her, wondering if she had understood about the current lack of vehicular access. “Then how did you get up here?” she enunciated with raise eyebrows. Biting back a retort such as “I flew”, I truthfully said that I’d walked. “Oh dear,” she said in puzzled tones, glancing around at the stupendous view with unseeing eyes.
The begum, a meticulously preserved 50 something, was at least dressed properly — jeans, sweatshirt, joggers, the latter though not having enough grip to prevent her high-class posterior colliding with solid rock as we negotiated a particularly rough stretch of footpath close to the house. Her executive-type son, better shod and more appreciative of mountain life, looked slightly amused at the incident, shrugging his shoulders in resignation. I figured it was a ‘No sale’ there and then, but the begum resolutely soldiered on. She was going to see what she’d come to see come what may!
The house now in sight, she suddenly stopped, turned to stone for a moment and then stunned me completely. “But how will I get my piano down the mountain?”
Regaining my composure I suggested, “The Pathans who carried everything down for us when we moved here would bring it.”
I could have been a Martian the way she widened her eyes and stared.
“Pathans carry my piano! But one must be gentle with a piano. It is a very delicate instrument. All the keys. All the wires. It would be out of tune.”
I considered suggesting that she have it helicoptered in, but politely said that once the road is completed, there won’t be a problem. I could envisage a problem of where to put the damn thing, this is a cottage not a mansion. A piano wouldn’t even fit through the door!
Pleasantries observed, tea and biscuits served to the background noise of our six dogs objecting to being closed outside, it was time for the begum to carry out her tour of inspection, even though there was no way she was going to spend time here.
“Oh, you have a fridge and a freezer! Do they work? A microwave, too. My goodness! Only one bathroom? I don’t suppose the computer is included, is it?”
The rain-water system and the solar cooker stumped her and my painstakingly created garden left her nonplused. To be honest, even if she’d wanted my house, there was no way I would let her buy it.
Then the ultimate. We have what we laughingly call ‘woodshed’, a large, very solid construction, still open on three sides and which we had intended, one day, to turn into a separate living area for guests.
The begum was standing in the centre of this, being careful of falling over the remains of last winter’s firewood and watching her step for puppy deposits, when suddenly a look of beatific enlightenment shone from her wide open eyes. “Yes! Yes! We could put in huge windows. It would be a lovely room. Perfect for my piano!”
I bit my tongue, tried to keep a straight face and pictured, even heard the music room in action, and was only prevented from saying something...anything...by her long-suffering son who pointed out that there was a storm approaching, fast, and they better get a move on. The sky, over Azad Kashmir, was absolutely black, thunder getting louder by the second, lightening splitting the atmosphere, the gentle morning breeze turned to a savage roar.
They left, at some speed I might add, but there was no way they could have made it up the mountain before the storm broke. It must have been a very disillusioned, very wet, piano-playing begum who retreated into the confines of her four-wheeled luxury and headed back to the plains.
The sound of a Chopin moonlight sonata will never be the same again!
With an ad duly placed, a string of phone calls followed. One city ‘begum’ asked all the right questions, plus a few that were hard to understand 
