His enthusiasm for the production of alcohol is abundant. He walks me past the beer production line, enthusing over the current output of 10,000 bottles an hour ranging from high strength Millennium at 7.5 per cent alcohol, through the popular and medal-winning Murree Classic at 5.5 to a Pils Light at 3.5.
This selfless Muslim workforce also produces 20 brands of spirit including gin and vodka.
Despite draconian laws on the possession of alcohol - a prison sentence of three to four years, un-bailable, and quite possibly a caning as well - it’s pretty clear that the Murree Brewery wouldn’t be in business if its customers were only non-Muslims.
Minoo argues that it’s foolish to suppose there is no demand for alcohol in Pakistan and if he doesn’t supply it then someone else will. Either the bootleggers smuggle foreign whisky in on dhows from places like Dubai, or for those who can’t afford bootleg, there is moonshine liquor, often made from what he calls ‘denatured alcohol’.
He looks over his glasses at me, rather severely.
‘“Denature” is an old English word for poison.’
One of the outlets where non-Muslims can legally acquire Murree’s output is at Flashman’s Hotel in Rawalpindi. A run-down collection of white bungalows, looking a bit like a 1940s film studio, it stands just off the Grand Trunk Road and next to a handsome Victorian church with everything but the spire painted deep pink.
Round the back of Flashman’s, if you know who to ask, you’ll find two well-scuffed shutters, bordered with a patina of black grease from thousands of hands. A sign, in Urdu, announces that opening time is three o’clock. A line, looking suspiciously Muslim, has already formed. About 3.15 the shutters are opened and I soon find myself peering through a barred window into a gloomy little room full of storage boxes and men drinking tea.
Before I buy I have to fill in a permit, which requires me, among other things, to give my father’s name and my religion.
‘Agnostic?’ I suggest, trying to be completely honest.
The man at the counter looks blankly back.
‘Agnostic with doubts,’ I write down, and hand back the form. This entitles me to six units of alcohol a month, a unit being one bottle of spirits or 20 bottles of beer. I buy a bottle of Vat No.1 Rawalpindi whisky at a cost of 350 rupees (about PS3.50), which the attendant wraps in brown paper and hands through the bars to me.
‘Drink only in room,’ he cautions. ‘Not in public.’
I nod, grateful for the advice. He must have got the measure of me, for as I turn away he shouts hopefully.
‘I do gin!’
Day Twenty Five : Rawalpindi to Lahore
For a military state Pakistan has a remarkably free press. Or so it seems as I read an editorial this morning addressing what it calls the Military-Mullah alliance. The writer’s argument is that since General Zia’s time the military and the Islamists have sought each other’s support against secular democracy.
The only difference between them, it argues, is that the clerics have beards and the army have moustaches.
A front page headline warns of the heatwave that waits for us tonight in Lahore. ‘50 Die As Punjab Boils.’
On our way to the station in Rawalpindi, there is reassuring evidence of the hopefully inextinguishable richness of Pakistani life. Run-down streets dotted with foreign language schools and computer shops, and looming above them hand-painted billboard ads for the latest movie adventures of Shaan Shahid, Pakistan’s screen heart-throb, glowering menacingly, as blood courses from a head wound, or grinning, equally menacingly, as he brandishes a Kalashnikov. He seems to be the star of every film they make.
Stopping to buy provisions in the Rajah Bazaar, I’m approached by a heavily bearded man offering to sell me a CD of Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden praying together at a mosque in Idris. Never seen before, he says.
Another seems pleased that we represent the BBC. ‘Everyone in Pakistan believe BBC, but not CNN,’ he assures me, readjusting his New York Yankees baseball cap.
It’s heating up as promised - 44degC (111degF) by the time we reach Rawalpindi Station, a huge conflation of Scottish baronial turrets and cupolas with a bland modern extension tacked on. Porters cluster around us and a thin-faced ascetic old man with a Gandalf-like white beard grabs one of my cases, hoists the other onto his head and, a little disappointed that I choose to carry my own shoulder bag, marches off through the crowds.
Our driver nods approvingly. This old man is a great character, he says. He was carrying bags for British officers before independence. That was 55 years ago.
There are three classes on the train, two with air-con and one without. We’re in air-con, 2nd class and are made comfortable by an army of solicitous attendants marshalled by a man in a white suit, green peaked hat and a crimson arm band, grandly embroidered with the words Conductor Guard. A rich cast of characters, all with titles clearly inscribed on jackets or lapels, come through offering refreshment of various kinds. My favourite is the Iceman, a stocky, embattled figure in a frayed white jacket, whose bulbous eyes and droopy moustache remind me of a small-time crook in a French gangster movie. He hauls a huge bucket in which is a block of ice with bottles squeezed around it. There is a tired, emaciated Sweet Seller and various perkier, smartly turned-out young men described on their lapel badges as either Buttlers (sic) or Waiters. Waiter No. 14 brings chai, sweet milky tea, and Buttler No. 7 collects the money.
The name Punjab is an elision of Paan, five, and Aab, waters, and refers to the five rivers on which the prosperity of the province depends. Connected up, under the British occupation, by a network of branch canals and distribution channels, the flows of the Indus, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Jhelum support 70 million people, almost half the population of Pakistan. Seventy miles south of Pindi a mile-long railway bridge crosses the river into the town of Jhelum. Walking out on the station there I fall into conversation with a tall, irrepressibly cheery young man with wide, expressive eyes. His name is Asim and he’s on his way to Lahore with his brother, Azam, an accountant who is having a weekend-long engagement party. They buy me pakoras, savoury fritters, from a stall on the platforms and we munch away in mutual enthusiasm. I will love Lahore, he promises.
‘They are not fundamentalists there. Lahore is a city of very loving people, very wide-hearted, very loving.’
He puts away another pakora.
‘Lahori people are very fond of eating,’ confirms Asim.
‘And is there a lot of night life?’
He nods animatedly.
‘Oh yes, two, three, four o’clock in the morning, people are eating different dishes at different places.’
South of Jhelum the scenery changes from scrubby bush plateau to the freshly shorn fields of the Punjab plain.
Back on the train the Iceman is coming. I talk with a pale German girl who converted to Islam a year ago and two young, articulate computer programmers in shirts and trousers travelling with their father. He is shy, speaks no English, wears an embroidered skull cap and shalwar-kameez and looks steadily forward.
The light is softening and the day is cooling and people are out beside the railway; leading dusty-flanked water buffaloes to be fed, carrying goods home on the back of bicycles and playing cricket with breeze blocks for stumps.
It’s dark when we reach Lahore. Outside the station, a colossal brick and stone fortified folly, I pick up an auto-rickshaw to the hotel. We grind off onto wide roads and through careless traffic, adding our own little cloud of pollution to a thick, hot, suffocating fug, tight as a strait-jacket.
Day Twenty Six : Lahore
Up at 5.45 to beat the heat. We make our way to the low hill that dominates the heart of this flat city and on which stand two of the most beautiful buildings in the subcontinent, Lahore Fort and the Badshahi Mosque. Both were built by the Mughal (the word derives from Mongol) emperors who came out of south central Asia and through Afghanistan around the time that Henry VIII was planning the Reformation. Using rifles, mortars and gunpowder, previously unheard of in India, they seized Lahore in 1524 and subdued Delhi two years later.