These two cities became the twin jewels of an empire that lasted almost 200 years and was characterized by blood, death, romantic tragedy and some of the most exquisite buildings, gardens, books and paintings in the world.
The Mughals were not the first to fortify Lahore. Some 13 or 14 strongholds have succeeded each other on this hill, but today’s fort, completed by the Emperor Akbar, has stood solidly behind its mighty brick walls for 450 years.
It is a huge complex, but we find ourselves caught for some time in a small office, with a beamed roof and lots of tasteful antique furnishings, making the acquaintance of the curator, who has a bad cold.
I have the feeling the last thing he wants to do is to go outside. Two days ago Lahore had its highest temperature for 75 years, he tells us, reaching for a tissue. ‘Forty-Nine Centigrade!’
Fortunately, it will be cooler today he prophesies. Perhaps 47 at most.
The appeal of the Lahore fort is a successful combination of intimacy and grandeur. Power with a human face. There is the massive Elephant Path, a wide flight of steps with long, shallow stairs designed to enable rich courtiers to bring their elephants into the heart of the fort without having to dismount. There are courtyards of immense size, criss-crossed with cooling water channels (sadly dry today), and audience chambers supported by forests of sandstone columns, and in among them, exquisite architectural miniatures.
The Shish Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors, is a series of cool, serene rooms open at one side and enclosed at the other by an exquisitely carved screen through which the breeze is drawn by a 17th-century carved marble air-con system. Narrow apertures on the outside widen out on the inside to draw the cool air in. And it does work. The walls are picked out with glass mosaics, paintings of gardens and countryside and complex mirrored panels.
It was in one of these, so the story goes, that Emperor Akbar noticed his son Jahangir exchange flirtatious glances with the Emperor’s favourite courtesan, Anarkarli, aka Pomegranate Blossom. As a punishment Akbar ordered her to be walled-up, alive. When Jahangir became Emperor he built a grand tomb at the place where she died, on which were written the words:
‘Ah, could I behold the face of my beloved once again, I would give thanks until the day of resurrection.’
The curator sniffs and sighs. Not because he’s moved by the story, but because he says it never happened. True or false, Anarkali has become a folk hero for many Lahoreans and the main market of the city is named after her.
Another gem, the Naulaka Pavilion, has less gruesome romantic attachments. Its canopied roof, an exquisitely carved blanket of marble, said to be modelled on a Bengali hut, covers walls and pillars intricately decorated with tiny carved panels filled with stones of agate, lapis lazuli, gold, jade and cornelian. It was built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz, of whom he must have been pretty fond. When she died he built the Taj Mahal for her.
The view from this cool pavilion out towards the Badshahi Mosque is a reminder of what makes Mughal architecture so fine. It’s all about balance and symmetry. Towers, domes, minarets, columns and cupolas, some in red stone, some in white marble, are all gracefully harmonized. The Mughal emperors set out to balance power and pleasure, and no-one ever achieved this more successfully.
It’s midday and in the mosque the sandstone slabs are so hot that a thin strip of carpet has been laid out, which is continually being hosed down. This requires a lot of water, as the 500 feet (160 m) square courtyard is one of the largest of any mosque in the world, and can hold upwards of 60,000 worshippers.
Today most of them are inside the shade of the tall Prayer Chamber, ten bays deep and topped by three white marble domes. The imam is giving his address but there seems to be little of the formality of worship in an English church. Some stand to listen, some kneel. People come and go, others talk to each other, some attend to their own devotions while young children run around at the back. Only when it comes to the holy prayer do they all come together to stand in line, barefoot, heads lowered. Then, moving as one, they bow to the waist, stand upright, kneel, press foreheads on the ground twice, then stand up and begin the process over again. There’s something simple and powerful about such a communal act of humility in such splendid surroundings.
This evening we meet for a meal at the house of the well-connected Yusuf Salahuddin, who, hearing of our curiosity about Shaan Shahid, the actor on all the posters, is to take us to see him filming at the studios on the Multan Road, heart of Lahore’s film industry, or Lollywood as it’s known.
Yusuf’s house is a warren of tastefully decorated rooms and courtyards in the Old Town. On antique tables stand photos of himself with Imran Khan, Jimmy Goldsmith and others. In the courtyard we eat the most delicious mangoes I’ve ever tasted and talk about what we’ve seen in Pakistan. His views on the trigger-happy North-West Frontier are far from reverential.
‘They’ll shoot you if they feel like it. Any excuse. If they don’t like the food, or the way you smile, or farting. Farting, that’s very bad. Farting is a crime on the North-West Frontier. And the older you are when you fart the worse it is.’
He insists we come back here for the Basant festival in April. Everyone in Lahore flies their kites for a day.
‘It must be a beautiful sight.’
‘Beautiful?’ He shakes his head in mock horror. ‘It’s war!’
Apparently it gets seriously competitive, with rooftop rivals attaching knives and glass to their string to cut each other’s kites adrift. (I’ve since heard that the mayor of Lahore has banned next year’s kite festival because of risk of injury.)
It’s late by the time we head down to the studios but Yusuf assures us that there is no point in getting there earlier. Because of the heat, all the shooting is done at night.
He explains that someone like Shaan will have several films on the go at once.
‘What sort of films?’
‘All the same,’ he says. ‘All Punjabi films have the same ingredients. One boy, two girls, one boy, one girl, two girls, one boy. We are a very emotional people, we like to cry our heart and soul out.’
Shaan arrives. A trim figure, early to mid-thirties, with black trousers and tunic and dyed blond hair. A good face, strong features, heavily muscled arms. Not unlike the young Brando.
A big wedding scene, in which Shahid plays an angry lover, is about to go before the cameras. There’s the usual scrum of activity around the set. Turbanned figures on lighting gantries re-direct the lamps, extras wait nervously in a back room, a leading lady is applying the heavy and elaborate layers of make-up that seem to be obligatory for any heroine, while the director, Sangeeta, a big, fair-skinned, bespectacled woman, prowls around like the headmistress of a particularly troublesome comprehensive, cajoling, exhorting, upbraiding and generally trying to hurry the process along.
The set is all fairy lights and soft furnishings and fussy white balconies.
‘This is what Punjabis want,’ says Shaan, in quiet, fluent English. ‘This is their fantasy of success.’
As he waits for his moment to be shot by the bride’s father, he seems calm and quite happy to talk. He says he’s been in the business 14 years and I ask him how many films he’s made.
‘223, I think, or is it 4?’ He considers for a moment. ‘And two of those years I spent in New York, so, yes, that’s 224 in 12 years’.
His father was a director, producer and writer, his mother the leading actress in Pakistan, so Shaan has no illusions about the business, or his success. He’s a family man. Loves to be woken by his daughter, he says.