Now we are all sitting on the ground, around a plastic tablecloth where Ms Gambouri is laying pieces of her own homemade bread, old butter, slices of onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and cups full of milk tea (chai) and glasses full of mineral water. Her recent wealth is unequivocal and it shines on the glasses themselves, which remind you of the new Chinese bazaar of Gakhuch, or the bigger one in Gilgit, full of beautiful goods, rich merchandise, porcelains and lamps and clothes and leather bags…
Ms Gambouri comes back with a couple of double fried eggs and smiles and laughs with her toothless smile. Oh, she is so happy! These days the whole world is looking at Beijing as the UN Conference of Beijing on Women and Development is going to start in a few days. Is a stupendous opportunity to talk about women and plan about women and so hundreds of thousands of articles are leading the first pages of the main newspapers around the globe, while thousands of women are packing their suitcases to fly to the Chinese capital with all their stories and projects, interventions and declaration. Also Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani Prime Minister, is preparing to go, a female leader from one of the most male dominated society, beautiful and tragic heroin of what the western world still sees as a black, barbarian, traditional theocratic world.
Ms Gambouri doesn’t know about Beijing, China, the UN Conference. Nor does she know about Benazir Bhutto, that the PM is going to China or that in a few years the Iron Lady of Pakistan will have to leave the country on corruption charges, while her husband - Mr 10% - will languish in a Punjabi jail for several years. But Ms Gambouri is very happy because her eggs production is growing and she is saving some little money and her husband can work less – and love her more (this she says out laughingly, while the other women blush and hide laughingly as well behind their dopattas); and her children and their own children, they all enjoy this new well worked for wealth. And so it is, that while I sit in this beautiful courtyeard of a beautiful house in one of the most beautiful valleys of Northern Pakistan, the world is moving on, and thousands of women are going to meet in Beijing to declare that the time of the women is finally arrived, that there will be no more disparity, no more pain, no more poverty. Women all around the world, unite!
At sunset, we leave Ishkoman and its spectacular valley that reminds me of alpine scenarios from the Italian mountains. I look at Narghiss, my colleague at the Agha Khan Rural Support Program, and at the way she tightens her dopatta up on her head while the jeep is fast approaching Gilgit. How big this little market town looks like after a day spent in Gakhuch, Yasin, Ishkoman. A nest of lights and life encased in yet another valley along the feet of the Karakoram range. Is late evening when we reach Gilgit. Home.
