The Chitral team is led by Prince Sikander, a scion of the Ulmulks – and the losing captain for the two years. This is his day: to be shamed forever as a three-time loser or redeemed as champion of the mountains. The polo match is still a week away, but Siraj says the Chitral team is already in the mountains making for Shandur, usually six hours on bumpy roads by jeep. “Even though the men and their horses are used to high altitudes, the pass is so lofty that they need to acclimatise to its thin air,” he says.
Sikander and the team spend each night at a different village, playing practice games. An hour out of Chitral, we cross a suspension bridge over a surging river and ascend a mountain track more suited to goats. I try not to look down as our jeep inches up steep gorges strewn with boulders. On my 1998 visit to the region, Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Hunza’s pale-skinned king, greeted me at the steps of the 700-year-old Baltar Fort, a granite stronghold in the region’s capital, Karimabad. His black velvet robe was embroidered with gold thread, and he wore leather slippers with upturned toes. Precious jewels studded his headband, from which a feather fluttered in the breeze. At 48, the king still has a warrior’s face, and his piercing blue eyes gripped mine. “My family has ruled Hunza for 900 years,” he said as we climbed the fort’s stone steps to the rooftop courtyard to gaze over the verdant valley. One of his royal predecessors reportedly bragged of his descent from a union between Alexander and one of the snow fairies inhabiting the alpine meadows and icy peaks. Ghazanfar pointed to Rakaposhi and said: “Our wizard can call down the snow fairies to dance with him.” As the day of the polo match draws near, the slopes of the Shandur Pass have become thick with tribesmen who have travelled from across the region. Tents have spread across the slopes like desert daisies after a rain, and charred mutton kebabs scent the air.
The two rival teams have pitched their tents close by each other, separated only by a rocky knoll. Their battle flags flap furiously in the wind while their flint-eyed horses, tethered to poles, paw the ground. In a tent amid the Chitral cluster, Prince Sikander sips tea with vistors. At 49, he resembles a middle-aged Freddie Mercury from the band Queen. He seems self-assured, but his eyes look wary.
“Polo started about 2,500 years ago as a Persian cavalry training exercise, and were up to 100 players on each side,” he tells me. “It was like a battle, not a sport. Our form of polo is closest to the original, although we have just six players on a team.”
The grudge match was established in 1933 by Col. Evelyn Hey Cobb, a polo-loving British political agent, in an effort to unify the region. Today marks the beginning of a three-day tournament, whose preliminary matches pit lesser teams from each side of the pass against each other. In the first game, a team from the Chitral side is easily beaten. That night, as a numbing wind sweeps down from the mountains, the Chitralis throw off their gloom from the loss with traditional dancing, twirling to wailing flutes and thudding drums. But keeping with local Muslim custom, women are utterly absent from the revelry, remaining in the tents that dot the slopes. The next day, the play is faster and more furious. As one player – a schoolteacher by day – charges an opponent to get the ball, his horse trips and cartwheels across the field, snapping its neck. The rider walks away with scratches and bruises, but the horse has to be euthanised by a veterinarian. After play resumes, the team from the Chitral side of the pass vanquishes the team from the Gilgit side. That leaves the sides tied with one victory each, but the preliminaries are incidental: only the final games really counts.
That night I walk over to the Gilgit tents. Their star, the Hawk, is tall and spare as a hunting knife. “I’ve been playing polo at Shandur for 20 years,” he tells me in Urdu, which is translated by one of his teammates as acolytes scurry to serve us tea and biscuits. He introduces me to Mohammad Fakir, a shaman, who tells me he has cast a spell to ensure Giglit’s third straight victory in the big game. “Sikander and his team don’t stand a chance,” the Hawk boasts.
On the day of the final match, the stands are packed, with Chitral fans on one side and Gilgit fans on the other. A few hundred women, faces veiled, are clustered in a separate stand at the field’s far end. Musharraf has taken a seat on the Chitral side, where the grandstand is located.
A toss of the ball starts the 60-minute game. I’m standing at a break in the low wall with several police officers, and time after time we have to jump to safety as the players rush straight at us in pursuit of a mis-hit ball. They crash their mounts into their opponents, seeking to unseat them, or lash out with their mallets, indiscriminately whacking horse and human. Up close, the grunting and whacking are terrifying. Sikander and Giglit player tear after a ball, both so low in the saddle that their heads threaten to hit the ground. The Giglit horse noses ahead, and the rider takes a mighty swipe, sending the ball hurtling into the goal. Thousands of Gilgits cheer as an equal number of Chitralis groan. Siraj’s son-in-law, Shah Qublai Alam of Lahore, captain of Pakistan’s polo team, watches from the main grandstand. He shakes his head at the violence. “We’ve so many rules in mainstream polo, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, strictly controlled by a referee. In our polo, a chukker lasts just seven and a half minutes, and then you change horses. And that’s at sea level. I can’t see how the horses can go at it for half an hour at a time without a rest.”
Sikander charges into melee after melee, sometimes hitting the ball, sometimes lashing an opponent. He scores the first goal for Chitral, and to the roar of his supporters charges straight down the field, holding the ball in the same hand as his mallet. With the many bands playing his special song, he tosses the ball into the air as he reaches midfield and with his mallet thumps it on the fly deep into enemy territory. This manoeuvre – the thampuk – singals the restart of play after the goal.
At halftime, the score is 3 all. While players and horses try to catch their breath, soldiers take to the playing field to perform traditional sword dances. After a half-hour, the game resumes, and the score seesaws through the second half –which finally ends with the teams tied at 5 goals each. Siraj, who has been doing commentary over the PA system, announces that the teams may now elect to toss a coin to decide the winner or play on for 10 minutes of overtime. “They have pushed themselves beyond their limits, and any more could be dangerous to man and horse,” he intones. But Shandur Pass mountain men don’t toss coins. The horses’ chests are heaving, and the game has slowed a bit, but the two captains insist that they play on. Overtime ends with the score tied at 7 all. Sirai at the microphone, pleads for the players to toss a coin to end the match. But no one is surprised when both captains insist on playing 10 minutes more. The tension has become almost unbearable. Even with the score still tied, Siraj announces that “this is the greatest game ever” in the grudge match’s 73-year history.
Play resumes, and Chitral scores a goal, and then another –
Sikander’s third of the game to put the game beyond doubt. At last, it’s over: Chitral 9, Gilgit 7. As Sikander hurtles down the field and performs a final thampuk, the ground shakes from the Chitralis’ cheering and stomping. President Musharraf strides onto the ground. Spurred on by flutes and drums, he lifts his arms in the air and performs a traditional Chitrali victory dance with Sikander and his team. Amid the tumult, Prince Khushwaqt approaches the field with the brisk enthusiasm of a much younger man, but a soldier bars his way. In true Ulmulk style, the nonagenarian thrusts the soldier’s gun aside with his walking stick and embraces his victorious son, Sikander.