Camel Milk

This is my first dispatch written in Peshawar, Pakistan, on the way back to the Yellow House.

 The SS Club has been like a second home to me for the last 20 years. It is a strange place caught in a surreal time bubble as it was set up by the Nazi SS when they were searching for the lost Arian tribe. There is a shooting gallery in the basement which still functions. The rooms have carved Bavarian style fireplaces and decorative wooden wall tiles which must have made the place feel, for its members, like they were in Germany. We filmed scenes in the Club for our Great Dictator Satire which are included in Ukraine Guernica in the club. It feels totally spooky down there with stuffed animal trophies and bookcases filled with Nazi literature. 

This is a special moment for me because we are about to shoot the fourth film in our series titled TALILAND which includes Miscreants of Taliwood, Love City, and Snow Monkey. The new title is still being debated amongst us, but I favour Eye of a Needle.

The first film, Miscreants of Taliwood was entirely created out of the yellow House and every time I walk down to the reception, I remember the scenes where:

1. I meet the action hero Javed Musazai and he asks me to play his brother in a drama. I doubt whether people will think we could be brothers but he insists we look the same and points to his eyes—saying “same, same.” He has amazing greenish blue eyes. The manager of the SS Club, Shahid, laughs and agrees.
2. When I am in the reception watching myself on Pakistani Television series playing the part of a western hostage taken prisoner by terrorists. I joke with Shahid “You were supposed to protect me!”

This time when I arrived at the SS Club I went for a walk with Arshad (the small Pashtun Movie star who is like an adopted son for Hellen and I) and was stunned to see a large camel standing beside the main road of University Avenue. It looked like a vision of the past placed in the present with modern cars speeding past it. There was a young boy named Ali who had a polished silver bucket and was trying to sell milk from the camel which had very full titties. Arshad made a social media post with me and the camel. I joked that I was going to buy the camel for the Yellow House and use her instead of cars.

The next day we came back with my camera and found Ali and his camel much further down the road. I took what I felt to be some of the best photos of my life and was very excited to come back and download them. But unfortunately, I had given the SD camera card to Waqar to put on a hard drive. The camera had been empty. I felt very annoyed with myself and kept going back to do again but Ali and the camel were gone.

In a dream last night, I was talking to my deceased mother and she quoted the bible “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.”

I immediately woke myself up and wrote it down realizing it could be a possible title for our new documentary and I did not want to forget. “Eye of a Needle.”

This has always been one of my favourite quotes from the New Testament along with “Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself” and “Cast the first stone he who has not sinned.”

Creating the Yellow House in Jalalabad and then getting the Taliban to support it has been like getting a camel through the eye of a needle. To many it seems unbelievable.

THE LAST VIDEO STORE

Today I woke up at the SS Club knowing it was my last day before heading over the Khyber Pass and through the Torkham Border to Afghanistan.

I can never come to Peshawar without visiting Bul Bul, the biggest small person star of Pashun Film, who has become one of my dearest and most treasured friends. He was Arshad’s mentor and teacher introducing him to the Taliwood industry. Arshad and I caught a rickshaw to visit this Prince of the Small People, in Nishterabad, the centre of the Old City.

We have always met at a video store which was the agency for actors in the Pashto films which I documented in Miscreants of Taliwood leading me to become a producer of Pashtun dramas like our vampire films Moonlight and Starless Night.  Back then, the store was where I would collect the actors for my dramas or, if I was cast in one, that is where I would wait for the director. It was the time when the DVD movie industry was booming and the Pakistani Taliban were trying to destroy it by bombing stores, raiding sets and killing actors. No one would have thought it would have ended by 2024, with a whimper and not the bang of violent attacks. Netflix is the culprit. Doomed by streaming, this once vibrant culture has all but vanished.

The rare exception is when its former TALIWOOD superstars get together and find a way to finance a cinema release.

 When we met at the airport in Islamabad Arshad was beaming with excitement to tell me he had been cast in one of these dramas with the mega stars, Abass and Jangir. Their film, Ishq Mubarak (Love Congratulations), is presently screening in the one remaining cinema in Peshawar. Arshad plays Abass’ little brother and was proud to tell me it is a love story with no violence.  Abass featured in our Moonlight series of Vampire dramas and is like the Brad Pitt of Pakistani Film, a super-super-star. And Arshad was one of the original stars of our Love City trilogy made at the Yellow House.

The Pashtun language film industry and everyone employed by it depended on DVD sales for their survival.

In our film Snow Monkey, the ice cream boys sell DVDs of our Yellow House dramas from their wheeled carts, off the street and over the fences of houses, to help finance the children’s drama they made.

This August in 2024 there is only one video store left—the same one I always met Bul Bul at, and where I met him today. It is possibly the sole remaining video store open for business in the world. When I made Miscreants of Taliwood it was the hub of film culture in what was the Hollywood Avenue of Peshawar. Now it is THE LAST VIDEO STORE still selling movie and music discs from its shelves and the buzz of a thriving industry has gone. 

As well as meeting up with Bul Bul I wanted to try to buy a CD music player. I have brought all my favourite albums on CDs, with me to play at the Yellow House.  Last time, when I was in Afghanistan, I searched the whole of Jalalabad and Kabul but could not find a single CD player for sale, anywhere. I thought this must be due to a Taliban ban on selling music. But it was the same in Pakistan a few days ago, when I searched Islamabad. I was told CD players are a thing of the past no longer available here, not because of the Taliban but because of iTunes. People download music onto their phones and listen through headphones.

Bul Bul led me to an electronics store that had some remaining DVD players that can play CDs. One cost me just $7 and I think Bul Bul beat the salesman down from $14. Then we went to a second store and purchased small speakers.

Back at the video store I suggested to Bul Bul that we make a Tik Tok comic video and that he should direct it.

The improvised script was simple. Arshad and Bul Bul (now fifty-two years old) would play being my children, and we would walk into the video store holding hands and begin a comic routine. We have worked together so long nothing more was needed. Once through the entrance they both leapt onto my hips, clinging like Koala Bears and pointed to the faded racks of video movies. I deposited them on chairs so they could reach up to select titles, and we danced with joy holding up covers which have our faces printed on them. For a moment the old days were back, and the shop owners were all smiles. Much laughter rang out from the audience that had gathered outside the shop. 

Bul Bul now runs his own NGO organisation for the rights of small people and has a radio show.  On other visits he has had this group together at his home and it is like visiting the world the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings. He is their protector and advocate known for carrying a gun under his shirt and that says “no one fucks with Bul Bul.”

On the way back to the SS Club I ran into the ninety-eight-year-old Sufi Master Ahmad, known as White Bubba. We went for a stroll down University Avenue talking about what we are doing at the Yellow House in Jalalabad. He asked if we still have a Sufi teaching there and I gave him the sad news that Sufi Saheed had been decapitated by ISIS long ago. I left him meditating on how to find the appropriate Sufi for the Yellow House.

I have never asked how he got the scar across the bridge of his nose but suspect he has had many close calls with the kind of fundamentalists who killed our Sufi Saheed. Arriving at the mosque his assistant exclaimed “You look so alike you must be brothers.”

My experiences in this community are like a memory reel in my heart which runs up through my brain. At times I find it too extraordinary to believe I am really part of it. An Australian in Taliwood.

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