Across the border at Wagah, the ‘enemy’ looks quite similar and more curious than hostile

When I got there, very loud Hindi film music was blaring from the Indian loudspeakers, for which the lyrics might have been patriotic but was played at speeds different from the one in which they were recorded, so it was difficult to know.

This was answered from the Pakistani side with the following robust refrain:

Pakistan is ours/We are all Pakistani/Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan!

The barracks of the Indian Border Security Force (BSF) is decorated with their logo, "Duty Unto Death." This is next to a rack of rifles, and a full-length mirror adorned on top with a bright red query: "Am I looking smart?" The soldiers spend much time in front of it attempting to answer the mirror’s question.

They resemble nothing so much as roosters, with a red-and-white comb adorning their turbans, and white socks that go halfway over their polished black shoes. There was much good-natured shoving between the crowd of spectators, who gained ground inch by inch, and the soldiers, who tried vainly to hold their positions. The crowd on both sides must have been several hundred-strong by now. On both sides, the VIPs had already been shown to the front, right by the fence and the gate, for the best views.

Then the drill sergeants on both sides called out, and the parade began. One of the BSF soldiers, and on the other side, one of the Pakistani Rangers dressed in loose black tunics and trousers, strode right up to the gate so fast that it seemed they must collide violently, but at the last minute they stopped an inch from each other, thrust their jaws and chest out, hooked their thumbs in their belt loops, abruptly turned at right angles to each other, and goose-stepped away. Successive pairs of soldiers repeated this performance, a kind of strutting bravado, a jointly choreographed imitation of war, which inspired someone in the crowd to observe, "They’re cartoons!"

Finally, twin trumpeters played Retreat, the flags of both nations were lowered and descended slowly down a pair of crossed ropes — when they intersected on their downward path both groups of spectators applauded vigorously — and the soldiers let the crowds rush to the fence.

Hundreds of us rushed up to the gate; there was tremendous excitement, and when I was at the gate I could see why; if I stood up and looked, I could see, separated by an 8-foot-gap, Pakistanis! I saw them all, Pathans in their knotted turbans, madarsa students with their skullcaps, the women in their shalwaar-kameezes; Baluchis, Sindhis, Punjabis; and we looked at them, the Indian Gujaratis, Kannadigas, Punjabis, Bengalis, and we were amazed to see that they looked just like us.

But we were forbidden by the soldiers standing in between to touch each other, or talk to each other. We could not even wave at each other. Those who tried to wave had their hands slapped down by the soldiers — national secrets might be given away by hand signals. But we could take pictures. The only people in the gap between the two gates, the 8-foot wide no-man’s-land, were two tourists from Japan — a rich country which threatened neither side — with video cameras, turning their lenses on both sides indiscriminately.

So we smiled at each other and took pictures with our little compact cameras. The massed silent ranks of Indians and Pakistanis, men and women and babies, on this Friday evening in May when the sun was finally beginning to show mercy on the thirsty earth of Punjab, stared and gaped at each other, and made contact by smiling.

This, then, was the enemy. The two countries have gone to war three times since Independence; since both possess nuclear weapons, the next time could be the last. "An enemy is after all the enemy," a sergeant in the BSF told us. They are not like Indian Muslims, he said; those Muslims will come to power by killing their own fathers, perhaps making a reference to the family troubles of Pakistan’s Bhutto dynasty. Afterwards, some of us who got special permission from the soldiers were allowed to walk to the Pillar, an obelisk set in the ground a few yards away from the gate, where Indians and Pakistanis can come close without a fence separating them — but still not touch or talk.

The soldiers stood around with their backs to each other, mostly. Then a tourist on the Pakistani side whispered something to one of the Rangers, and he shyly came up to a friendly Indian soldier. The Indian checked to see if his superiors were watching, turned around and they were both standing together and the Pakistani tourist got his picture, the two enemy soldiers standing together grinning for the tourist’s camera.

"Is this India? Is this Pakistan?" the tourists wanted to know again and again, asking the soldiers to point out precisely where the boundary is, what country this farmland belongs to, what country the Pillar belongs to, what country those trees and this piece of ground belongs to.

Wagah is almost as close to Lahore as it is to Amritsar, the two great cities of Punjab, which was split between India and Pakistan at Independence. Nobody knows exactly how many refugees passed through Wagah in 1947, but they numbered in the millions. None of those people would be able to cross today — the border crossing is restricted to foreign nationals and cargo traffic.

Trucks come up to one side of the border, and their contents are transferred across the short stretch of territory on the heads and backs of licensed porters. Bales of cloth and bundles of betel-leaf can cross; human beings who are citizens of the countries on either side may not. An Indian or a Pakistani who needs to cross the border has to fly or endure a nightmarish 24-hour journey on a train which passes through nearby Attari, providing they are first successful in procuring a visa.