bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2008) — Fall/Winter 2008 // Automne/Hiver 2008, pp. 9–15
f you travel the precipitous mountain roads of Afghanistan or northwestern Pakistan, sooner rather than later you’ll find yourself stuck behind a huge old Bedford truck, overloaded with sugar, cows or refugees, creeping uphill at five kilometres/hour and belching thick black diesel smoke.
But enjoy the experience: these are often masterpieces of folk art, whose only rivals are the colourful jitneys of the Philippines.
Jingle trucks are so named because they are adorned with skirts of lightweight chain, with metal disks and tiny bells that tinkle and rustle consolingly as the driver grinds his gears and lurches onwards. But every inch of a good jingle truck’s bodywork is also covered with bright artwork, hand-beaten tin plating, appliqué reflective tape, even centuries-old woodwork salvaged from some peasant’s house in the Swat valley. If it’s the real thing, there will be an inexplicable and un-aerodynamic upward-sloping overhang above the cab, which itself will be so cluttered on the inside with lucky rabbit charms, reflective mirror mosaics and tasteful pink flashing lights that you wonder how the driver can see out. There must be black flags hanging from the rear and, on each end of the front fender, two-metre-high coloured wands to warn the driver if the gap he’s about to enter is too narrow. And — did we forget to say? — it just has to be a Bedford.
The chaotic outskirts of Rawalpindi, among the mud-built shanty towns of the Afghan refugees, are where the jingle trucks are lovingly designed and painted; often the cost of the artwork will exceed that of the basic truck. Favourite designs are white horses, ducks arising from bucolic lakes, rampant tigers and — mystifyingly — huge portraits of a medal-bedecked General Ayub Khan, one of Pakistan’s earlier military dictators. Recent additions to the artists’ repertoires are Pakistan International Airlines jumbo jets and portraits of Benazir Bhutto, shown waving to the crowd seconds before her assassination.
Wander around the yard on a busy working afternoon and you may find an artist roughing in the face of a tiger, small boys cutting out tin fish for men to hammer into shape, fluorescent tape being cut into strips that will adorn the ribs of the truck, or an old bearded fellow chipping away at the ornate driver’s door with a chisel. There’s a chic little place in Islamabad that will sell you one of those fish for 10 times what the shop owner paid the artist.
But, if you take the time and can find the way, you can go down to the workshops and commission your own metre-long steel truck for yourself.
Mine has pride of place on the dining table. Just like the real thing, it has a Rawalpindi registration, “Bedford” hand-painted on the metal hood, the name and cell number of the artist on the inside, the driver’s on the overhang. I’m just not sure how those warning wands are going to survive the long trip back to Canada.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2008) — Fall/Winter 2008 // Automne/Hiver 2008, pp. 9–15. Read the rest of this issue →
