Before entering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, I saw Jamia Masjid Salahuddin Ayubi on my right. I turned the steering wheel right and stopped near the masjid. It was Asar prayer time.
I stepped out of “Foxy” — my mustard-coloured Volkswagen — and entered the masjid. As usual, I had already made wudu before leaving “Eyrie” — the eagle’s nest, my rooftop studio apartment at Markaz F-10.
I prayed Asar and came out to have something to drink from Isloo Grill across the road. But as I was crossing the road, a familiar smell — a fragrance — filled my senses.
“BāBā-Tāl [the Bell-man]!”
The name struck my mind.
The very next moment, I heard the chiming of bells in the air…
and he was there.
He appeared with smiling eyes! He was in his navy-blue robe stitched with different-sized brass bells, blue jeans torn near both knees, and white joggers.
He shook my hand and started walking with me. We reached a table in the open area of “Isloo” and took our seats. I ordered two cups of tea and a plate of pakoras.
And what pakoras they were!
Hot, crisp and golden at the edges, soft and savoury within — the sort of pakora that does not merely arrive on a plate but announces itself by smell before it reaches the table. Perhaps it was the coolness of the evening, perhaps the hunger after Asar, or perhaps simply the old affection one develops for a place where the food carries a little memory with it.
Then came the tea.
Isloo’s tea has its own personality: hot, fragrant, comforting, and served with the unhurried warmth of a place that knows its regular customers. The service was simple and attentive, without ceremony or fuss. Around us was that familiar open-air atmosphere — conversation, cups, passing traffic, the evening beginning to settle — ordinary things which, together, sometimes become extraordinarily dear.
I have a soft corner for that little table at Isloo.
Then I asked him, “BāBā! When were you at the Eyrie, and wrote that message?”
I saw a sparkle in his eyes and a smile on his face.
“You were sleeping after your night nawafil, the Fajr azan was still far, so I did not wake you. I know you always go to sleep after 3:00 a.m…”
He picked up a pakora and said, “I took your pen and wrote that line on a piece of paper… on your desk.”
I remembered that I had found that paper this morning with a short line that read:
“Evening at Spot by Roadside!”
After finishing our tea and the tasty pakoras at “Isloo”, we drove towards Spot by Roadside.
We reached Spot by Roadside in twenty minutes.
Foxy huffed and stopped.
This place is not a place. It’s just a bend where the city ends and the mountains begin to listen.
We stayed there for an hour. Just one hour — as written on that scrap of paper.
BāBā-Tāl did not get out at first. He sat inside Foxy, his robe of bells silent.
Then he looked at me.
“Do you know what holds Pakistan and China together?” he said.
I thought he would talk about borders, roads, CPEC, treaties.
He didn’t.
“Friendship is not signed on paper,” he said. “It is forged under the earth. In stone. In mountain.”
Then he opened the door.
He stepped out of Foxy — barefoot.
No socks. No joggers now. Bare feet on naked stone.
The ground there is cruel. Sharp pebbles, broken slate, thorns dried by the sun.
I winced just looking at it.
He walked.
Slowly.
Each step making a bell tremble, but no pain on his face.
He walked to the edge of the cliff and stood there. Islamabad lay 600 feet below us, a carpet of lights just beginning to flicker against the blue of Maghrib.
He turned to me.
“You know?” he said, his voice lower than the wind. “You know we are six hundred feet high from the capital?”
I nodded.
He bent down and pressed his palm to the rock.
“This is the same stone,” he whispered. “This same mountainous land that stands between Pakistan and China. There is no border in stone. It’s one spine. One backbone. From here… to Kashgar.”
He lifted his foot. Dust fell from his sole.
“My feet,” he said, smiling with those same eyes, “my feet are touching those mountains right now. The mountains that hold two countries like two brothers holding one shawl.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
The wind passed through his bells —
chin… chann…
And somewhere 600 feet below, the azan of Maghrib began to rise from Jamia Masjid Salahuddin Ayubi, from the very place where I had found him again.
He was not standing on pebbles anymore.
He was standing on a brotherhood.
Before leaving, we had one more cup of tea.
I still remember its colour.
The hot tea at Spot by Roadside seemed darker than the tea at Isloo — a deep amber, almost copper-gold, catching the last light of the evening. Steam rose slowly from the cup while the mountains turned darker in the distance. For a moment, it looked as though somebody had poured a tiny sunset into a glass.
BāBā-Tāl held his cup in both hands.
He did not speak.
Perhaps some evenings are better understood through tea than through words.
Then, very softly, his bells moved.
“Bacha…”
I looked at him.
“The mountains have spoken.”
The evening at Spot by Roadside stayed with me long after Foxy carried us back toward the city.
And perhaps that is where the larger story begins.
Pakistan and China have built a relationship over more than six decades that has survived changing governments, regional wars, international realignments and shifting great-power politics. It is commonly described as an “all-weather friendship” or an “iron brotherhood.” Whatever phrase one prefers, the relationship rests on a long record of diplomatic, economic, strategic and people-to-people engagement.
Its most consequential early test came with the 1963 Sino-Pakistan Boundary Agreement.
At a time when borders across Asia remained contested and the Kashmir dispute was unresolved, Pakistan and China negotiated a bilateral arrangement concerning their boundary. The agreement was signed in Beijing on 2 March 1963 by Marshal Chen Yi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Its text provided for joint demarcation and mapping, and Article 5 stated that boundary disputes arising after delimitation would be addressed through peaceful consultation. Article 6 also linked the arrangement to the eventual settlement of the Kashmir dispute, providing for future negotiations with the sovereign authority concerned.
That last provision is important.
The 1963 agreement did not pretend that the wider Kashmir dispute had disappeared. Rather, it created a bilateral framework between Pakistan and China while expressly leaving room for a future settlement of the larger dispute.
India rejected the agreement at the time and has continued to reject its legal effect. India’s present position remains that the territory covered by the arrangement forms part of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, which New Delhi considers integral parts of India. Pakistan, by contrast, treats the 1963 agreement as a valid bilateral boundary arrangement. These are competing state positions, and the broader territorial dispute remains unresolved.
Yet one practical fact remains difficult to overlook: Pakistan and China have continued to manage their bilateral frontier through negotiated mechanisms rather than recurring military confrontation along their shared boundary.
And that brings us directly to the present.
On 16 September 2026, Pakistan and China operationalized the Pakistan-China Boundary Joint Commission, with its inaugural meeting held in Islamabad. According to Pakistan’s Foreign Office, the commission is intended to strengthen cooperation in border management, joint surveys, trade facilitation and people-to-people connectivity. The mechanism was envisaged under the 2013 China-Pakistan Agreement on Boundary Management System.
India objected almost immediately, arguing that the commission has no legal basis because, in New Delhi’s position, the relevant territory is part of India and there is no recognized Pakistan-China boundary there.
BāBā-Tāl had been listening.
He looked toward the mountains.
“Bacha,” he whispered, “when two brothers repair a gate between their houses, a neighbour may have an opinion about the gate.”
He paused.
“But an opinion is not the same thing as the decision of the two houses.”
His bells gave one tiny sound.
“Treaties are written with ink. Commissions are created by governments. But friendship…”
He looked at me.
“Friendship is remembered by people.”
I asked, “Then what should Pakistan do?”
He smiled.
“Let diplomacy speak in the language of diplomacy. Let mountains remain mountains. And let every disagreement be handled without turning neighbours into enemies.”
His words reminded me of a simple Qur’anic principle:
“And if they incline to peace, then incline to it [also] and rely upon Allah.”
— The Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Anfal 8:61
There is another wisdom here. The Holy Prophet Muhammad [Peace and blessings be upon him] described believers as supporting one another like parts of a structure.
— Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2585.
For states, the principle is not identical, but the metaphor is powerful: structures survive when their parts support rather than destroy one another.
Aristotle is traditionally credited with describing friendship as “one soul dwelling in two bodies.” Whether applied to individuals or used as a metaphor for nations, the thought captures something important about enduring relationships: proximity alone does not create trust; repeated acts of accommodation do.
The Pakistan-China relationship has also developed far beyond a line on a map.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC, has become a major component of Pakistan-China economic cooperation, linking infrastructure, energy, transport and Gwadar with the broader Belt and Road framework. Its projects have also generated domestic debate in Pakistan over financing, transparency, local benefits and implementation. Those questions are legitimate parts of any mature partnership and should be addressed through greater transparency and stronger participation by affected communities.
The relationship therefore should not be understood simply as sentiment.
There is sentiment, certainly.
But there are also roads, ports, electricity projects, trade routes, defence arrangements, diplomatic channels, border mechanisms and generations of official contact.
That is why the phrase “iron brotherhood” has survived so long.
Still, no relationship between sovereign states is perfect.
Pakistan-China ties have their own questions: economic sustainability, project selection, debt and financing concerns, local participation, security, trade imbalance and the practical distribution of benefits. A durable friendship does not become weaker by discussing such matters openly. On the contrary, transparency can make cooperation more resilient.
The same principle applies to the border.
A boundary commission does not have to mean a reopening of every historical dispute. According to Pakistan’s stated purpose, the current commission is designed for practical border management — including surveys, movement of people and goods, and coordination between the two sides.
And perhaps this is where the Pakistan-China experience offers a broader regional lesson.
Not every disagreement needs a battlefield.
Not every boundary question needs a permanent crisis.
Not every difference needs to become a contest in which one side must humiliate the other.
Sometimes, states simply need mechanisms that keep talking when emotions rise.
The mountains around us have been there far longer than our maps.
Empires came and disappeared. Borders moved. Flags changed. Roads were carved into rock. Generations were born and passed away.
The mountains remained.
At Spot by Roadside, BāBā-Tāl had pressed his palm against one of those stones.
I remembered what he had said:
“One spine. One backbone.”
Perhaps the metaphor has limits. Nations are not brothers in the literal human sense. States have interests, calculations and responsibilities. But diplomacy works best when those interests can be pursued without turning every disagreement into hostility.
That is the real question before Pakistan and China in the years ahead: can the relationship continue to deepen while remaining transparent, economically sustainable, respectful of legitimate concerns, and useful to ordinary people on both sides?
The answer will not be written by slogans.
It will be written by roads that work, trade that benefits people, borders that are managed peacefully, students who meet one another, communities that gain from development, and diplomats who continue talking when the easier temptation is to stop.
On our way back from Spot by Roadside, we crossed the gate and entered Punjab again.
And there it was.
Masjid Salahuddin Ayubi.
The same mosque where I had stopped for Asar before beginning our journey.
BāBā-Tāl suddenly raised his hand and signalled me to stop.
I looked at him.
“BāBā?”
He smiled.
“Tonight, we pray Isha here.”
Then, after a pause, he added:
“And before Isha, I shall offer Nawafil — in tribute to the great Muslim warrior, Salahuddin Ayubi, the commander remembered for reclaiming Jerusalem.”
Foxy came to a gentle stop.
The bells on BāBā-Tāl’s robe were quiet.
He looked toward the mosque.
“Some journeys,” he whispered, “should end where they began.”
I understood.
We stepped out of Foxy.
The road had taken us to the mountains.
The mountains had taken us to brotherhood.
And now the mosque was taking us back to prayer.
I followed BāBā-Tāl inside.
After Isha and Nawafil, we came out quietly.
The night had settled over the road.
BāBā-Tāl stood beside Foxy for a moment, looking back at the mosque.
Then he said:
“Bacha…”
“Yes, BāBā?”
“Some borders are drawn on maps.”
He looked toward the mountains.
“Some are drawn in the heart.”
He touched one of the little brass bells on his robe.
“And some should never be drawn at all.”
He opened the door of Foxy.
I stood there silently.
The journey was over.
But the thought remained.
POETEARS
QUATRAIN — Coined by T. Hejazi — Where poetry becomes tears, and tears become poetry.
Two brothers meet beneath one mountain sky,
One road of stone keeps neither heart awry;
Maps may draw their lines where states must stand,
But brotherhood needs no line to tell us why.