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Once she was Pushkalavati, the Lotus City of antiquity. Later, Purushapura, the City of Men, etched in Sanskrit chronicles. Under the Mughals, she was Pesh Awar, the frontier town guarding the Khyber.
In my youth, she was simply Gulon ka Shehr — the City of Flowers.
The gardens bore witness: Wazir Bagh, perfumed with orange blossoms that clung to spring evenings. Shahi Bagh, where families strolled at dusk, children tumbled across the lawns and almonds bloomed pale pink before falling like snow. Samar Bagh, on the northeast of the city along the Budhni Nullah before it merges with the Shah Alam River. For us, it was Gulbahar Colon, our residence, whose very name promised spring blossoms. Its lanes became our anchor after decades of wandering Punjab with my father’s government postings — Lahore, Jhang, one dusty station after another.
Here, finally, the Yousufzai scions found a home. We absorbed everything: the Hindko tongue, the Pershori humour, the graciousness of old Peshawar — while carrying with us our own frugal Pukhtun ethos. It was a city of coexistence. Sunnis commemorated Karbala alongside Shias with the same solemnity, shoulder to shoulder. Shias married Sunnis without fuss. Peshawar’s lanes were not battlegrounds of sect but gardens of shared joys, grief and reverence.
Our Yousufzai frugality met the Pershori culture of refinement. We learned Hindko jokes, acquired a taste for sheermaal with nihari, drank endless kahwa in carved hujras
In 1965, I left Peshawar for PAF School, Lower Topa. The Air Force became my new horizon, taking me from Quetta to Sargodha, Karachi to Risalpur.
Yet wherever the winds carried me, Peshawar remained my anchor — its orchards, bazaars, and laughter pulling me back like a compass needle to north.
The next anchor came when I married into Hinko-speaking Sethi and Khawaja clans — families woven deeply into the fabric of the city. To marry into them is to marry into Peshawar itself. Now imagine this: my wife has 54 first cousins. Fifty-four! A small brigade. To this day, I tease her that she doesn’t need to hold elections in her family — they already form a parliament.
The wedding itself was less a ceremony, more a campaign of joy. It lasted almost a month — a festival in its own right. Tongas lined up in rows, festooned with flowers. Drums beat till midnight, cousins danced till dawn, uncles debated the menu, and neighbours poured in uninvited as if by divine right.
As the first-born of twelve children (from two mothers — a fact entirely ordinary in a Pukhtun household), I was accustomed to noise, rivalry, and laughter.
But even I was overwhelmed by the scale of this Peshawari shaadi. It was not a wedding; it was an orchestra of pandemonium and poetry.
What strikes me now, looking back, is how naturally my clan blended into the city.
Our Yousufzai frugality met the Pershori culture of refinement. We learned Hindko jokes, acquired a taste for sheermaal with nihari, drank endless kahwa in carved hujras. We absorbed the city — and it absorbed us.
This was Peshawar’s secret: it never erased anyone. It layered identities like a carpet — each thread distinct, yet bound together in pattern.
Through the late 1960s and 70s, life still carried the fragrance of old Peshawar.
Students debated poetry on the lawns of Islamia College. Shopkeepers in Qissa Khwani played chess under mulberry trees. Afghan traders still passed through with carpets and dry fruits, as they had for centuries. The bazaars echoed with laughter, stories, and song.
It was, though none of us knew it then, the last true spring before the storm.
For in December 1979, the Red Army would cross the Amu Darya. Refugees would pour through the Khyber. The slogans of “Jihad Fee Sabilillah” would echo through Peshawar’s streets. The City of Flowers would be asked to bloom fire instead.
But that is another episode.