My father asked me to get each of us a broom. “Look,” he said in Urdu pointing to the sky. “The clouds are coming in.”

We were in Nathiagali, probably in 1970 or 1971 when I was about three or four years old. My parents had purchased the Nathiagali house in the 1960s as a summer home. Nathiagali is a mountain resort town, one of many hill stations in the foothills of the Himalayas. Our house, named Miranjani House because it looks out on Miranjani Mountain, was among my favorite places in the world.

Miranjani Mountain, standing at almost 10,000 feet is the highest peak in the Abbottabad District of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Our house was a large rustic cabin with a blue tin roof, wood floors and a square fireplace in the living room, which we would all gather around in the evenings. The bedrooms were full of bunk beds, and in the summer the house was teeming with kids. The dining room table was long and easily sat thirty or forty people.

Mimo reading in the livingroom of the Nathiagali house. The square fireplace is in the background on the right.

In the summer when the house would be full of kids, my father craved peace and quiet. We would tumble out of bed in search of breakfast which would usually be laid out on the kids dining table. “Breakfast is up there this morning,” my father said on more than one occasion, pointing to Miranjani Mountain. Picnic baskets were packed in advance and we kids would go off hiking up the mountain munching on fruit and snacks until we got to the top, a beautiful open meadow where we would have our picnic.

Miranjani Mountain

When they purchased the house, my mother did not like the layout. “The kitchen had the best views,” she would say. So she hired a carpenter, and the two of them went about remodeling the house so that the living room had the view of Miranjani Mountain. “Architects always marvel,” my mother would say, “that the house is standing on three beams.”

Miranjani House

The house was about seven or eight thousand feet high. We would be short of breath when we first arrived, needing to adjust to the altitude. We would sit in the garden looking out on the forests of cedar and pine trees. In July and August the fog would roll in. “Come,” my father would beckon me. “It’s time to sweep the clouds out of the house.” We would each take our broom and sweep at the fog that would make its way into the house. It was our own little magical ritual.

Sweeping the clouds in Nathiagali