Hunza Water

The hems of his jeans rolled, Rehmat Ali climbs barefoot up a tree to pick the grapes dangling from climbing vines, defying hostile religious injunctions against alcohol to celebrate a wine-making tradition that is older than Islam in the mountains of Pakistan. Every autumn in the remote village of Sher Qilla in the foothills of the Himalayas, Rehmat joins the many agile young people taking to the trees for the long-awaited harvest under the watchful eye of their gnarled and chiselled elders. Drenched in sunlight, bunches of grapes crown the treetops, where they are safe from the opportunistic reach of greedy farm animals. Rehmat — slim, and with an aquiline nose — begins to pick the forbidden fruit. Working with his bare hands, he places the green and crimson grapes in a wicker basket that is lowered to the ground along a rope. The fruit is tossed into the khor, a cement tank washed with icy glacier water, where barefoot villagers trample it to press the juice. Then, ...