#Chitral lover, British author, charity worker #MaureenLines died

CHITRAL (Gul Hammad Farooqi) British traveler, charity worker, writer, author and a friend of the people of Kalasha people of Chitral, Maureen Lines aka Bibi Dow has died at the age of 80 in Peshawar.

She was born in North London in 1937, but spend about 30 years of her life in Pakistan. She began travelling in Europe at the age of seventeen, lived in Paris and in 1961 immigrated to United States. Three years later she hitched-hiked across Turkey and Syria to Damascus and so began her abiding affection for the Arabs and respect for the world of Islam.

Since then she returned to the Middle East and travelled to North Africa; she has lived on a Greek Island and in Beirut; sailed through the Persian Gulf and travelled in Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank, India, Western China and extensively in Pakistan. She has published a number of articles on both sides of the Atlantic and in Pakistan and sold two Gothic novels in New York.

She was the author of Beyond the Northwest Frontier, The Kalasha People of South Western Pakistan and Journey to Jalalabad.

She came to Pakistan in 1980 and again in 1981. She then returned to New York and took two years studying medical emergencies and qualified as an Emergency Medical Technician in 1984.

In 1986, she returned to Pakistan where she worked as a ‘Barefoot Doctor’ in the valley of Kalash Birir for a number of years before starting up the Kalash Environment Protection Society with seven influential Pakistanis in 1993.

In 1995, she started up the British charity, the Hindukush Conservation Association with Sir Nicholas Barrington, the then British High Commissioner to Pakistan, and Keith Howman, President of the World Pheasant Association. Source told that she was also given Pakistani nationality.