Afghan boy drinking Chai (Tea)
The most difficult part of writing is to know where to begin, just as the most difficult part of speaking is to know where to stop. Nothing is more irritating then a blank sheet of paper staring you stupidly in the face. When you are bursting to write but cannot make up your mind how to set about it.
I want to talk about the Pakhtoons, the people I love, which makes my task harder than ever. I want you to love them as I do. But the Pakhtoon is not easy to love. He takes a lot of knowing. He is the most complicated simplicity . I want to bring him down from the peaks of his mountains and fields face to face with you in his torn clothes and grass shoes, his eyes full of manliness, laughter and the devil, and his head full of a childish and noble pride. Ye s I want to bring him to you and make him talk to you – of his struggle and his dreams, of love and feuds, his field and his watchtower.
I shall make him sing his love songs to you, so that you may feel the throb of his heart. He will tell you of Pakhtoon fairy tales so that you may listen to what he tells his child. He will tell you stories of his village so you may see how he lives. He will talk to you about the moon so that you may know how he loves. He will talk to you about his customs so that you may understand his laws. He will talk of dacoities, raids and duels so that you may know t he power that drives him. He will talk to you of priests and magic and charms so that you may know the darkness in his heart. He will talk to you of life and death and right and wrong, and I hope by that time you will know him.
Afghan boy holding gun
The Pakhtoons temperament, like his clothes, is picturesque and elegant. He loves fighting but hates to be a soldier. He loves music but has a great contempt for the musician. He is kind and gentle but hate s to show it. He has strange principles and peculiar notions. He is hot blooded and hot headed and poor and proud. He is a temperamental neighbor who might become a loving friend , or a deadly enemy. He knows no happy medium; that is his greatest virtue a nd his greatest drawback.
Songs and poems of a nation are its spiritual self-portraits, provided the race is primitive enough to be honest. It is easy to be honest in feeling – one cannot help it – but extremely difficult to be so i n the expression of it, especially as men become civilized. When custom begins to dictate to instinct, when the eyes look more at the listeners then at the face of the beloved, that is the time when convention overcomes music, ethics overcome passion, an d desire is substituted for love. So if you find the Pakhtoon expressions too brutal and naked and direct, do not forget that he lives a straight and primitive life in a lonely valley or a small village.
If you look into his eyes, they are clear, manly and bold. They do not know fear, and wont live long enough to know death. He never takes cover in a fight and always laughs and sings when he is frightened. He will soon die fighting, a man as brave and strong and handsome as he, for he knows only how to love and laugh and fight and nothing else, he is taught nothing else.
The Pakhtoon has a tender heart but tries to hide it under a rough and gruff exterior. He is too good a fighter to leave his weakest part uncovered. “Don’t be so sweet” He says, “that people may swallow you up nor so bitter that people may spit you out.” So he covers his sweetness with bitterness, self-preservation pure and simple. His violent nature, strong body and tender heart make a very unstable combination for living but an ideal one for poetry and co lor. He keeps a rough face because he does not want you to see his soft eyes. He would rather you thought he was a rogue then let you see him weep his eyes out for his wife.
Afghan boy holding a dove
His father and mother try to inure him to the hardness of their own lives. “The eyes of the dove are lovely,” they tell him, “but the air is made for the hawk. So cover your dove-like eyes and grow claws.” He becomes a hawk. But sometimes in the evening he forgets life and its hardship and begins to coo like a dove.
Afghan drinking water
You cannot understand his poetry by reading it; you must hear and see it. You cannot understand velvet from a description of it. You must touch it with your fingers and rub it against your cheek in order to know the deep and subtle shades of softness that go to make it. Therefore if you really want to hear and know a Pakhtoon poem, go to the bank of one of his many rivers, preferably in the evening when the girls go to fetch their water and the youths hover around to get their daily dose of hope and longing, the only wine the Pakhtoon drinks.
A Pakhtoon cannot think about love without marriage, if he does, he pays for it with his life and therefore all his love poetry is about those who dared it. Society all the world over will hound you for bre aking a convention and worship you for daring to do so. Man has a way of worshipping the breaker of idols while posing as a great devotee of the temple. The Pakhtoon may shoot the lover of his daughter but he will sing to the glory of love. A strange att i tude, you will admit. No stranger than yours when you would hang a thief and admire a merchant.
The Pakhtoon has thousands of customs – for death, birth, marriage, love, hate, and war. To try to count them or even to attempt a very sketchy portrait of their purpose and function is impossible. They are neither good nor bad, for they depend on time, place and circumstance. But this can be said about all of them, that they are an attempt to hold and preserve a standard of value and way of life that has given the world a great fighter and a poor soldier. When a Pakhtoon is a child his mother tells him, “the coward dies but his shrieks live long after,” and so he learns not to shriek. He is shown dozens of things dearer than life so that he will not mind dieing nor killing. He is forbidden colorful clothes or exotic music, for they weaken the arm and soften the eye. He is taught to look at the hawk and forget the nightingale. He is asked to kill his beloved to save the soul of her children. It is a perpetual surrender – an eternal giving up of a man to man and to their wise follies.
Being direct and rather thick between the ears every Pakhtoon imagines he is Alexander the Great and wants the world to admit it. The result is a constant struggle between cousin and cousin, brother and bro ther and quiet often between father and son. This has proved his sole undoing through the ages. They have not succeeded in being a great nation because there is a Jinnah in every home, who would rather burn his own house than see his brother rule it.
A violent temperament, a domineering nature and abysmal ignorance are his only sources of inspiration. When he cannot be the Lord Mayor of Delhi, he develops a great contempt for Delhi and a great love for his two and a half acres, where he can and does function as Lord Mayor. He loves his own freedom, but hates to give freedom to anyone else. A true democrat. He thinks he is as good as anyone and his father rolled into one and is stupid enough to try this sort of thing even with his wife. She pays for it in youth and he in old age.
He suffers from a pronounced lack of tact and a distinct excess of practical self-expression. He would rather shoot his way out of a problem than get a head ache thinking about it. He has great ambition and no patience; that is why he usually dies rather young. He has a great heart and a thick head; that is why he makes a charming friend and a fine host. He has a proud head and an empty stomach; that is why he is a great dacoit.
When he has to choose between ransom and alms, he chooses ransom because he is a man and not a worm. He looks at the torn clothes of his beautiful young wife and the hungry eyes of his child, he picks up hi s rifle and grits his teeth and goes into the jaws of death to procure a yard of cloth for the one and a mouthful of food for the other. When a social system fails to provide for his dear ones, he tramples it down under his grass sandals. When a politica l arrangement decides to starve him and overfeed another he shoots holes into it.
That is a quality in him which I admire he would rather steal than beg. So would I. He would rather face the anger of God and man than the shame and disgrace of poverty. He would rather look into the fright ened eyes of a kidnapped merchant than the sad accusing eyes of his ill-fed wife and the hungry, hopeful glance of his wretched children. I would rather see a man hang for dacoity than see him crawl along a pavement with outstretched palms, asking for al m s from those who have found generous buyers for their souls. The Pakhtoon loves to steal because he hates to beg. That is why I love him, inspite of his thick head and vain heart. He would rather break his head than sell it with that genteel submission so common in civilized man.
I have come to the end of my story. I hope you enjoyed hearing it as much as I enjoyed telling it. Reading is the civilized form of listening, and writing a complicated way of talking.
I have tried to tell you of my people. Not from a cold, unbiased, unprejudiced point of view, because I am not a stone, which is the only thing that may be described truthfully as unbiased.
Thought is an expression of prejudice. Inspiration is above prejudice and therefore above thought. Prejudice and bias is mother’s milk to man. The sooner you admit it the better. When I see a judge of the H igh Court, with his serious face and his noble wig, dispensing “unbiased justice,” I always want to laugh. No. I wont do that. I am a Pakhtoon and must be honest, so I will frankly admit that I am prejudiced in favor of my people. Indeed I would hate mys e lf if I were not.
I have given you my picture of them. How could I give any other! I love them in spite of their murders and cruelty, ignorance and hunger. Because he kills for a principle and cares not who calls it murder. He is a great democrat. “The Pakhtoon,” he says, “are rain-sown wheat – they all came up on the same day – they are all the same.”
But the chief reason why I love him is because he will wash his face and oil his beard and perfume his locks and put on his best pair of clothes when he goes out to fight and die. The dear child wants the h ouris to like him. He thinks God will dislike a dirty face as much as he does himself; so he washes it.
He says Allah
Is good and sweet
To him who laughs
And sings and dies.
He says the cowards
Weep and work,
But fighters go
To Paradise.
I am definitely prejudiced in his favor. I hope by now you too are prejudiced.
Source: Gulalai
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