The hidden half of the Pashtun world

As a foreign woman, I was let into the homes of the very conservative Pashtuns. Here's a short story of my encounters and experience.

Walking the streets of Peshawar

I have befriended some of the women and families I will refer to – I have changed their names to protect their privacy. We’ve shared stories, straightforward thoughts and wild dreams: it occured to me that I could serve as an escape to some of them, as they are unable to share with their own friends and family. I realize that these friendships I have made, temporary or not, make me accountable. Accountable to try and provide the most accurate and respectful facts and stories I have been lucky enough to hear and experience. While I will always strive to be critical, the last thing I want is to appear judgmental or ignorant. I also hope that my honesty and storytelling can be intertwined with the trust I have been given by these incredible women who shared small parts of their life story with me.

To my Pashtun friends, especially female, if you read this, I hope I can honor you.

The Pashtuns are a tribal society that mostly live in areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. They have their own language, Pashto, and their population is estimated to be between 60 and 70 million, of which 15 in Afghanistan. Closely following Islamic principles as well as Pakhtunwali, an unwritten ethical code of conduct, they are immensely conservative and resistant to cultural change. Some of their paradoxical moral codes include hospitality and vengeance. “Every family cultivates its vendetta, every clan its feud. Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid”, Churchill wrote about the Pashtuns in 1930. But, no matter how important vengeance is, hospitality is more important, being the very first of their principles. It is an obligation to show hospitality to all visitors, regardless of race, religion, nationality or wealth, without any expectation of repayment. Over the course of our journey through their land, we would experience first-hand the meaning and importance of hospitality, at times feeling burdened by its intensity. I will go as far as to say that I have never met people with such an unwavering commitment to their social rules.

Pashtuns are organized into tribal or family groups, often led by a Malik – an influential, and consequently wealthy, leader from the group. Excluding the Afghan Taliban – they are Pasthun - our very first real interaction with Pashtuns was in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. A Pashtun man acted as a white knight as we were being surrounded by dozens of curious men and dispersed the friendly but overwhelming crowd. He then invited us for a pomegranade juice and told us that he was very sorry he couldn’t invite us to his home, it would cause him trouble with the Taliban. It wasn’t until we reached Pakistan that we could fully understand the extent to which not being able to provide us with his best hospitality affected him.

In Peshawar, we happened to be the guests of one of those Malik leaders. By our standard, we were treated as nothing less than royalty. We were fed, provided with luxurious shelter and were treated to a very exclusive experience sightseeing the old town of Peshawar. We were walked around by men holding automatic rifles, and our host was carrying an Austrian-made Glock 17 handgun in his sweatpants’ pocket – the whole outfit was completed by a gold Rolex. During one of our evenings in their 3-story villa in an exclusive neighborhood of Peshawar, I asked – naively, I realize that now – what he was allowed to do with this gun, if someone were to, say, attempt to steal his phone. The answer “I shoot them in the head” provided insights about what they mean with revenge and justice. On another occasion, we took their private bullet, bomb and fire-proof car. There was a vertical crack, splitting the windshield in half. I couldn’t help but wonder how a bomb-proof 5cm-thick window could get such a crack.

You will have understood it by now: Pashtuns are fierce people of tradition and strict ethical code. For the wealthier Pasthuns, along with their hospitality duty comes a rather pleasant place: the hujra. A type of social club, it ranges from one room to a full house, depending on the means of the owner. This place also serves as separation between the outside and the home – which is strictly off-limits to men outside the family. I was told it is a guest house reserved to male visitors, where they are served food and are also invited to sleep. As we would experience, it comes alive in the late hours of the evening. Pashtun men of all ages gather to drink chai, eat, socialize, smoke and play Carrom - a type of pool, where you hit the puck with your fingers instead of a stick. Around 10am, the next morning, the same men gather for chai and fried bread in the courtyard of the hujra, lounging on wooden beds made of thread, allowing for the breeze to pass through. Very early on, it occurred to me that life for the wealthier Pashtun men is quite sweet.

So, what about their wives, mothers, daughters? Perhaps it struck you that I haven’t yet mentioned any women in our Pashtun adventures. That’s because, at first, there were none. Of course, I had wondered about these concealed figures for a while. Where were they hiding? What was their role? Almost every society that takes great pride in living the unchanged – primitive? – values of their ancestors is a patriarchal society. In these instances, tradition takes a less interesting turn, serving as an oppressor for half the population. As in any society devoid of women in the public space, their whereabouts are quite evident. A woman whom I spent a few evenings talking to explained concisely that “In the Pashtun culture, women are expected to stay inside the home”. While I, as a foreign woman, was perceived as a specie so remote from their women that I was allowed in all places in the clothing of my choice, local women are systematically suppressed. They exist only behind backdoors. They are the invisible chai-makers, looking at the sky from their internal courtyards, if they are lucky enough to have one. The less privileged ones look at their mud-walled house from the inside or at the bazar stands through the tiny holes of their burqa.

I learned this because as a woman, I was allowed in the family homes. When we visited the countless hujras of our hosts’ friends, the husbands repeatedly asked me to visit their homes, where their mothers and wives spent most of their time. And so, over and over, I stepped through the doorframes that separated the hujras from the homes.

One time, an engagement party was taking place as I arrived. Twenty or thirty women of all ages were gathered in their fanciest dresses and make up, laughing and talking in high-pitched voices. They were surrounding a woman in her twenties, who was wearing a glittery long dress made of many layers. Her hands were tattooed in henna drawings, her eyelids decorated with thick lashes. I was thrown into this celebration at such speed that it was as if I had landed from the sky, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I noticed, though, the gaze of the woman whose engagement was being celebrated. It was lost on the horizon, her eyes not squinting with her polite smiles. She seemed to be doing her duty, without flinching, like a person going to a job that doesn’t fulfill them. Except this work, this oeuvre in which she plays this role, is her life. Many Pashtuns are in arranged marriages; women have little to say about it, the men in the family take the final decision. I lingered for a few seconds on her eyes, which seemed to be made of glass, and I was pulled in another direction.

I went from house to house, through narrow passages and low door frames, discovering women dressed in colorful clothing, light headscarves or no head cover at all – it was a change from the burqas seen on the street. They welcomed me with the warmest smiles, urging me to sit down for tea and gossip, as they called it. I discovered women with grand culture and refreshing ideas, and their excellent English allowed for clear and engaging conversation. Such interesting figures, opinionated in ways that made me smile of interest and curiosity, hidden behind walls and courtyards. Their personalities, education and existence concealed from the world. I felt like I was given access to half of the country - an access Xavier would never get.

We spent around a week parked in a family’s hujra and I made it a daily ritual to visit several of the women at the end of the day. I took a little tour through the houses and kitchens, lit and heated by the fireplaces. After we had gone out for dinner – with the men only – one of them told me “Sarah is waiting for you”, referring to his wife whom I had met a few times. It occurred to me that I was an entertainment for them, something new that distracted them from daily life, but also a rare window on the outside world. “Which car did you take to go for dinner?” and “What did you talk about?” were some of the favorite questions. Mundane, for most of us, but precious for them. It gave them a glimpse of what life looks like beyond the front gate. A gate that rarely opened, and only for the occasional trip to the bazar or a relative’s wedding.

Sarah and I met several times over the course of our stay, however only the memory of her will remain in my mind: Pasthun women are not allowed to have their picture taken - although of course, other followers of Islam also adhere to that rule. This rule doesn’t make the women imune to the wish pressure to expose one’s most flattering angles for everyone to see on social media. So instead, they post pictures of the back of their head, turning away from the camera while the others, the husband and kids, look straight into it. One evening, while we were sitting on the couch in her bedroom, Sarah was oiling her hair with mustard seed oil and asked me about our trip - a favorite topic of hers - and what our plans were. When I told her I turned 30 during the trip, she said “I’m also 30. And I have two kids already”, smiling sadly. She told me that she hoped to be able to move to the United States someday, with her family – she was pregnant with her third child. She explained to me that she would like to be able to work. She added that her husband doesn’t give her permission to work although she has a university degree, but that it would be different abroad – far away from these social rules, she seemed to imply. Our van interested her a lot too. She kept on asking to see pictures and, after a few days, she even said she might ask her husband for permission to come see it when it’s dark – when no one can see her. I got the hint and proactively told her husband that I would be overjoyed to show Sarah our van as I was so very proud of it – a favor I knew he couldn’t refuse me. After dark, we waited for him to come and get us – the only way for her to go anywhere – and we walked the 50 meters separating her home and the van. The sheer excitment in her little shrieks was emphasis for how rare this outing - in her own backyard - was. She took pictures and videos, asking me to comment and explain. I couldn’t help but think of the many aspects of my life that I take for granted. While it’s good to remember to be grateful, some rights should be taken for granted; and that’s the painful separation between being born in the right place and at the right time, or not.

On one occasion, we were visiting the home of a man we’d met in town. Xavier stayed in the hujra, eating oranges – the usual snack this time of the year - while I was taken by our host through the gate, into the familial courtyard. No member of this family spoke English, despite being quite high ranking. It didn’t stop him from introducing me to his sister and his wife, whose curious gazes and slight boredom were now familiar to me. An older woman, in her 70s, was sitting on a lounging bed, reading the Koran. Her legs fully extended in front of her and the angle at which she was sitting gave away the long years that shaped her hip flexibility. His mother, he told me. The sister patted her hand on a lounge bed, indicating I should sit down – the usual setting for gossip. Our host sat down next to me and took out his phone and promptly opened the Google translate app. He typed quickly and the translation read “I have another love” and when my face showed my confusion, he continued typing: “I have another wife”. After some back and forth on the translation app allowing two people with no common language to share an intricately complex conversation, I understood that he had a second wife, whom nobody knew about. He explained that it was a love marriage, as opposed to his official marriage, which was arranged by his and his wife-to-be parents – a fate many Pashtuns will know. “Only God knows about her. And now you”. He seemed relieved to tell somebody, to share this secret that must be so conflicting. He told me he wished it was different. For one brief moment, I felt propelled to speak my mind – something I mostly hadn’t done. I typed on his phone “When they bring so much pain, shouldn’t social codes be reconsidered?”. He shrugged and looked at me with pained eyes, sorrowed by my judgment of the honor code that runs his and millions of people’s lives.

As we decided to leave the valley, I went back to see Sarah one last time and was in for another round of surprise. She explained to me that she does forex trading online. Then she asked me whether “Italian pizza really looks like on tv, like a flat naan?”. I said that I guessed it did, indeed, look like a naan. I hope she finds out someday.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions, you know what to do!