TRAVEL AND CULTURE

Note: I wrote this in 2005. It is included in my book FRONTIER: FABULOUS AND FORLORN. I have shortened the paragraphs to make it easier for the readers reading it on the web. All pictures displayed at the top were made by Haris Khan of Mardan during his visit to the Kelash valleys in April-May 2024. Some of these pictures reveal how lifestyle in the primitive valleys has changed.

PRAYING WITH THE CONVERTS

BY: NASSER YOUSAF

In the good old days the word "Kafiristan," since rechristened as "Kelash," used to evoke a sense of primitive lore, mystery, curiosity and inquiry.

But times have, indeed, changed rapidly. The wheel of progress has left nothing for imagination. Nothing, absolutely nothing, remains a secret and likewise no knot lies untangled. No people seem to have been left undiscovered and no territory appears to have been left uncharted.

Since man was determined to find out every soul hidden from view, he mounted a horse and discovered the three hideouts of Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir, inhabited by the Kelash people in the remote mountainous region of Chitral.

Attracted by the ancient, coarse way of life of the people so explored, man found his journey on the horseback too

exacting and hence decided to harness the travails of his unbridled inquisition through carving out of a track for his jeep in the steep, rugged and treacherous mountains.

The road carved out to reach Bumburet, the largest and most thickly populated of the three valleys, is so narrow that it barely holds the jeep back, from falling down the precipice and into the bottomless depths of the gorges running thick with fast flowing water.

Although journey by jeep to Bumburet, its economy in time apart, has accentuated the perils of the undertaking; yet men, both uninitiated as well as professionals, keep flocking to the three vales in search of the substance that continues to be the subject of endless inquiry, controversy, conjectures and hence of voluminous travelogues.

For a great many of them the quest ends, pitifully, as nothing beyond the ordinary.

A couple of kilometers short of the Bumburet Bazaar there is a mosque that is unique, neither in architecture nor stands out for its grand size. Yet sitting serenely under the canopy of a cluster of walnut trees, this mosque is distinct from the other mosques because it has been built by the converts from the Kelash religion

The prayers in this mosque are led by Majeedullah, a lean, sparsely bearded convert who has a number of his relations, including his uncle, still clinging fast to the religion practiced by their grandfathers.

The mosque, consisting of a hall, a veranda and a patchy lawn of grass has been built by the side of a fast flowing noisy stream. Dark grey mountains hang on the environs a little distance away.

As Majeedullah proceeds towards his position on the pulpit, he is followed by a wholesome crowd of not less than seventy of his clansmen, mostly young boys, Into the main hall to listen patiently to the Friday sermon being delivered by their leader in his stuttering Chitrali accent.

The scene outside the mosque is not untypical of the whole area of Bumburet. Apparently, there is pretty little to pick from. A group of four girls, all beautiful and attired in their traditional Kelash dress, are returning merrily back to their homes from the school.

Neither these school girls nor their mothers wearing the same dress and occupied in their ancient job with their sickles, leave the inquisitive visitors, stepping out of the mosque in tow with Mageedullah, with any sense of the extraordinary.

In fact the scene is not at all dissimilar to such mundane activities in any other part of the sub continent.

The Kelash are said to have moved from across the high tablelands of Asia into their present settlements many centuries thence, with their cattle and mainly agricultural bearings.

They, with their primitive lifestyle, are, therefore, considered to be the custodians of antiquity. The prayer leader and his fast expanding band of converts are perceived to be a tangible threat to the extinction of one whole ancient civilization.

Majeedullah would proudly announce to how Tableeghi groups (Muslim Missionaries) coming to their area, from far and wide were influencing and changing the way things stood before.

Look! Life after conversion is characterized by a sense and feeling of all round cleanliness as opposed to scant regard for the same in our former disposition, the cleric in his mid thirties would explain with a broad grin on his small markedly triangular face.

The arguments like those being advanced by Majeedullah and his companions have to be seen in the backdrop of concern that the prehistoric Kelash civilization needed to be preserved from the looming threat of mass conversions.

Despite an array of temptations and persuasions, the move, however, has met with little success except of course with some hardened Kelash. "I will deal with the Hell and Fire factors when they come about but I will never change my forefathers' faith," is how one such fellow replied with stoic indifference when his

Chitrali friend warned him of the Life after Death.

But the odds are heavily tilted against this hell-bashing fellow as the size of his community is shrinking by the day despite the immense interest being exhibited by some to stop the tide.

A Greek-funded, high-rising stone and wood structure, envisaged to function as center for the preservation and promotion of Kelash culture, is getting final touches.

A strikingly handsome, tall and stoutly- built Kelash who quite interestingly has added "Khan" to his surname Faizi is present on the site as a work-charge. Dressed in shalwar-kameez and speaking fluent Pashto, a suave Faizi is the exact opposite of what the cultural center might be striving to protect.

Mr. Faizi is one of those hundreds of Kelash who having travelled widely, have imbibed the ways of the world and, less charitably, lost their primitive innocence. If this is not enough, why a Kelash lad of eighteen something would be called Najab Hussain, an explicitly Islamic name.

Najab Hussain, as he gazes at the proceedings down the slopes from the balcony of his wooden house in the company of his aged parents, is finding himself in the eye of a dilemma. A second year student in the government college Chitral, Najab is professedly of the Kelash religion. He, however, does not know how to defend his faith with an Islamic tag attached to his identity.

This college lad has something in common with his close neighbour, the septuagenarian Bedana, who has learnt the crafty ways of the world from the squalid backyard of her house perched on the hillock that inhabits the biggest concentration of Kelash.

Bedana has suddenly woken up to discover the capitalist in her old, haggard body as the grease and filth stuck to her household, for eons, is turning out to be her most prized possession.

The Kelash souls, inhabiting the vibrant body of Najab and the dilapidated structure called Bedana have already deserted their living quarters to settle in the more promising pasturelands.

The space for the dispirited Kelash souls was getting smaller by the day. The awful stench of the decomposed dead bodies was getting mixed up with the infamous odour of Lahori murgh-choley which the enterprising Punjabis have cared to provide in the last extremity of the planet.

So the dead now get buried, after the ceremonies marking the journey of the decreased in Kelash fashion, from the grief-stricken, ephemeral existence are over. The graveyard in the chinar and walnut grove lies unattended with some empty wooden caskets containing the few time-resistant human bones.

Each new grave being dug in the grove is burying with it the few surviving traces of Kelash culture. These are some of the things that even Ms. Maureen Lines is finding hard to help.

Having lived, off and on, among the Kelash for over two decades, mostly in the Birir valley, Ms. Lines recently got her citizenship certificate from the Government of Pakistan.

Ms Lines is the most authoritative witness to the gradual elimination of customs and traditions of her favourite tribe. And she is not oblivious of the fact.

Although this learned author of two books on the North West Frontier and Afghanistan must surely be one of those great humanitarians who would not like the Kelash to be viewed, like the endangered ibex specie, only through the binoculars, yet the volunteer in her is fighting an uphill task, characterized by conflicts and realities, to help her chosen people retain at least some of their distinctive ways of life, of which there seem to be little left.

"Bashaleni" the quarantine house to which the Kelash confine their women folk during their monthly Menstrual cycle, Is one of the few extant Kelash customs in a changing kaleidoscope. The survival of this custom, too, perhaps is owing to and dictated by urge of the moment as Kelash see little charm in clinging to things that can not be put to use. 

The present-day Kelash do not seem to be over obsessed with the thorny issues of faith and rituals either as they visit their prayer hall, Malosh, only when they are hard pressed to invoke the blessings of their designated gods. 

It is generally believed that of the several thousand known Kelasha,  only about two thousand and seven hundred are now left who are still holding on to their ancestral identity, although less out of any consideration of faith and more out of the temptations attached to the label. A little time spent among the Kelash reveals these subtle and not too subtle contradictions.

The contradictions are all the more striking in the household of Behram Shah, the rich and famous among the Kelash who is all set to show his mettle in the political arena. 

Shah owns two houses separated merely by a stepping-stone. The older house is painted and anointed in black smoke and filthy grease and meant for the eyes of gullible tourists and the newly built is where he lives with his family. 

Fairly cognizant of his Islamic name, Behram is wittingly romping home the advantage of being the old Kelash with out foregoing his share of the comforts of the modern age.

Retaining and protecting the pristine charm of the Kelash culture is the most unsettling of all issues that confront the lobbies striving to work towards that goal. 

Whether to allow the Kelash the right of choosing their faith sans coercion or temptation is one aspect of the problem. And on the more serious side why the comforts of life be denied to a people merely for the sake of drawing perverted pleasure out of their misery. 

It is time to make confessions. Kelash has been lost to Hotel Alexander and Hotel etcetera etcetera that were built by some swindlers, defaulting on their bank loans. 

Alas! Kelash can not be revived by dancing away our evenings in the company of the beautiful Kelash maidens.

The road to Bumburet will remain strewn with rocks, boulders and the ever-lurking threat of unreported deaths in the labyrinthine defiles, but the hazards-prone journey will yield no dividends, a few years hence.