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| I began the tenth week with a half day off-- complete holiday where anthropology
was forbidden. After much discussion I agreed to go into the sheep business with
a tenant farmer in the village. Three visitors from London came to the village and
we took a tour of Taxila Museum and some of the archaeological sites nearby. I had
a rather tense night out of the village with some Chach Pathans. There was a tragic
accident in the village. I got tricked into going to another wedding (just shows
how important they are). I ended the week spending most of my time with some of
the Pathans and Gujari speaking Gujars in the village. A Pathan who lives on the outskirts of the village proposed I buy a male sheep to go with his five female sheep. We spoke about this for several days and I discussed it with several zamindars. Everyone seemed to find this very amusing (except the Pathan involved who took it all very seriously). We went to the 'mundi' (market) in Taxila and spent a few hours looking at sheep and arguing with sellers. I say we but the truth is I kept my mouth shut. The negotiations were all done in Pukhto so I understood very few of the details but the gist of what was going on was not hard to follow. After each 'session' we left the Afghan sheep seller and went to a quiet spot so my friends could explain in Punjabi what had happened. We went back to the same seller numerous times and eventually agreed on a price. I am happy with the price and some poor people have privately told me the price was good but, as usual in Pakistan, people enjoy publicly telling me I paid way too much for the sheep. Although I disagree I have had this same discussion so many times that I have given up trying to justify my purchases. My friend from Islamabad had three visitors from the University of London in town for the week. He wanted to show them a 'typical' Punjabi village that was peaceful and pretty so he called me and asked if I would mind him bringing his friends by. Of course I said there was no problem. I didn't expect how excited and pleased my village friends would be by the visit. When I casually mentioned that three visitors from London were coming by for tea on Saturday one of my hosts began preparations for a massive feast. He tried very hard to plan down to each minute but I'm afraid I thwarted a few of his efforts. I met the visitors and my friend and his wife in Taxila where we saw the museum and two of the archaeological sites. Then we came back to the village and I was amazed at the transformation in my absence. My village firends had pulled some beautiful furniture out into the sun so we could sit and have a drink in the dhéra before lunch. The London visitors saw a little bit of my hosts 'guest rooms' (the dhéra) and chatted quite comfortably with everyone. Although one of the Londoners seemed slightly disturbed by the obvious difference in the status of the villagers he remained very polite to everyone. It's impossible for me to defend the status difference since this is completely unaccetpable in my own country, but I tried to explain some of the complexities of this situation. The feast was impressive. I won't give the entire menu here but it was large and varied. My friend's wife and the female visitor from London were given a privilige I have never had-- and will never have. They were invited into my host's home to meet his wife and mother. It occurred to me then that the women of the zamindar family rarely get foreign visitors because most foreign visitors are men. From reports I got later they were extremely pleased to meet these visitors. Although I could easily be very curious about this meeting I do my best to suppress my curiousity out of respect for my hosts. I got invited to a 'young men only' night of singing girls and feasts. This is a South Asian tradition during weddings in particular. This night there was no wedding-- just a large number of friends who were all in the area and wanted to do something. It started very nicely with a good meal and lots of comraderie. Sometime in the late evening a disagreement started over money between two Chach Pathan cousins. In the beginning everyone was involved arguing and getting angry and the topic switched from women to money and back. After about an hour of this I noticed that only the chach Pathans were still arguing. All of the Punjabis were either keeping very quiet or joking about it all and trying to make peace between these two Pathans. I mostly stayed out of it. The only time I said or did anything in this argument was to take someone's pistol away when he started waving it in the air and telling his cousin to shoot him. At that point I got a little nervous and insisted he give me the gun. I gave it to a servant who quietly thanked me for intervening. I must stress here that this evening took place quite far from the village and I do not typically see this kind of behaviour among my friends here. When we returned to the village we learned that there had been a tractor accident in the village the night before. A man riding a bicycle had slipped and hit his head on the tractor trolley and died. He was a very popular man and everyone in this and the next village over are extremely upset. The driver of the tractor has sworn never to drive another vehicle for the rest of his life. There is nothing I can say to anyone about this. In my own language I wouldn't know what to say and in Punjabi I am at a complete loss regarding appropriate things to say to make people feel better. Since the man's death I have been several times to his family's house with villagers who offer prayers and condolences. The house, as is common, is supposed to remain filled with visitors for 40 days after the death, though in practice I have seen that the number of visitors sometimes drops off after ten days or so. In this case people seem more upset than in most deaths so I don't know how long people will continue visiting the house. On Thursday I woke up early planning to accompany an old man to the hospital (the same old man from Week Eight ). I learned that a zamindar was also going to accompany us. After waiting for the zamindar to bather and dress I headed out onto the main road with the zamindar. Slightly before we reached the main road I asked where the old man was and where we were going to meet him. I was then informed that the hospital had been cancelled and we were going to a waleema (wedding celebration). I complained and said I wasn't going to the waleema, I was going to the hospital. I was just going to go say hello to the man in the car waiting for us and then go back and find the old man. When I arrived at the car I was ordered to get in the car. I refused and then they promised me that the waleema would only last one or two hours. So I gave in and got in the car. The waleema turned out to be a barAt (a different day of the wedding ceremony but that's small matter-- I don't prefer one over the other). It was an interesting barAt but took much longer than one or two hours. We then went into NWFP to pray at the house of a deceased man. We then went to the maternal village of the men with me. With all of the driving and eating and tea drinking our 'one or two hours' took about eight hours. I learned a while back that the time to argue and be upset is before the fact however, once I am in a situation the best thing to do is to go along with it and see where it takes me. So on this day I mostly tried to forget the old man waiting to go to the hospital. The end of this week was spent mostly with my new sheep-business partner and his friends and family. There was a lot to discuss and much for me to learn. Although I will not be taking care of the animal myself I am curious how he is being taken care of (along with his five new 'wives') so I am pestering my partner, his brothers-in-law, his son, his friends and other Pathans with questions about sheep maintenance. |
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