|
||
| As my weeks go this one was neither good nor bad. More of the same as other weeks
with no spectacular events. My mobile phone went missing last week and this week
was filled with periodic speculation about who 'stole' it (I am not sure it was stolen
myself). I and 20 village men wasted one morning waiting for the government to come
to a meeting the government had scheduled. There was an unfortunate argument over
funerary rites. I went to the District capitol of Attock for 2 days to visit the
college. While in Attock I bought 20 kites and distributed them out to some of the
boys in the village. I spent some time pestering people in the tea shop with a short
quesitonnaire. For some reason this week I was confronted with an increased number
of people trying to convert me to Islam. When my mobile phone went missing last week I didn't think much about it. My things are often cleaned up by Mr. Rasheed and he is the only one who can find them. I thought that when I needed it I would simply ask Mr. Rasheed where it was and he would take 2 seconds and find it for me. When that didn't happen I realized it was lost. Poor Mr. Rasheed tore my room apart looking for it. He was very upset. My host was very upset. Guest must not lose things in this village. For the first few days I thought it would turn up. Others were convinced of foul play. My Pathan friends told me this could only happen in a Punjabi village-- Pathans would never steal something from a guest. My Punjabi friends told this is what I get for hanging out with Pathans-- they cannot be trusted. Poor peopl told me that it had to have been a Malik who stole it because only a Malik knows how to operate the phone (not quite accurate-- everyone knows they are expensive and so stealing for resale is a definite possibility). Maliks, of course, say that no member of their family would steal something from a guest. I am still not sure that it was stolen. I may have set it down somewhere and some child may have found it. If a child found it then it could be in a ravine somewhere completely ruined now. In any event my host and Mr. Rasheed were far more upset about it than I was. On Sunday the government had scheduled school meetings in all the schools in the area to elect local boards. I arrived on time to find no one was there (neither villagers nor government reps). I then went to the tea shop to wait a bit. I returned to find 6 men waiting (9 were needed for the local school board). After one hour's wait about 20 men from the village finally turned up but still no government rep. After another hour we were informed that the government had announced on the news that the meetings were cancelled. I later heard rumours that the teachers were striking because they did not want local school boards. Whatever the reason it did not do much for people's confidence in their government. At a funeral in the village there were some arguments over how the ritual should be performed. Apparently the deceased's son, who now lives in a nearby city, is a Wahabi and did not like the Barelvi tradition of reading from the Holy Quran over the body after the prayers. However the deceased had other relatives who still live in the village who insisted on the village tradition-- out of respect for the deceased. I was not present at the janaza (funeral) but heard about it within fifteem minutes after it happened from a visitor who came straight to my room to fill me in. People have now figured out that as much as I talk about agriculture and farming my real interest is more in the line of disagreements and arguments. Over the next few days I heard a lot about this disagreement and have learned a great deal about the difference between Wahabis and Barelvis and who is what in the village. Three generations of Maliks have attended Attock College so I thought it might be useful to visit this college with two young zamindars who are students there. As part of the life cycle of many zamindars I thought this might shed light on the external friendships and contacts zamidars have. In some repsects it reminded me very much of my own colleges adn universities. One big difference being that although the Master's level classes are co-ed they are segregated co-ed. Women on one side and men on the other. The classes I sat in impressed me and disappointed me. I thought the quality of teaching was very good. The teachers had control of their classes and obviously had a good rapport with their students. I thought that some of the material they were teaching however was not of Master's level standard. Perhaps I haven't attended enough post-graduate classes in my own country but I imagined that the students should already have studied the material in the lectures I attended. Student life outside classes was very similar to Europe and North America-- hanging out in tea shops (in France, England and the States cafés but the ambience was the same). They discussed politics, religion, philosophy, girls and everything else except their class material-- again very similar to many students in my country. The kites I purchased in Attock a popular, if short lived, success. It had just rained before I gave the kites out in front of the tea shop and baber shop so as soon as the boys began to fly the kites they got wet and ripped. They still seemed to enjoy them so I may get some more kites for them and give them out on a sunny day. I flew a kite myself for the first time in many years and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I had the kite up around 300-400 metres in the air with the help of my kite-master friend. Our attempts to have a kite 'battle' were foiled when our second kite ripped before getting in the air. I spent a few hours at various times this week at the tea shop and barber shop conducting a very socioligist style survey. I deivated from it too much for a sociologist to really be content with it but I was pleased withe the results (see March monthly report). I had a short list of questions I was trying to get a maximum amount of data on. I have found that people are consistenly willing to put up with just about any amount of tedious questioning I can come up with. Normally I try very hard not to bore people or make them regret being so nice but this week I decided that I wanted a large number of responses to a fixed set of questions. I didn't get exactly that but I got something I consider even more interesting. One further advantage of this sort of questioning is that it allows me to perfect my Punjabi and Urdu. I can legitimately ask the same questions a dozen times in a short period of time and no one finds it odd. The questions I had written were written with the help of an Urdu dictionary and grammar book so of course they underwent some modification during the questioning. People also helped me to translate the questions into the local Punjabi for those villagers who didn't understand what I wanted. So in spite of the fact that I did not get the copious amounts of controlled data I wanted I got useful data and improved my Punjabi. My final comment for this week is on the inordinately high number of conversion attempts I had to deal with this week. Partially these can be understood because I was in Attock College-- with the intellectuals, two of whom decided that I had been in Pakistan long enough to know the Truth and so it was time I converted. This doesn't explain it all though, since I had to face two similar incidents in the village. Normally people in the village are extremely courteous and repeatedly tell me that all followers of 'the Book' are welcome and there is no problem with not being a Muslim. I guess that after three months people don't understand why I havn't become a Muslim. Perhaps they feel they have been patient with me long enough and now it's time to force things a bit. I have my protectors though. When people do try to pressure me into converting, invariably someone else comes along and sternly reminds the convertor that the Holy Quran expressly forbids forced conversion. I keep telling people I have absolutely no intention of converting but that I have the utmost respct for Islam and Muslims. For most people that is enough-- they don't want a false conversion from me-- but for a very small number this is simply hard to accept. I have another 8 months or so to go I'll see if they give up on the hopeless case (me) or intensify their efforts near the end of my stay. |
||
Return to Home Page |