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| The census/survey of the village has turned up some interesting details
on conflicts in the village. I learned about a traditional 'joke' Maliks play on
non-Maliks. Malik Asif Nawaz gave the largest dhek Bhalot has ever seen. I have nearly
completed counting every household in the village. I have decided to cut short my
field work for various reasons. The question on the questionnaire about how Maliks have helped people has turned up some very interesting results. With the help of other people I have been able to flesh out the very sketchy details I got on the questionnaires. I have heard about people killing each other over marital affairs, more arguments over land, trouble with the police for numerous reasons. Interestingly enough in the cases I have details on it's not the women being killed but the men in cases of infidelity. The family of the women take it upon themselves to eliminate the offending party. Given recent happenings in the National Assembly, which effectively blocked all debate on honour killings in Pakistan (arguing that retricting honour killings was an infringement on NWFP's cultural traditions), I find this intriguing. In Bhalot, at least, it seems that the response to an insult to one's honour is not to kill one's own family member but the outsider who was involved. Among other things it reconfirms my decision not to even attempt any village romances. I had decided to pay my census team on the 31st of July. The fact that it was a Saturday seemed fairly unimportant in a village where the only day which really stands out is Friday. I expected my team to arrive at my door at 6:30 in the morning and all be waiting impatiently outside for when I woke up. In fact they came in dribs and drabs throughout the day (the last one was paid around 9 in the evening). I had an unpleasant shock when 2 of my team received the money and then were immediately told to give Rs. 100 each to a Malik. The first time I said nothing thinking that perhaps he owed the Malik some money (this is a fairly generous Malik with the cricket team and does loan money and pay for cricket supplies, drinks etc). Then the second time I let my irritation show and asked what was going on. How can a rich man oblige 2 teenagers who have worked hard for their money to give a percentage to him? I would venture to say that not a single person in the room understood why I was upset about this. They explained to me that this is a village tradition. When a poor person has a lot of money for some reason, a Malik will ask him for some sum of money. The poor man gives over the money. the Malik keeps it for a day or two and then returns it. In this case the money was returned the same day and everyone had a good laugh that the Gora (me) was so sensitive about money. It wasn't my money anymore so of course the boys were free to give it to anyone they wanted-- but all the same I wasn't happy to think they were giving it to someone who didn't need it. I was relieved to learn that he never had any intention of keeping the money. On Sunday night a small group of men went up to Baba Shaikh Daud's shrine at the top of the little mountain to recite the Holy Koran and pray. I tagged along because they wanted me to. I did not take my video camera but did take my still camera, which in the end I didn't use. The very first prayer was for Doctor Sahib's (me) 'illness of the heart' to be cured. This sort of startled me and I was busy racking my brains to try and figure out what consitutes an illness of the heart. Excessive desire for privacy? Too much attachment to material things? Insufficient generosity to unknown guests? There are a lot of things I do that don't conform to local standards-- I used to do them but as my time comes to an end I am less interested in just going with the flow. Then more prayers about me and I realised this was praying for me to become a Muslim-- not at all a comment on my character. I asked about it afterwards and they confirmed that the illness was not being a Muslim. I can live with that. These prayers were in preparation for the largest dhek ever held in Bhalot. Approcimately 20 cauldrons (dheks) of rice were prepared and distributed to the entire village and every truck driver that passed by who was feeling hungry. It was held at the base of Baba Shaikh Daud's mountain. There was a great deal of speculation as to why Malik Asif Nawaz decided to have such a big dhek. It's a very expensive thing to give away that much rice. His explanation is that he felt in his heart that Almighty Allah wanted him to do it and when you feel something in your heart then nothing is expensive. Others had different possible reasons. One man suggested Malik Asif has received his motorway compensation money and is very rich now. Whatever the reason, the result may be a dhek 'inflation war' between various Maliks and Khans of the area to have a bigger dhek than Malik Asif. If this happens then villagers will happily sing the praises of all of them-- everyone loves these events and they are a nice break from everyday life. I have nearly completed counting every house in Bhalot. I have completely counted the immediate area of the village plus one small dhok just a few hundred metres away. I now have the more difficult task of counting all the isolated houses that are scattered nearby. They aren't necessarily part of the village but they are so close that I think they are important. Many of the residents are sharecroppers on Malik land and are frequently in the village hotels. The problem with these is that while I know where all of these are on Malik Asif's lands and one other Malik I don't know all of these for every Malik's lands. I can't just wander out into the fields in the hopes of finding all the houses. I will need a guide for this. In fact I used a guide for counting the houses in the village as well. Someone helped point out which buildings were residences and which were just sitting places (bait'heks) and which were buffalo houses (some buffalo houses are remarkably pukka-- some human houses are remarkably not). So far the village is looking smaller than most of the estimates I have had for population size. I want to check with the national census publications and compare their results with my own and finish it before I give a population figure. The population of the village has potential political consequenses and I am not so confident of my figures that I want to risk making things problematic for anyone. Finally I have decided to be back in England for the first week of October rather than stay until December. I don't think this will seriously hamper my field work and in other ways is better timing. One of the things I regret about leaving then is that the weather will turning beautiful about that time. I will have spent the past 4 and a 1/2 months being hot and sweaty and uncomfortable-- instead of enjoying the autumn like everyone here (who have earned the nice weather by this point) I'll be in England with the drizzily rain and wind. At least Canterbury usually has nice Octobers-- it'll just be November that starts me wishing I were back in Pakistan. |
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