Tosan was a handsome athletic young man, trained in martial arts, but apparently very poor. He asked me for a loan to start a business. I sensed he had potential and arranged a loan for him. Not too long after that, he needed further help, but I thought it was better he learned to “stand on his own two feet.” In his view, I had let him down and betrayed our relationship. Quite upset, he accused me, “You’ve dragged me to death.” Clearly we had misunderstood each other. I remained outside Tosan’s world and he outside mine.
So, do we continue to walk past each other? Should we not at least try to see the world from the other’s perspective? Indeed, learning a culture is both an art and a skill, a journey that never ends. As an outsider, I need to step outside my own world – as much as that is possible – and seek to step into the other person’s world, to somehow enter the other person’s skin.
There are many ways to approach the study of cultures. Cultural anthropology has become a highly sophisticated science. At the risk of simplicity, I want to suggest a paradigm of five circles as a way to enter another world, in our case the Afghan world. Our aim is to move further towards the core of Afghan culture as much as possible. Although the five circles have an order from the obvious to the obscure, we need to keep in mind they are not necessarily sequential, i.e. that one does not need to master the outward circles before going further inside. Nor are the circles mutually exclusive; they will overlap. It may be better to view them as spirals.
Learning to Understand Culture – the Five Circles
Behavior and Objects – Learning through the eyes by observing what people do
We initially learn aspects of another culture by watching what people do, by observing their outward behavior, what they eat, what they wear, what jobs they do, and by noting the material things they own. These are things we first notice when we enter a new culture. While these observable behaviors and objects are important entry points, we often assume that they are culture. Although somewhat superficial, at the same time they are also profound. There may be deep reasons why certain things are done. It is Eid (religious holiday) for example, and we observe great celebration and much visiting. Just days before, everyone has bought new clothes. The tailors work day and night until the wee hours of the first day of Eid. Then comes Eid morning. How bright and cheery life appears as children run outside in their new attire. We all greet one another, “Eid Mubarak!” (Happy Eid!) But what are the people really celebrating?
It goes without saying that entering into Afghan culture is more than being a guest for Eid, enjoying qabuli palaw or tikka kababs, or wearing piran-tumbans. Let’s go further …
Language and Words – Learning through our ears by listening to what people say
Language is a further spiral as one walks into another culture. What people say and how they say it expresses so much of their way of thinking. As I sit in a taxi with a driver in the early morning or purchase something from the shopkeeper, I hear them say, “Bismillah” (in the name of Allah). I am probably their first customer. Even though it is simply a ritual phrase they are using, I realize they want to begin their work with God’s blessing. All this from one word!
Learning and speaking another language is a never-ending process and invaluable as one relates to another culture. Not being able to speak the local language prevents one from developing meaningful relationships with Afghans. (Of course “speaking a language” ranges from basic greetings to reciting poetry and discussing the nuances of politics and culture, and beyond.) As a person develops confidence in Dari or Pashto, it is as if other worlds open up to him, and the spiral into Afghan culture grows deeper.
But remember, words are much more than they appear to be at “face value,” than what meets the eye, or what enters the ear. Words are loaded with connotation, with double and triple meanings. Normally we think of words as a way to communicate information. True, but words do more than transfer facts or information. Through words we relate to others. Words are used to build relationships. As I pass by my elderly neighbor who spends most of the day sitting at his gate, he greets me cheerfully with the words, “A cup of tea?” No tea is ready, but he’s expressed his desire to relate to me as a friend. You may have had a great conversation with a taxi-driver. As you try to pay the fare, he says, “No problem. You’re my guest.” He still wants his pay, but he has communicated his pleasure of being able to serve you.
We can learn several points here. As we seek to enter into the Afghan world and learn their language in order to relate in a deeper and more intimate way with Afghans, it behooves us not to take everything at “face value.” Indeed, the more words are used to build up relationships, the more one becomes aware of the importance of “wordsmithing.” Speech becomes an art – both in encoding and deciphering words. By “reading and speaking between the lines,” we enter yet further into Afghan minds and gradually become aware how complex it is to enter another culture.
Another aspect of language is literature – the written word. By becoming familiar with the written word, one opens up yet another door into the other world. The value of the written word is profound as it embodies much more than one person’s voice. It becomes an expression of the values, beliefs, and realities of previous centuries. Take the ancient epic of warriors and heroes, Shahnama, by Abul Qasim Firdawsi, for example. It was written a thousand years ago, existing in oral form and in written fragments before that. Tens of thousands of Dari-speaking Afghans have listened to and enjoyed the Shahnama. This massive epic, then becomes the “word” of not only the original author(s) and compiler(s), but all who have read it or listened to it over the centuries. More on this later.
Feelings and Values – Learning through the mind by realizing what people consider important and valuable
Here we peel back another layer and enter yet deeper into another world. Values are often assumed and not articulated clearly. But as we observe and listen, we soon notice that certain people and relationships, places, things, behaviors, and events are given higher status than others. People assign things and actions to different categories. In Afghan culture, sons are in one category, while daughters are in another. In villages, men will celebrate when a boy is born, but remain strangely silent when girl is born. People may be poor, but will spend hundreds of dollars on status symbols such as fancy mobile phones and watches, extravagant clothing, and carpets.
Certainly, personality is unique. Yet it is obvious that people of a certain culture and language develop and pass on mutually accepted values, concepts of beauty, tastes in food and dress, and ways of enjoying life or expressing sorrow. For example, most Afghan homes will be furnished with similarly designed reddish carpets and toshaks (long floor cushions). We can assume that a meal at an Afghan wedding or a funeral will include qabuli palaw and meatballs (kufta). Greetings are very important in Afghanistan. If I forget to say “salam” in the morning to colleagues at work, woe is me!
In order to develop and maintain good relationships, it behooves an outsider to learn what behaviors are offensive and hurt people’s feelings. On one occasion, I was chatting with a librarian who was a considerable intellectual. He showed me a certain book and encouraged me to read it for my research. I was in a rush that day and said to him in Persian, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time right now.” He stopped me on the spot and gently reprimanded me, “You never say ‘I don’t have time.’ You say, ‘I won’t bother you today.’” What’s the difference? The first response is self-centered, the second one courteously honors the other person.
Values begin with little things, actions, and words but carry profound notions. As we take time to observe the how and why of these little things and are able to appreciate and embrace them, we will move closer to the hearts of our Afghan colleagues and neighbors.
Beliefs and Faith – Learning the heart by understanding what people believe and how they express their faith
In other words, religion. Afghans are Muslims and their faith embraces every aspect of their lives. It is impossible to understand Afghanistan and the cultures of this country without a deep appreciation and understanding of Islam – its history, doctrines, celebrations, laws, and practices, what is forbidden (haram) and permitted (halal). Many Afghans would argue that culture and religion are inseparable, that all of culture, behavior, speech, and values are subsumed under religion. There are many ways to understand the Islamic faith, as it is an ever deepening circle of different realities.
- One can study Islam formally, read the Koran and history books on how Islam developed in the Middle East and Asia.
- It is also necessary to look at the differences between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam. For example, why do so many Hazaras commemorate the 10th of Muharram (the day of Husayn’s martyrdom) with such fervor?
- By understanding Sufism, one can appreciate why a group of men will sit in a tight circle, close their eyes, shake their heads in unison, and chant, Allahu, Allahu (He is Allah, He is Allah) for hours on end.
- When you’re in a taxi or bus, you watch a passenger utter a short prayer under his lips and move his hands over his beard. You look outside and notice a shrine decorated with cloths and flags. A bus passes by with many black flags tied to it and a large eye painted on the back with the words, chashm-e bad be dur (Keep the evil eye away). It expresses a belief in the spirit world and a longing to experience blessing from God.
- Another question to consider is this: how are Islam, identity, and culture related? Is religion part of culture or is culture part of religion? Some Pashtuns see themselves first as Pashtuns and then as Muslims. Note the proverb, “May I lose my faith, but may I never lose my pakhto.” A devout Muslim will object to this notion, but it reflects the importance of the Pashtun code of honor and tribal identity for those who use it.
Worldview and the Soul – Learning the real world (if that is possible) by watching, critiquing, asking questions, listening, and reading
What is the worldview for an Afghan? How does he understand and explain local, national, and international events? Of course, how one Afghan looks at the world may be very different than how another looks at it. However, as Samuel Huntington has outlined in his controversial study, The Clash of Civilizations, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin wall, peoples around the world are asking basic questions of identity. Who are we? How are we to understand the world and make sense of it? Huntington observes,
And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and at the broadest level, civilizations.
In his book Identity and Violence – The Illusion of Destiny, the economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen downplays Huntington’s thesis and argues that every person has plural identities. To divide the world by civilizations, worldviews or “religious identities” leads to a reduced, very minimized view of people. It artificially places individuals into one and only one group. Every person has multiple identities, including religion, nationality, language, profession, and interests. Sen hinges this multiplicity of identities on a person’s freedom of choice to select his or her meaning and identity in life.
Sen is too superficial, especially for tribal cultures. His emphasis on individual choice ignores the “inertia of the tribe” which inhibits people to choose freely. Secondly, and much more profoundly, in tribal cultures there is nothing so deep, so profound as identifying with one’s own people. As is said, “blood runs deep.”
Although Huntington’s thesis will continue to stir much criticism, an increasing number of cultures have spurned any notion of universalism and are finding their identities in traditional ways of living. People are aligning themselves with others who hold the same or similar worldview.
A worldview is the way people from one culture view the world. Cultures develop constructs of ideas – usually unwritten – that give direction and definition to a people and the events around them, helping them to understand, interpret, and make sense of their experiences. The same event or experience will be interpreted differently by different people based on their worldview. If part of an event or experience falls outside this framework, a person will be unaware or blind to this specific experience. She will not see, hear, feel, or understand certain aspects of this event or experience. It is like learning another language; we cannot hear certain sounds because we did not grow up with those sounds.
Herein lies an advantage of entering another culture. We often become more conscious of our own ways when we learn the ways of another people. We learn our worldview subconsciously or even unconsciously; therefore, we are usually unaware of it. We cannot easily see or understand our own souls. But as we observe others, we begin to compare their ways of living with our ways – their themes of life with our themes. This helps us critique and understand our own culture, as well as the new culture we are entering.
At the same time, it is easy to assume our ways are the correct ways of “doing life” and even superior to others. This leads to ethnocentrism – the attitude that sees our ways as being right and prematurely judges the other culture’s values, belief systems, and worldview. Alternatively, as we enter more into another culture with a high respect for its belief systems and worldview, we can fall into a bland romanticism which sees everything in the other culture as sweet and wonderful. It is a naïve “cultural relativism” that thinks all explanations of events and experiences are equally valid, that no one way is better than any other way.
Explanations and Cautions
So how can we peel away the layers of our own ethnocentrism and move into another culture? Do I idealize another culture or interpret everything critically? How do I make the effort to find bridges of commonality as well as appreciate the differences? Learning another culture is a journey as one travels deeper and deeper into the other world; it is like going to school, where one constantly learns more about life, oneself and others.
A healthy self-awareness that we are all creatures of our own culture and worldview keeps us from a shallow mimicry of others’ ways as well as knee-jerk judgmentalism. Foreigners living in Afghanistan, or any foreign country for that matter, can easily remain outside the other world in their own cultural bubble. They may enjoy the occasional excursion into the other world and be delighted at the exceptional hospitality of their hosts, but quickly return to their own haven. Sooner or later this bubble will pop.
We have expectations and Afghans have expectations from us which inevitably lead to clashes and frustrations. Then we build walls which separate us from one other. Walls of misunderstanding have separated our cultures from each other for far too long.
Voices from Deep Inside
Afghanistan is a country of walls. Before building a house, the owner makes sure four solid walls surround his courtyard. Moreover, each wall is high enough that no stranger can peer over and look inside the courtyard. We recall the Taliban regime which politicized walls, requiring all women to carry “portable walls” (burqas) with them. In part, this reflected much of the conservative rural culture.
Not only do walls surround each courtyard, but heavy “psychological” curtains have hung over people’s lives. People do not easily reveal their personal feelings. In the milieu of courtesy, polite speech can also be understood as a wall that hides a person’s inner thoughts and emotions.
How can people living behind these walls begin to speak and reflect their thoughts and emotions to the world beyond them? How can those on the outside learn about life behind all these walls? Both the spoken and written story, emerging from behind the walls of an enclosed culture, speak to us of lives buried beneath centuries of curtains and coverings. In her Veils and Words, Farzaneh Milani considers 20th century women’s literature in Iran as an act of unveiling. Similarly, in Afghanistan, which has had a more restrictive culture than Iran and higher walls, the modern Dari short story has begun to unveil the muffled voices of a hidden and almost unknown world. Through the short story, an author offers a window into the cultural life, thoughts, and emotional aspirations of ordinary Afghans. He allows us to enter into the inner courts of the “circle of culture.”
I see myself in this story!
When I have been translating Dari short stories into English, many Afghans helped me explain idioms, proverbs, and colloquial expressions. One day as I was working on a story that satirizes civil servants who occupied space in dingy government offices, my colleague chuckled as he commented, “I can see myself in this story!”
Maybe that is why the English best-seller, The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini has been met with both acclaim and disapproval by Afghans. One Afghan says, “As I read it, I thought I was reliving my childhood.” Yet, some do not want their childhoods publicized. Many Afghans also read this novel very politically. The protagonist in the story belongs to the dominant culture and seeks to “atone for his wrongdoings” against a friend from a tribe that has traditionally been victimized.
A kind of anthropology
In this vein, the novel, a short story, proverbs, poetry, and art – music, songs, fine art, movies, and traditional crafts – become windows into a culture. Just as oral speech reflects language, so literature, art, and crafts are expressions of the culture in which they are produced. The study of the literature and art of Afghanistan becomes a study in anthropology of sorts, the study of a people and their culture. The written and oral story, a ceramic piece, a thousand-year-old poem, a hand-woven carpet, a well-designed painting, an Afghan movie, a ghazal-poem accompanied by music, proverbs and narrations, told by women and men – each can be seen as an image of Afghan society. These stories help us make sense of and understand the landscape of the culture.
But we need to beware. Individual stories are good and interesting, but may be an aberration or not the norm. Daniel Bertaux warns, “While social research needs to use a variety of sources in order to observe as fully as possible a given ‘object,’ this object should never be an individual … it seems necessary to collect not one but several life stories; and this contributes to solving the problem of truthfulness as these life stories may be “checked” against each other …” So we see the value of the different forms, as well as compilations or anthologies of art. To a certain extent they become the collective stories of a people.
Classical literature, for example, becomes a communal voice of a culture. In a dated document written by an Iranian nationalist on the occasion of Firdawsi’s thousandth birthday in 1940 eulogizes Firdawsi’s Shahnama as being “one of the world’s literary masterpieces,” and concludes,
… we must allow [Saadi, Rumi, and Hafiz] to stand side by side with Firdawsi, and call them the four pillars of the Persian language and literature, the four elements making up the culture and national character of the Persian people.
Many Afghans could identify with this sentiment, that these four classical Persian poets – as well as the two Pashto classical poets, Rahman Baba and Khushal Khan Kattak – reflect varied but real images of traditional Afghan culture through their poetry.
From a very different perspective, an Afghan family who weave intricate designs and patterns into a carpet tell a story of culture as well.
Hopefully, as you read the different chapters of this book there will be moments of increased interest as you enter into stories from another world. You will begin to mingle stories –stories of your own world and the stories of this new world. Sometimes the stories may match, other times they will clash with yours. Sometimes their story will speak to your story. Follow that thought or topic and see where this new story leads you.
