Sharing tales of misfortune is a common practice among women in many cultures. Among the Paxtun women of Afghanistan and Pakistan, articulating ones despondency (gham) is part of a ritual which serves to establish and maintain relationships. Moreover, it also qualifies her to be a woman of honor. Grima draws a parallel between this ritual and the infamous male practice of honor killing. Her research is based on narratives encompassing Paxtun women's life histories, misfortunes, and ailments as well as the contexts in which these stories are normally recounted. Her access to different levels of Paxtun society enables her to express the diverse ways in which this ritual is performed throughout their culture.
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Benedicte Grima is Pashto Instructor at University of Pennsylvania.
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When discussing the Paxtuns, a major ethnic group which straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, one thing that scholars are keen to mention is paxtunwali, the Paxtun code of morality and honor. There is a Paxtun proverb that refers to the paxtunwali, which says ?you don?t speak Paxto; you do paxto.? But what does doing paxto entail? More often than not, the description of what it means to do paxto has come from a male scholar who studied among male Paxtuns. Hospitality (melmastia), right to refuge (nanawati), and revenge (badal) are the three precepts of the paxtunwali as they are traditionally understood.
But Benedicte Grima, as a female anthropologist and folklorist, was allowed access to the world of female Paxtuns, which had received far less attention than the more public male sphere. She argues that men and women have different ways of carrying out the paxtunwali, especially in terms of badal. Women consider it to be keeping badal when they visit one another in order to inquire about events that have recently taken place, as well as when they give each other gifts. Badal should therefore be understood more in terms of general reciprocity in social relationships, rather than just as blood feuds.
It is on these visits of inquiry that most of Grima?s ethnography focuses. She uses Dell Hymes? model of the ethnography of communication to focus on a speech event called tapos, which literally means ?to inquire? to Paxtun men, but is defined by women as making a personal visit to the female head of a household to ask about an illness or other misfortune. During each of these visits, there is a performance of a woman-to-woman speech genre. The women share stories of the misfortunes of their families in great detail, while following a sort of genre formula.
While working in the framework of the ethnography of communication, Grima also provides an ethnographic account of emotion which is compelling. She argues that emotions are both culturally constructed and socially performed; they are not simply inner states arising solely from within the individual herself. Cognition and emotion are therefore intricately linked, since one must understand the social norms in order to know which emotions are appropriate and how to perform them. She explains the performance of emotion as something Paxtun women do in order to show that they understand the cultural norms that they must follow in doing paxto. For example, when a woman is married, she must shed tears, because traditionally, being taken from one?s mother?s home and into the home of one?s husband is a tragic event, or gham. Even if one is happy to marry her husband, which is not the norm, she must still cry.
The concept of gham is central to Grima?s study. Gham means ?sorrow?, as opposed to xadi, ?joy?. In the misfortune narratives she collected at tapos, as well as the life stories she collected under more controlled circumstances, the main theme was gham. Women?s life stories were told as a series of ghams, focusing primarily on the tragedies that they had endured. This is where the subtitle of the book comes from; ?The Misfortunes Which Have Befallen Me? is an opening line to one of these life story narratives.
Once the Paxtun women learned of Grima?s desire to hear their life stories, they began to compete. The person who could tell the saddest story would gain the greatest respect from her female Paxtun peers. She would be recognized by her fellow Paxtun women as truly a worthy member of their community, because she had undergone so many hardships as a result of the Paxtun way of life, yet continued to endure these troubles for the sake of maintaining her own honor and that of her family.
Grima argues that withstanding a series of ghams is a great deal of what it means for a woman to do paxto. Being a Paxtun woman involves a great deal of hardship. A woman must stay in her home unless granted permission to leave by a male relative. She is separated from her family in a patrilocal arranged marriage system. She must maintain the honor of her entire family, which among other things requires veiling in public and avoiding contact with males who are not relatives. If she dishonors the family, she is subject to beatings, and perhaps even death. If one is willing and able to undergo all of these hardships for the sake of her family and the community, she is considered a true Paxtun, one who does paxto by following paxtunwali.
It should be noted that Grima?s study focuses primarily on rural Paxtun women. Although she did fieldwork among urban Paxtuns as well, they tended to be less traditional. As urban dwellers, they were less tightly bound by the norms of a small rural community. They therefore claimed that they did not have any life stories to tell, because they had suffered no ghams. It would seem to be implied therefore, following Grima?s theory that for women suffering ghams is central to what it means to do paxto, that these urban women do not do paxto to as great of an extent as their rural counterparts. A comparative ethnography of urban and rural Paxtun women would help explore this question.
The Performance of Emotion among Paxtun Women is reminiscent of Lila Abu-Lughod?s widely read ethnography of communication and emotion among Bedouin women, Veiled Sentiments. Like Veiled Sentiments, it is an important read for anyone interested in feminist anthropology, the ethnography of communication, the ethnography of emotion, folklore, or Islamic studies.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By AK
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Few good books have been written about the Pashtuns, fewer about Pashtun women and their subculture. This is a good addition to the documentation of this fast changing and secretive culture.
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