Sylvia's Journal

I finished the book about grief and the ‘performance’ of emotion among small town and rural Pashto women of areas in Northwestern Pakistan. It makes me want to read more anthropological studies done by women, as this one was so different from what I have read about Pashtoons in the writing of men (Pashtoon and non Pashtoon).

What I learned is that within their overwhelming powerlessness, the women do have the power to excel in the bearing of grief and their ability to flaunt their social restrictions (parda, the veil) when they have to act in the service of the object of their grief (the injured son or other close male relatives). But these are not the kind of individualized expressions of personal grief as we know it in the west, but highly choreographed narratives and performances that strengthen their role and status.

This is a kind of power that men are afraid of, maybe similar to the mysterious reproductive powers that men have been afraid of in all societies (and still are in some). And so, not surprisingly, this power is downplayed by the men as manifested in various traditional forms of communication (romantic stories, poetry and humor) precisely, according to the author, because it is acted out in a realm that men have no access to.

I can see why the younger and educated women from this background have such a hard time reconciling their professional roles with the heavily prescribed rituals and behaviors that dominate women’s lives, if not in their own immediate families, at least in the larger kinship communities from which they hail.

From reading this book (and Axel is now reading Louis Dupree’s classic and monumental work on Afghanistan) it occurs to me that doing any so-called ‘development’ work, or worse, military intervention in this country, is madness without having anthropologists on staff. I have yet to run into one. Where are they? Where did they go?

Today my colleague, the father of the boys who were in the ISAF accident more than 2 weeks ago, returned back to work. Yesterday the boys were finally evacuated on a military plane with all the hospital equipment and gear that has sustained them over the last two weeks. Both have emerged out of their comas and are speaking again.

They have no memory of the accident. The description of their state resembles that of Axel after our accident: the nerves that are not working, the broken ribs, the double vision, the concussion and contusions, the deafness as well as the memory loss. The state of the older boy who was driving resembles mine: the guilt and the replaying of the scenario, wishing to replace the bad action with a good action. Mine was an endless loop, replaying itself in my head over and over again, accompanied by the rapid heartbeat and the sweat and the mantra of ‘oh, what have I done!’ I was so lucky that no one died. He is not.

The transport to Germany required signatures all the way up the chain – it was finally Hillary’s signature that sent them on their way. And so, no longer needed daily at their bedside, the father has come back to work, communicating by cell phone with his sons on the path of full recovery.