THE man, who said that Pashto was our home and Urdu was our farmland, sat in a chair like a pontiff. He was introduced as an eminent drama writer, so no sooner than his name was announced one had to concur immediately with his celebrated status as the undisputed linchpin of Pashto drama. He wore a small beard on his broad meditative and somber face perhaps more to silence the prigs than with any perceived sense of flaunting his religiosity.

His brusque and immensely interesting statement did not need much elucidation but even then he went on to add that Pashto was less marketable as compared to Urdu. “It is essential that we keep writing in Urdu for our bread and butter and to supplement our meager earnings from our Pashto works, shouldn’t we,” he made a polite inquiry.

The drama writer, who had advanced much in years and was by and large taciturn, did not hesitate to speak when he considered it important to set things right. Thus he agreed when he was asked if his profoundly realistic conclusion could also be extended to justify the galloping migration of Pakhtuns to Punjab and in particular to Karachi.

“Yes, indeed our land and its resources are not enough to feed the fast growing Pakhtun population so economic compulsions are pushing the people beyond their once greatly held sacrosanct borders,” he said.

Reality has indeed travelled far beyond the grasp of clichés and rhetoric. Pakhtun population has multiplied so rapidly during the recent years that it has left the enumerators gasping for breath. One could now find a Pakhtun almost at will in any corner of the world, and many of them in any isolated part of Pakistan.

Winters came late to our climes this year. Late afternoons in the month of November in the near about of Nathiagali did not bear any trace of the feared winters save of course the fast shortening length of the daylight hours. It was a teashop on the road leading to the mountaintop where a man holding a basket on his head was seen taking big strides towards the shop. It was no surprise to find out yet another Pakhtun selling his plastic wares far from his home in the hamlets perched atop the mountains.

The Pathan or Khan, as the outsiders refer as such to all Pakhtuns, appeared to be of robust health and good fair skin despite undergoing the travails of a lonely life in the mountains. He eked out a living from selling plastic wares to support his extended family back home in the tribal areas. With a broad smile, he disclosed how he was planning for his second marriage with a girl no older than his oldest child aged 18. “And are you sure your nine children back home were in safe hands,” he was asked. “Well, God takes good care of them,” he smiled again with an incredible display of equanimity.

Matthias Weinreich, a German scholar, has carried out an extensive study of the Pakhtun migrants to the northern areas of Pakistan over the last 150 years. His book titled ‘Pashtun Migrants in the Northern Areas of Pakistan’ covers tens of stories like that of the Khan one encountered on the road to Nathiagali. These Pakhtuns work as traders, cobblers, tea boys, farmers and porters in the remote valleys as far as Naltar where they could be seen to have mingled in the local culture and traditions after having mastered the local languages.

Pakhtuns used to take pride in their unwritten code of life called ‘Pakhtunwali.’ One wonders whether ‘Pakhtunwali’ predates the arrival of the Islamic faith in this part of the world though nationalists would insist it does. But then it would be interesting to find out whether religion and that too in its Salafi manifestation has impacted the traditional primitive code of life.

It apparently has in a big way since Pakhtuns now have this bloated notion of themselves as the last protectors of the religion, and that has all of us reeling from its effects. But since Pakhtuns exist and such is the urging of existentialism that migration, which is ingrained in Pakhtun blood, has only got an impetus. But lest one forgets this mother of all factors: Pakhtuns have a tendency to procreate, and do so phenomenally at that.

Many thousands of people are said to have emigrated from Peshawar, and yet owing to the pressure of population Peshawar appears to be bursting at the Existence matters seams. Peshawar’s dusty roads and streets are full of Pakhtun children begging and scavenging. Two young boys, perhaps brothers, not yet having experienced seven years of existence, are seen holding censers. They approach a car, the driver pulls down the window letting the boys ward off the evil surrounding his existence through fanning the incense burning in the censers. The boys get ten rupees each in return for their spiritual services that ended not without plenty of prayers for the car owner.

No current account of the Pakhtuns and their battles with existence could be considered complete without bringing into picture Karachi. It was in Karachi where one met the slightly dark complexioned Rahat Ali.

In his mid thirties, Rahat along with his brother works as a driver with a rich Pakhtun family in Karachi’s Defence area. “And how many of your family members or close relations live here in Karachi, twenty or thirty,” Rahat was once asked.

“No, we are about 600 resettled here in a Pakhtun dominated area from a village of Swabi over a period of time predating my birth,” Rahat revealed while chewing vigorously on a strong juicy snuff called ghutka.

Such are the matters that we should now be chronicling.

Published in Dawn March 12th , 2015

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