Ustaad Sikandar Khan’s rabab workshop in Peshawar’s Dabgari Bazaar is known far and wide for its special, handcrafted rababs made from the finest Afghan wood by skilful artisans who have kept their ancestral craft alive till this day.

It is the same bazaar from where musicians were forcefully displaced a decade ago as Peshawar became embroiled in conflict and militancy. But as art critic Ihtesham Turo put it, “the musicians [haven’t] stopped playing music” in the bazaar. Some singers still have their offices there. And of course, Ustad Samandar Khan kept his workshop open during this time.

“We will keep making rababs for as long as people’s love for [it] is alive,” says Ustad Samandar’s 26-year-old grandson Khurram Shehzad.

If their sales are anything to go by, people’s passion for the rabab is alive and well. Ustad Samandar’s shop doesn’t advertise nor do they have a website, but amateur rabab players from across the country and abroad place orders at their shop.

Peshawar may be scarred due to decades of violence but it has not lost its cultural identity

Their popularity is by word of mouth: customers hear about their handcrafted, high quality rababs and they place orders every month. rabab prices can be as low as Rs8,000 but can cost more than Rs100, 000.

The tradition of rababs is actually about 2,000 years old; over time, it has become a symbol of living Pashto music and culture. Critics have argued that Talibanisation and militancy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) were an attack on Pakhtun culture. The fact that rababs were still being sold when Peshawar’s soul was being ripped apart could, therefore, be read as an act of defiance.

Perhaps it is from the same spirit of resilience that the government is now rebuilding Peshawar’s cultural fabric. The provincial archaeology department is now teaching the art of making rabab as well as other endangered cultural arts and crafts at the historic Gor Khatri in Peshawar city. The trainer and the students are being paid an honorarium.

“I am not a musicians but being Pakhtun, I love the rabab. I have learnt to play it because it is actually part of our culture, our very blood,” says Abdul Samad, an archaeologist by profession.

In fact, slowly but surely, Peshawar’s cultural scene is showing signs of resuscitation. Few will believe that just recently, the city lit up with fireworks and laughter when a cultural festival was arranged by the KP tourism and culture department.

The fact that rababs were still being sold when Peshawar’s soul was being ripped apart could therefore be read as an act of defiance.

Despite threats to educational institutions, a fair was held for families. And in spite of the imminent danger of terrorist attacks and violence, people have come out in great numbers whenever any festive occasion has been organised in the recent past.

Another festival was held exclusively for women who exhibited the handicrafts, fashion sense, cuisine and music of the province. Young students from various universities volunteered to organise and even took part in a fashion show as models.

This is a far cry from the days of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) government when even billboards carrying women model’s faces were intolerable. It was also during the MMA government that Peshawar’s sole theatre or cultural hall, Nishtar Hall, was shut.

Musicians and singers living in the Dabgari area of the Peshawar City fled due to fear of a clampdown of vigilantes. Even mannequins were removed from shops. Playing music in public transport was forbidden. Billboards depicting women were torn down; even tourism billboards depicting Kalash women were smeared with black paint.

The MMA was voted out subsequently and in came the Awami National Party (ANP). Although the ANP’s reign was marked by bombings and terrorism, in a calculated move, the provincial tourism and culture departments started organising events and festivals in areas of the city whose populace had been worst-hit by the wave of terrorism.

In 2010-11, the Tourism Corporation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TCKP) started the Revival of Indigenous Cultural Heritage (RICH) programme that aimed at rehabilitating cultural activities at the grassroots level as communities tended to come out in their thousands to celebrate indigenous expressions of culture and performance.

Traditional festivals, traditional sports and local customs were revived as part of the plan. The traditional institution of hujra — a community place of recreation, discourse on collective issues and place of hospitality at every village — was also revived under the RICH project. Recent poetry and rabab sessions held in various villages with the support of the provincial culture department also fall under the RICH programme.

Despite the change of government in 2013, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf led government kept the tourism and culture department team together. As a result, there is continuity in the policies for the revival of cultural and historic spaces.

The Nishtar Hall, for example, is being redesigned and will open soon for cultural events. For the first time, the culture directorate has been revamped with a team of young experts, who will be documenting Pakhtun cultural heritage and conducting various activities to revive cultural festivals and traditions in the province.

For the first time in the history of the province, artists, poets, writers, singers, and actors have been honoured as ‘Living treasures of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’ and have been awarded a monthly honorarium of Rs30,000.

In December 2008, the Taliban in Swat killed a singer named Shabana simply because of her profession. Recently, Nabila Wadood from the same locality took part in a province-wide talent hunt competition; she bagged the second prize in a folk song competition ‘Ya Qurban’.

Indeed, over the last few years, Peshawar has seen more literary, cultural, recreational and other purposeful activities for youth and families which are unmatched in the city’s history. The revival of indigenous cultural activities proved to be psychologically therapeutic and morale boosters for a population that found itself in the midst of an endless conflict zone.

Naeem Saafi, a consultant with the culture department, however, feels that there is a need for more long-term initiatives in a city that has seen ugliness and death from so close.

“The cultural [milieu] of the entire city has been disturbed during all these years. People’s tastes have been affected so it would take sustainable efforts to revive culture,” says Saafi, arguing that for the youth — an increasing segment of KP’s population — it is culture that can ‘save’ them.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has gone through decades of turmoil and bloodshed but has still given birth to people who have fought back by keeping culture and tradition alive. Despite having witnessed terror, Peshawar is on its way to rising from the ashes.

Cinema scope

Going to the movies was once essential to social life in Peshawar but declining standards and terrorism put an end to that

Back in 1975, the movie Dulhan Ek Raat Ki proved to be a diamond jubilee hit film, released simultaneously in Urdu and Pashto. It was a mega hit. The Pashto version was released under the title Naaway da yao shpay (Bride for a single night) with Badar Munir and Musarrat Shaheen playing the lead roles. The film was written by Munir.

Some 40 years later, Pashto films have become synonymous with violence and indecency. They are far from anything denoting entertainment or depicting culture of the land or people for whom these films are being produced.

The downfall of Pashto films in turn translated into a crisis for cinema halls in Peshawar, which haven’t been doing much business. The owners of more than half a dozen cinemas tore down their halls to erect commercial plazas instead that fetch a good rent.

The owners of a few surviving cinemas resorted to extreme measures: they tried to produce films on their own, not for the love of films but for the sake of keeping their cinema business running. This in turn meant low-quality, low-budget films that were to be completed within days and put on screen.

One such interesting case is that of Pashto film actor Shahid Khan, whose family owns a cinema. They produce and even cast the rough and tough Khan as the protagonist in many of their productions. Khan often wears a wig and puts on a fake moustache to play the action hero in these movies.

But films made in this genre are about violence, bloodshed, drugs and gangsters — all stereotypical and stale depictions of society. In comparison, poetry written by a younger crop of writers in Peshawar depicts the pain and resilience of Peshawar with far greater nuance and sensitivity.

Meanwhile, dramas on CDs — whose popularity had contributed to the decline of cinema in Peshawar — have also been struggling due to their poor production quality. “Nishtarabad, once a thriving market of such CD drama productions, is not doing much business either,” explains critic Ehtisham Turo.

Given the near suspension of cinema-going culture, especially among families, some cinema owners are trying to revive it by exploring options to set up a Cineplex in the city. Till now, they have run into some hurdles, and the government’s support and clear-cut policy in this regard might help resuscitate cinema in Peshawar.

On its part, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa culture department has been working on the first-ever cultural policy of the province. This could also pave the way for a provincial law for the censorship of films, CDs, tele-films, videos, dramas and other shows made in the province.

There are discussions too around a proposed audio-visual studio that will provide a platform for patronage and technical support for future artists, film-makers, celebrities and other cultural ambassadors from KP. Not only will this facility become a viable Tourism Corporation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa asset and generate income, plans are afoot to evolve it as a full-fledged training institution or academy of performing arts, drama, musicology, film-making, entertainment and the media industry. — by Sadia Qasim Shah

Before the spoilers

The city of storytellers has a rich tradition of performing arts

Peshawar, which lay on the crossroads of cultures and ancient caravan routes, has a rich tradition of storytelling. Before the advent of radios and television, the art of storytelling flourished in traditional teahouses and balakhanas in the bazaar.

The storyteller relied on his tongue and his imagination to earn his livelihood. The tales were partly narrated, partly sung to entertain an audience of traders and travellers arriving in their caravans from distant corners of the world.

You might struggle to find storytellers today, but the history of storytellers in Peshawar is perhaps as old as the history of the city.

The earliest theatre in Peshawar was established during the British Raj.

The Gunner’s Theatre was constructed on Artillery Road in 1854 to provide amusement opportunities to soldiers and their families. Many travelling theatre groups performed plays, musicals and pantomimes casting local amateur thespians.

With the advent of cinema in the 20th century, silent movies made a debut in Peshawar. Several cinemas sprang up in Peshawar. Their owners included renowned local entrepreneurs of the time such as Ishar Das Sahni and Sardar Sant Singh Seble, who ran cinemas in different other cities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Peshawar produced cine legends like Prithvi Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, A.K. Hangal, and Dilip Kumar among others. In fact, according to writer Ibrahim Zia, more than 70 actors and actresses who made big it in Bollywood hailed from Peshawar.

In Pakistan, the standard of films produced during the 60s and 70s was generally compatible with that era and the quality was more or less satisfactory. However, the standard deteriorated from the 80s onwards, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, both in terms of content and technique.

Pashto films that had made a debut with refined themes around folk characters and historic cultural icons were reduced to those glorifying gangsters, gore, vulgarity and blood baths. In a bizarre manner, Pashto cinema was taken over by lobbies based in Punjab over time, who not only grabbed local jobs as producers and artists but also distorted the cultural refinement of films ruthlessly.

A further decline in cinema industry ensued in the aftermath of the socio-political upheavals that began after the Afghan War. These contradictions peaked during the political clampdown on cultural activities between 2001-2007.

Resultantly, a new ‘CD drama culture’ appeared that sunk the already dwindling standards of Pashto film industry to even lower depths. A region that had once produced more than 70 Bollywood cine legends, who earned name and fame for the province, sadly started to churn out trash.

This stagnant and polluted environment continues to contaminate any raw talent that surfaces locally, if not completely devouring it. Those associated with the fields of performing arts, acting, singing, dancing, film and music productions have no other recourse but to look towards the ‘cultural hubs’ of Lahore and Karachi. For the few who can afford it, studio and production house facilities abroad (such as Dubai) are feasible options.

History has proven that creativity peaks in times of crises. Our region too has produced many diamonds in the rough, but unfortunately there is no basic studio facility in the province to polish such rough stones into priceless gems. — by Ali Jan

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 15th, 2016