Myth has a stronger hold on the popular imagination than historical fact. The Pakhtoons living on either side of the Pakistan-Aghanistan border have had bad press for generations. Hence the image of the fierce, bloodthirsty, killer intent on causing trouble, insurrection and unrest.
That was a picture painted by the British Raj for its own imperialist agenda and the successor post-Raj state has accepted it without scrutinising the evidence.
Tagore’s memorable story of the Kabuliwala presents an entirely different picture. I am just old enough to remember a tall, noble Pakhtoon named Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a man who instantly inspired reverence and respect. Badshah Khan, as we called him, was wedded to peace and non-violence. This towering figure was marginalised after 1947. Today few in Pakistan even remember his name outside his home province.
It was therefore with pleasure that I read the book by Robert Sampson. Sampson has lived in Peshawar since 1989. He teaches at the well-known Edwardes School where, coincidentally, Badshah Khan was educated. Sampson’s mother, a doctor now in her youthful 80s, still serves in the tribal areas. Like mother, like son. Sampson has made it his mission to spread the spiritual and expressive oral culture of the Pakhtoons to the world at large.
As an example he celebrates the life and poetry of Sufi Rahman Baba (1650–1715) whose vision of love, with its soaring values of equality and tolerance, are a world away from the sectarianism and fanaticism of today.
A member of the Sarban sub-tribe, Rahman Baba’s forebears had moved from Kandahar to the Peshawar valley where he was born and brought up. Some claim that his family were Maliks but it is likely that his origins were humble for he himself said:
Though the wealthy drink water from a golden cup,
I prefer this clay bowl of mine.
There is today a controversy as to which order of Sufism he belonged. Annemarie Schimmel and Saad Ahmed Baksh believed he was of the Chishti order, others claim him to be either a Qadiri or a Naqshbandi. However, the quality of his poetry is never disputed.
Over a period of three centuries the mystical aspect of Pakhtoon culture has been both magnified and intensified by his verses. Like the other Sufi poets of the Islamic tradition (and, incidentally, also the Bhagti poets of the Hindu tradition such as Kabir and Meera) Rahman Baba’s verses are imbued with amazing ambiguity. They could just as well be love poems but at the same time addressed to the Divine.
An Anglican missionary, the Reverend T.P. Hughes, was so impressed with the poems (they quite obviously reminded him of the English metaphysicals, Donne in particular) that in 1877, in Lahore, he printed a collection of them. Before Hughes, some handwritten versions were in limited circulation and a few found their way to the Biblioteque Nationale, the British Library, the Bodleian, the John Rylands and Aligarh Muslim University.
Fortunately the Pushto Academy in Peshawar also has some manuscripts. Sampson’s thesis (Nottingham University, 2003) had the title Abdu’l Rahman Baba: The legacy of his poetry in expressing divergent Islamic theology in Pakhtoon society. This was followed in the same year with The Poetry of Rahman Baba: The gentle side of Pakhtoon consciousness. Two years later he and Momin Khan brought out an English translation of Rahman Baba’s diwan. The Poetry of Rahman Baba: Poet of the Pakhtoons (University Book Agency, Peshawar) is a massive work. Visions of Love is a selection of Sampson’s favourite Rahman Baba poems. He has attempted to free the verse from the constraints of rhyme and metre in order to communicate the essential essence of the great Sufi’s thought, mood, pity and passion. One can quote page upon page but here are a few lines:
Humanity is all one body;
To torture another is simply to wound yourself. When you don’t look for faults in others, They will conceal your weaknesses in return.
If for a soul-mate you dream, See past the alluring fashion of her dress.
The vision of such flowing hair Entwines around the heart, but Constricts and squeezes out the one it treasures most.
Instead, follow the creator of this world,
Who fashioned each soul from love,
And made passion the highest goal.
The time to start the quest is now.
There is no second chance To embrace the joy, the pain, Of the one Who longs For you.
Opposite each poem is a graphic photograph of a scene from the present day Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The combination of poetry and pictures makes this a most attractive book. However, intolerant interpretations of faith and belief have made dangerous incursions. Sampson voiced his concern in The War on Poetry: Snuffing out Folk tradition along the Pakistan-Afghan Border (Frontier Post, December 7, 2008).
Three months later Taliban militants attacked the shrine of Rahman Baba. The timing was designed to disrupt the annual April gathering of Pakhhtoon mystics and folk poets.
I recall the stirring lines of Badshah Khan:
O Pakhtoons! Your house has fallen into ruin.
Arise and rebuild it,And remember to what race you belong.
Visions of Love: Sufi poetry of the Pakhtoons (POETRY) Translated by Robert Sampson InterLit Foundation, Peshawar ISBN 978-969-8343-41-5 100pp. $20
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