Forget me not

Noor Jehan Mecklai
is moved by a photographer's tribute to the endangered Kalash people of Pakistan

It is not often that one gets to have a close look at the daily. lives and customs of the enigmatic Kalash people. Usually one gets the same old tourist posters, or photographs of the women’s folk dances and distinctive headdresses. But Maureen Lines, whose exhibition was recently presented at the Goethe Institut in Karachi, is no stranger to the Kalash. She is one of a small number of social workers who have made their homes among the Kalash in Pakistan’s remote mountains.

Maureen Lines first came to these valleys in 1980. So moved was she by the ramshackle condition of these people that she went to America and obtained a diploma which enabled her to work as a barefoot doctor in the valley of Birir. It is her that she still lives, having given up her British nationality in 2006.

She has founded two organisations - the Kalash Environmental Protection Society and the Hindu Kush Conservation Association – and her published work includes the books ‘Beyond the Northwest Frontier’, ‘The Kalash People of Northwestern Pakistan’ and ‘Disaster to Catastrophe’. Gloomily, she has predicted‘ the eventual destruction of the Kalash and Chitral valleys; and someday the writing and photographs of people like herself may be all that is left of these unique cultures.

Who are the Kalasha? They number about 3,000 people, together living in the valleys of Bamburet, Rumbut and Birir, about 40 km from Chitral. They are the last of the People of Kafiristan, which once spread across the Hindukush Range from eastern Afghanistan through parts of Chitral. At the end of the l9th century, with the conversion to Islam of the Kalasha on the Afghanistan side, that area was given the name of Nooristan. Many of those who resided in Chitral were converted even earlier, in the 15th century, but some continued to follow their polytheistic religion, in which nature plays a highly significant role.

The most widely accepted story is that the Kalash are descended from the armies of Alexander the Great, who may have passed through these mountains some 2300 years ago. This theory is based mainly on their appearance – the striking blue eyes, white skin and golden hair – and on certain aspects of their culture. However, many researchers think that the Kalash were part of the great Indo-Aryan mass migration from Central Asia into India in1500-1000 B.C., while others suggest that they arrived much later from present-day Afghanistan.

The Kalasha themselves, however, claim to have come from a legendary place called Tsyam, in much the same way as the New Zealand Maori cite the mysterious Hawaiki as their original home.

In Maureen’s recent exhibition, the most immediately striking photographs are the ones of women and girls dancing and wearing their elaborate kupas headdress, which is reserved for festivals and formal visiting and is decorated with cowrie shells. At certain festivals the dancing is both duty and enjoyment, as it takes place while the men are at the local sanctuary making offerings.

The women’s rough-textured dresses used to be made of hand-woven brown cloth, while embroidery, if any, was added with hand-dyed threads in soft, natural tones. But now colourful machine embroidery with acrylic threads is the order of the day, while the black cloth of the dresses is produced commercially.

Other photographs show the Kalasha at work, in the fields, and at play. Some of them are overexposed – this is one of the problems of village photography, with its unavoidable “contrasty” situations. But the winners in this exhibition are the portraits, some happy, others somber and full of pathos.

Maureen Lines has documented the lived experience of the Kalash with love and sympathy. In doing so, she has secured them (and herself) a special place in history.

April 22-28, 2011 - Vol. XXIII, No. 10