Ethnic groups

Language

Religious non-leteracy in a literate culture

Folklore and folk music

Folk music and instruments

Settlement patterns

Life Cycle in Afghanistan
Birth and Childhood
Marriage
Death and Inheritance
Sports and Games
Diet
Dress and ornaments

The inward looking society

Each village or nomadic group usually has at least one midwife who assists at childbirth. When a first child is born, the family holds a daylong celebration, the opulence of the family determining its extent. The occasion becomes, especially auspicious if the child is a~ boy, for this establishes the virility of the father, the fertility of the mother, and gives the family an heir to its property and—more important—family honor.

Guns are fired, drums beaten, and food given to the poor, again more elaborate if the child is a boy. Often the family foregoes the ritual of driving away evil spirits when a girl is born. Deliberate female infanticide rarely exists, but in large rural families, girl babies reportedly have died from neglect.

Usually on the third day after birth, the child is given his or her official name. Before the third day, the family refers to the baby by a substitute name to prevent evil jinn from stealing the infant by calling its name. In many non-literate societies supernatural figures can gain control of an individual's soul or inner being simply by calling his or her name.

A religious leader (mullah) whispers "Allah-u-akbar!" ("God is Great!") four times into the infant's ear, informs the child of its illustrious ancestry, and exhorts it to be a good Muslim. The mullah may name the child, but often the father's oldest brother (paternal uncle of the infant) decides on a name, especially if the child is male. In many urban literate families the parents name the child or get a consensus from the family residing in general proximity. These literates hold a christening ceremony, not dissimilar to that of the West.

Among nomads, the paternal uncle generally gives the child a name, for he becomes the boy's sociological father if the child's father dies, and one of the uncle's sons will probably marry the child if it is a girl.

Urban Afghans usually 'have a shaw-yi-shesh (seventh night after birth) celebration. Relatives and friends bring gifts for the infant and most of the activity (singing, dancing) takes place in the women's quarters. Sometimes, the child receives its name at this ceremony. The child, regardless of sex, remains with the mother and the women.

A baby is swaddled, and the mother carries it around on her hip, using her shawl, a garment of many uses. The cradle used by most Afghan groups can be either put on the' ground, hung from a nomad's tent pole, a villager's roof, or a tree. Boys wear wooden penis holders which look like pipes and drain through a hole in the cradle. Girls also have urine drains with a slit instead of a "pipe" head. Baby boys often run around naked, but girls almost always wear clothing (loose pantaloons or dresses).

Mothers breast feed babies until they begin to chew the nipples raw, or another baby is born. Weaning is a brutal process, and the mother cuts the child off without warning. In some groups, mothers place black goat's hair over the nipple, and when the child comes for milk, she shows the horrible-looking thing to him and accuses him of being responsible. Tantrums commonly result.

Mothers table and toilet train their children at an early age. They must also swing the heavy hand of discipline, because fathers are usually loving and indulgent. The mother maintains considerable influence in a son's life. The harem atmosphere exists in every household or camp where females of two or three generations must compete for affection. Quite early in life, the young boy learns he must bargain well and sell his attributes high in order to survive in the village or tribal struggles for power. One is tempted to relate (at least partly) the ability of Muslim statesmen to gain, concessions trom both East and West to the lessons learned in the harem atmosphere.

An older brother or sister carties the child, often piggy-back, soon after he learns to toddle. The child also helps to watch over the grazing livestock of the family. Children learn early where their socio-economic-political obligations lie. Separate kinship terms differentiate elder brother and elder sister from younger brother and younger sister. In addition, special age terms refer to females, different for each major life-crisis: pre-puberty; post-puberty; when married but childless; with children but no son; when son is born and finally called "woman"; past-menopause.

Fathers usually bathe boys and help them dress until they reach the age of five or six years. Boys are generally circumcised by their seventh year, at which time they begin to become men. They should know how to dress themselves, and are permitted to wear a turban cloth over their turban caps. Itinerant barbers often perform the circumcision. A feast accompanies the ceremony if the 'family can afford it. The festivities might include sporting events, such as buzkashi, wrestling, and tent-pegging. The father gives prizes to the winners, usually money or expensive turban cloths or both.

The youngest son, always the favorite, sits with his father when visitors arrive and the. ritualized, defensive hospitality of the village runs its formalized course. Older sons must quickly learn to take subsidiary roles in parental affections when a new son arrives. The psychological strains are obvious and great.

In most areas, no official ceremony marks puberty for girls, but in some areas (such as parts of Nuristan) huts still exist to isolate menstruating women from the society, which considers them unclean. In certain Pushtun areas of Paktya, gur, unrefined molasses or a kind of brown sugar, is passed around among close women relatives of a girl when she reaches puberty.

Subteen boys begin to assist their fathers in the fields, or, if nomadic, learn to ride, shoot, and herd. They can no longer play freely with female counterparts. Childhood is over; adulthood begins. One major feature of child-socialization in the Afghan non-urban society is that children have no adolescence, no transitional, educational period among their contemporaries away from their families to prepare them for the world they enter as adults. The young Afghan boy from 10 to 12 (or even younger) moves directly into an adult world. Adolescence is primarily a function of a literate, pluralistic society, which can afford to waste half a man's life in socialization, or preparing him to live as a productive member of his society. Some Westerners remain in adolescence until past thirty, undergoing training or graduate studies to enable them to take their places in the adult world. Others never achieve adulthood, but once the American child enters the public school system, he spends more time away from his nuclear family than with it. He develops new sets of interpersonal, institutional relationships, and usually these change constantly through life, whereas, on the whole, the rural Afghan child keeps the same interpersonal institutional relationships within his immediate kinship unit.

A sub-pubescent Afghan girl helps look after her younger brothers and sisters, as well as the village livestock. Before she reaches nine or ten years of age, her mother teaches her to grind wheat and corn, fetch water, cook, mend and wash clothes, make dung patties, gossip at the fire, well, or stream, and a thousand other odds and ends a woman must know to be a good wife and mother.

Few village schools exist in Afghanistan, and most are mainly experimental and near the larger cities. Even the recent figures from the Ministry of Education (Chart 17) 'probably do not represent a true picture, for It is often the case that where schools exist, no teachers are available. At times opposition to new schools comes from within the village or tribe. The headman of one village typified this attitude. When he asked me, "Why should a farmer learn to read?" This was in 1951, but attitudes have been slowly changing, and monumental since 1963.

In villages where mosque schools exist, local mullah teach young boys the Qor'an; older women perform the same task for girls. Classes are unscheduled and held only during the agricultural off-season.

The education (or socialization other than economic activity) of the child is mainly in the hands of the grandparents or, if its grandparents are dead, older uncles and aunts. Three generations of social symbiosis exist, each symbolizing various stages of the society. The grandparents represent the past and, with other elders in the village, are the walking encyclopedia of the society, the distilled knowledge of the ages. In Persian they are called the rish-i-safid, and in Pashto spin-giray. They pass on their knowledge to the young in the verbal, folk traditions of Afghanistan. Ego's parents, intimately engaged in the present, are the economically producing generation, often too busy to teach non-material aspects of the culture to the children, symbols of the future, the guarantees of continuation and continuity.

The grandchild-grandparent relation, therefore, early becomes intensely important and lasts long. The closeness is emphasized by the terms of endearment used by the grandchild and grandparent, sometimes the same term, thus, in a general way, equating the two generations, the reservoir of knowledge and the recipient.

Sibling rivalry will out, however, as older brothers and sisters bring down the heavy hand of discipline on the younger ones. Each sibling works off his or her frustrations on the next youngest, an effective way to train children who must live and work together as adults to perpetuate the society. Older brothers pick on younger brothers, with the youngest brother, although the parental favorite, usually receiving more than his share of the slaps and licks.

Friendship (dosti: to be friends) outside the kinship structure does occur, but mainly among the literate groups. The extra-kin hierarchy of friendship generally assumes a certain line (naturally, levels of emotional intensity vary and terms specifically can vary from region to region).

Bradar(Brother) (Brader in Dari, wror in Pashto); khwar(Sister in Dari) (khwar in Dari, khor in Pashto); kaka (all uncles in Dari, paternal uncle in Pashto); mama (maternal uncl,e in Pashto):

Such terms identify an individual's best friends, who can be counted on for help of any kind at any time. The term kaka (Dan) refers to someone in the generation above ego; lala (Pashto for elder brother) is also used. Friends may also refer to each other by placing jan (dearest friend or darling) as a suffix to a name, e.g., Yaqub-jan, Razi-jan, Palwal-jan.

Dost: used by both men and women for either sex. A type o~ second-line friendship; the dost will usually help in any situation except an emergency which might get him involved against his own or his family's interests.

Rafiq: someone who has been close at some period of life or another, e.g., school-chums, fellow office-workers, comrades in military service. The rafiq will help officially, and even unofficially, if the aid involves no inconvenience to his person. The term encompasses both men and women.

Ashna: simply an acquaintance.

Only at the best friend level (bradar, khwar, etc.) do we find a differentiation between female and male. In urban society, the formal term sahib is used for both adult men and women; a not-too-confusing contradiction when one remembers that, although ideally male dominated, females often in reality have great influence