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

Like other individual aspects of a total cultural environment, play and recreational activities reflect the values, the ethos of the society. Are they games of skill or brute strength, mental exercise or violent contact, physical or mental coordination? Do they involve the quietness of the hunt until erupting in terminal violence, the wild dissonance of a bullfight with its hushed dripping of blood at the end, the seated furor of observer sports, or the participation of a thousand horsemen galloping on the plains of Turkestan? Is cheating accepted or at least the attempt respected? Does chance or luck control, or is strategy the key?

Afghan sports and games, therefore, reflect many aspects of Afghan culture by age, sex, ethnic group, literate versus non-literate segments, although some overlap does occur. Infant games, for example, may appear one-way, but they assist the infant as he interacts with the adult to identify the outside physical world and his inner mental world. Interplay between adults and infants reinforces the close contacts necessary to generate mutual need and affection. The young children begin as tabulae rasae, and explore their own physical geography under the tutelage of father, mother, grandparents, brothers, sisters, or other close consanguineal relatives. The outside world also comes into proper focus during the simple games played before the child can walk. Some child psychologists (and other social scientists) consider the young child's role as passive, but can a learning process ever be truly passive?

Almost as soon as the child begins to walk, he participates in his second phase of gamesmanship, in games which last until—and usually throughout—adulthood. The Afghan child becomes an adult in his or her early teens, and rapidly develops into a group-oriented individual, performing a full range of economic, political, and social tasks. So there is little wonder that the adolescent team competitions so prevalent in Western literate societies are rare in Afghanistan, except in special cases to be noted and elaborated.

The most popular children's games are the informal games of tag ("You're It"), Blind Man's Bluff, and the unstructured fighting found all over the world.

For a society as fundamentally warlike as the Afghan and where the ideal personality type is the warrior-poet, boys do not play war games like Western children's Cowboy and Indians, Cops and Robbers, Communist vs. Capitalist, and so forth, found in technologically advanced, literate societies. I believe several factors affect this lack of interest in relatively formalized copies of the real thing. At the age when American boys, for example, receive their first air guns, an Afghan tribal boy gets a rifle and is taught by his father to use it properly. War in Afghan society relates to the family, tribal, kin-blood honor, and is not an amorphous, ill-defined, loosely implemented ideology with built-in contradictions (the Four freedoms, democratic society, socialism, communism, capitalism, etc.), but is an immediate face-to-face confrontation with a real, nearby enemy, a confrontation involving zar, zan, zamin (gold, women, land). Afghans do not play at war; they make war within the Strictures of their cultural patterns. In addition, self-identification with a group is important, and what Ghilzai Pushtun would play the role of a Durrani, or what Mangal would be a Zadran or would any Afghan be a farangi (foreigner generally, but specifically, and pejoratively, the British)? Pride of group is too great.

In pluralist American society, by contrast, individuals switch loyalties in stage-like identities in childhood's war games, a pattern, which often continues throughout real-life adulthood.

Non-urban Afghan children begin their group responsibilities early and have limited time for games, so their repertoire remains within the range of tag, and a few other games, all with locally available objects. A peasant or nomad father may carve a crude doll for a daughter, make or buy a sling and slingshot for a son, which, as well as providing sport, helps prepare the children for later responsibilities. The girl plays house and mother; the boy sharpens his eye with the sling and slingshot to kill small animals for food, or drive them away from the fields.

All over Afghanistan in both urban and rural areas, boys and girls play bujul-bazi, a game resembling marbles (also played in cities), but played with sheep knucklebones (buju?) or similar shaped objects.

One universal sport, pahlwani (wrestling), varies little from region to region, and is one of the few rural sports to involve inter-group competition. The rules are simple: the wrestler may grab arms or clothing, but not legs. Much clothing is ripped and occasionally must be replaced before the match can continue. Spectators gladly loan chapan to be torn to shreds, for, after all, the honor of the village rests on the outcome. Balance is all important. Usually, the wrestlers grab one another's forearms in overlapping grips, and move sideways in a crab-like, rocking motion, testing each other's strength and trying to catch each other off balance. Often, a man will leap high into the air, trying to toss his opponent with a judo hip-throw. To counter this, the other wrestler will twist in midair and end up behind his opponent with a headlock. Some times only one such move as this ends the match. The whole object is to throw the opponent and pin his shoulders to the ground. When it seems apparent that one man has another pinned, the coach of the winner lifts his man by the waist and runs around the circle of spectators. The victor clasps his hands over his head and the crowd applauds.

As would be expected, a greater diversity of children's games exists in urban centers. Hoop racing (unknown in villages because few wheels exist in rural Afghan life) is popular. Another important fun game easily recognizable to Westerners is the scissors-stone-paper game played with the hands.

Kite fighting (gudi-paran-jangi; literally "flying puppet" or "doll fighting"), a favorite urban sport, weather permitting, provides boys with great opportunity for individual competition. Contestants cover the kite strings (man ii) with a mixture of powdered glass and rice flour (shisheh), sold in small discs. They try to outmaneuver each other in order to cut the string of an opponent's kite by rubbing the strings together. To increase maneuverability, Afghan kites have, no tails. Children of all ages run over rooftops and compound walls in hazardous attempts to recover a falling kite. A loser, at times, will hide and tie a string to a stone, toss the stone over the victor's string, and pull the kite down. Others tie a stone on either end of the string and use the result like a gaucho's bola (chilak). In season, telephone lines and trees in Kabul blossom with colorful kites.

Many boys in Kabul (and other urban centers) keep flocks of pigeons (kawtareh, Pashto; kabutar or kaftar, Dari) in special houses on rooftops, and periodically release them for exercise. Pigeen-iustling is a great sport, another manifestation of the gambling syndrome in Afghan culture. Pigeon owners take great pride in their flocks, usually, consisting of two types: argheh (tail and wings same color; flies in a straight line) and lutum (colorful types which fly in circles, dive, and tumble).

Released pigeons fly together and return together, but neighborhood boys try to lure the pigeons to their compounds with calls and whistles and Judas-pigeons. Others trap neighbors' birds with nets. Several alternative fates await the captured pigeon. If a boy captures a close friend's (sayad-band) pigeon, he returns it. Others' (sayad-waz), he sells in the bazaar, or clips the wings if it is a good breeder. Some pigeons end up in pilau.

Two games (tup-dandeh; chub-dandeh) combine certain elements of cricket and stickball and occupy much of the young boys' leisure time in the narrow dirt streets of Afghan cities.

Girls and occasionally boys play a brand of hopscotch called juz-bazi.

Winter brings out the ingenuity of Afghan children. They have no sleds, skates, or skis, and must invent games. Naturally snowball fights are common, ani both boys and girls slide on the frozen lakes, streams, and juy (small irrigation canals or ditches) instead of skating. Using skins or wooden boards, they slide down frozen hills. Some make snowmen, but the old custom of sherbashi, the sculpturing of leopards, lions, and other animals in the snow, common a generation ago, now exists only in Nuristan and parts of Badakhshan. A few of the Germans and Italians employed in Afghanistan before World War II skied informally, but now a ski lodge exists near Kabul. Many Afghans educated in Europe and the U.S. join the foreign colony in weekend skiing.

Adults play a surprise game (barfi) when the first snow (barf-i-awal) falls in Kabul. Friends try to anticipate one another in sending a note to each other: "Snow comes continuously from above; snow is mine and barfi is yours." If the couplet, usually brought by a servant, reaches the addressee, he must give a complete pilau (large meal) for the sender. Many Afghans avoid answering the door during the first snowfall with the agility of summons dodgers. If the recipient catches the messenger before he can reach home, the sender must give a pilau and the messenger as well submits to a symbolic beating.

A favorite memory game involves the breaking of the chicken wishbone (chenaq). It matters not who receives the larger fragment. A wager is made (usually a pilau), and, at any time in the future, when one of the players hands the other an object (any object)., the recipient must immediately say, "Mara yad ast" ("I remember"). The game continues until one participant forgets, and must pay the forfeit. The winner announces: "Mara yad, tura /aramush—" ("Memory for me, forgetfulness for you!").

Festivals usually include several rides for children, such as ferris wheels, and carrousels, on which boys imitate buzkashi riders. Bursting balloons with pellet guns is also popular at festivals. Gise or ta.s (a dice game combining liar's dice and poker) dominates the festival gambling, and the rustic croupiers seldom lose.

Afghans love gambling, which takes many forms. For the Afghan, often living at a survival-subsistence level, all life is a gamble. Boys risk their pocket change on tokhm-jangi (egg fighting) as they try to smash each other's hard boiled eggs by end-to-end bumping. Young boys selling qaymaq, a curd-like 'food in small pottery dishes, often gamble all their earnings by betting on who will sell out first. Odds and Evens (joft-o-taq) is played with candy, small coins, and dried fruits. A child holds a number of objects behind his back, and his opponent guesses odd or even. A correct guess and the objects change hands.

Urbanized adults play myriad card games, including bridge and a poker-pinochle derivative called falash (flush), and many upper-class women with little else to do (like certain groups of Helen Hokinson's American women) gamble incessantly and sometimes put their spouses irretrievably into debt. Men will occasionally gamble away all their property and even put up unmarried daughters as stakes, a practice frowned upon but still practiced.

The rules for parcheesi, caroms, and chess (invented somewhere in the area), played in both cities and rural areas, tend to vary. I have sometimes had new rules tossed at me as a checkmate (my opponent's) appeared inevitable. For example: if a player is down to one pawn, his queen, and his king, the queen cannot be taken! Afghans often play chess in gardens, or under trees in villages.

Probably because of the martial aspects of Afghan society and its male orientation, ubiquitous hunting and informal target-shooting exist. Weapons range from matchlocks or flintlocks (with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Tower firing mechanisms) and percussion-cap rifles to modern high-powered arms, or reasonable imitations, made at Darra (Kohat) in the tribal area of Pakistan, where, protected by separate laws governing the six Tribal Agencies of Pakistan, Pushtun artisans produce by hand everything from Bren and Sten guns to brand name automatic pistols, complete with manufacturer's marks. But the most popular weapon in Afghanistan is the muzzle-loading, percussion-cap rifle or the late nineteenth-century breach-loading Enfield. Either can be used as rifle or shotgun depending on the size of the load.

Game birds (duck, partridge or quail, grouse, snowcock) are the usual victims of the hunter's gun. Seasonally, ducks and other migratory birds pass through Afghanistan, and, using live Judas-ducks or decoys, hunters prowl the edges of Afghan lakes and artificial ponds near villages. Whether the decoys are indigenous or derivative from British decoys brought up in the nineteenth century is unknown, but three types exist. The more frequent, a crude, but aesthetically pleasing, two-part (body and neck-head) wooden decoy (mull), exists mainly in the Panjsher Valley. Another, found in shallow lakes and marshes near Kabul and in the southeastern valleys, consist of duck shapes sculptured from mud and straw, which sit on platforms of mud on the surface and harden in the sun. Hunters in southwestern Afghanistan (Hilma nd—Arghandab valleys and Sistan) make decoys from interlaced reeds (lukhi).

Larger game hunted include various wild sheep and goats (such as ibex and markhor) in the mountains, gazelle in the deserts, and snow leopards (palang) and bears (khers), which occasionally slip in among the domesticated animals and carry them off. Few hunt these larger predators for sport. Most villages have part-time hunters, who have enviable kill records and often wear scars which bear witness to missed shots. Village hunters, usually superb stalkers, mimic the animal being pursued. The ancient weaponry used by most huntet~ makes it necessary for him to be as close as possible to his target before firing. I have watched Nuristani hunters stalk turkey-sized snowcock up a mountainside, moving with the grace of the bird, and come within twenty feet of this flighty creature before delivering the death shot. In Badakhshan, some stalking hunters wear masks with rabbit ears. West of Badakhshan, hunters use a large square (seven feet) cloth (chireh), painted with mythological and real animals, to lure birds. Holes cut into the cloth permit vision and firing. At times, hunters dig shallow foxholes before covering themselves with the camouflaged cloth.

Probably the best known game animal for the international sportsman is the Marco Polo sheep (Ovis polii). In addition, huge Siberian tiger occasionally roam the high Pamir. The Siberian tiger makes the lowland Bengal tiger look like a tabby cat by comparison.

Many graves and tombs in Afghanistan are literally covered with the horns of slain animals. The local people usually describe the habit as "custom," but I suspect the practice relates to the pre-Islamic, and even prehistoric, totemic identification of certain groups with the virility and independence of the wild mountain sheep or goat. The former function of the horns on graves was probably to pass on some of the strength, cunning, and agility of the slain animal to the individual buried on the spot.

Afghan hounds (tazi) abound in Afghanistan. Shorter-haired and longer-brained than his showy counterpart in the United States and Europe, the tazi is so highly regarded by the Afghans that he is not considered a mere dog (sag). Afghans often mistreat ordinary dogs, but never the tazi. (The name tazi probably comes from a Persian term for Arab, taz). He sleeps in the tent or hut with his master, wears a quilted coat of his own in winter, and in return assists in the hunt, particularly for gazelle and rabbit A hunter in the plains, the tazi has an underdeveloped olfactory sense but superior eyesight. He hunts by sight and not smell. Some have clocked tazi at fifty miles an hour, but they do not depend on speed alone to catch the slippery gazelle, who runs a complicated zig-zag pattern when chased. The tazi runs in a straight line, and, computer-like, bisects the angles of the turns. The fatigued gazelle drops, the tazi hamstrings the animal, and waits for his master to come up for the kill. A Muslim cannot eat meat unless the animal has been properly slaughtered (halal), i.e., the throat must be cut before the animal dies. Other meat is hararn (unclean).

Most Afghan groups trap small animals and birds, using a variety of simple devices. Netting is popular in most areas, either by means of a small net held up by sticks with a drawstring attached to the center stick and the trap baited with grain, or with Judas-birds staked out in cages to lure birds into huge nets controlled by the trappers. Some birds are eaten, but two types are also used for fighting: qawk (rock or chukar partridge) and bodena (small, lark-like bird). The Afghans highly prize their qawk-i-jangi (fighting partridge) and train them carefully, feeding them a fattening diet of raisins and almonds. The proud owner takes his qawk for walks, sings to him, and preens his feathers. The qawk is kept in a cage covered with a brightly embroidered cloth.

During the qawk fights, the birds seldom fight to the death, and rules prohibit lethal spurs and other artificial appendages. An experidnced referee, selected from among the aficionados, serves as arbiter. He and the owners must agree which two birds can fight. Unequal matches between small and large birds are not permitted. Birds selected, the owners remove the detachable bottoms of the cages, and, keeping the qawk caged, vertically move a botton up and down between the cages to agitate the birds, who begin to peck at the cage bottom and each other. The owners lift the cages and the qawk begin their fight. Each owner has four time-outs (a total of eight) and can place his cage over his bird if he appears to be losing. The cage agitation begins anew. When one bird obviously gains advantage over the other, the fight ends. The birds, cages covered, rest in the shade. Two other participants come forward. Afghans (particularly the Uzbak near Kunduz) raise and fight large cocks, but do not use spurs or other blood-drawing equipment.

Other animal fights (camels, rams, dogs, even captured hyena in Qandahar) occur during national holidays and other festivals. The dogfights usually get rather, bloody, and often take place on Fri days in Kabul. Much money passes hands during the bird and animal fights, another example of the gambling aspect.

Buzkashi, like baseball to the American, cricket to the British, and soccer to the French, characterizes and often caricatures the essence of Afghan culture. Buzkashi literally means "goat-grabbing," but now players commonly use calves. According to tradition, the game developed on the plains of Mongolia and Central Asia, where nomadic horsemen of the region are said to have used prisoners of war instead of goats or calves, dismembering the hapless creatures and reducing them to masses of hominid jelly during the play.

New rules promulgated by the Afghan Olympic Federation recently toned down the game for official functions in order to make it safer. Now mounted referees call two types of fouls: intentionally hitting your opponent with a whip or trying to force an opponent off his horse. Flagrant violation of either of these two rules can result in expulsion from the game, and, as in ice hockey, leave a team short a player for a specifled period of time. The new rules also limit play to one hour with a ten-minute break at halftime, and determine the size of the field (400 x 350 meters), as well as the number of players on each team (5 to 15).

In the north, buzkashi thrives as in the old days, with no rules and a few simple principles, substituting, however, a calf for a man, much to the disappointment of many elderly enthusiasts. Buzkashi forms a major part of the extracurricular lives of the people of northern Afghanistan. It constantly reminds the sedentary farmer of his former heroic nomadic ancestry, and helps the nomad relive the greatness of his past cavalry victories. After the late-summer reaping of wheat and barley and the early-fall plowing, many Uzbak, Tajik, and Turkoman play buzkashi on the plowed fields. The horses inadvertently contribute to soil fertility. When snow comes, the games cease, but the horsemen renew their contests after the spring planting, particularly near nawruz (March 21), the first day of the Afghan year. A fine match can be seen annually at this time in Mazar-i-Sharif. Buzkoashi continues intensively during the spring and summer as teams practice for the jeshn holidays. Now, practically all northern provincial centers and many sub-provincial towns have buzkashi on nawruz and jeshin. Provincial champions then meet in October for the national championship during the King's birthday celebrations in Kabul.

Actually, anyone can arrange a buzkashi match by sending out word that he will pay the winner of a match and give prizes for goals scored by individual players. The amount of the prize for a goal is announced before the beginning of play and paid after each goal. Money, turban cloths, or a chapan will be the usual prize. The custom now is to give money for all but the final goal, when the sponsor donates a fine turban cloth.

The rules of northern buzkashi are quite informal. The headless carcass of a calf is placed in the center of a circle and surrounded by the players of two opposing teams, which have been known to number as many as 1,000. I have heard of games with even more. Naturally, only a few chapandaz (master players) ever get their hands on the calf. The rest ride spare horses, and from time to time a chapandaz rides outside the play and remounts. Some. riders merely join the fun for a close-up of the action; others are novices learning the game, and give their horses experience before they join in the central melee. And melee it is.

Scoring a goal can be simply described, not so simply executed. At a starting signal, traditionally a rifle shot but often a blast on a whistle or shout from the match's sponsor, the first-string chapandaz push their horses, rearing and snorting in formation, toward the center of the circle. Each man attempts to lift the calf to his saddle, a difficult task with horses' hoofs, slashing whips, and the weight of the carcass combining to complicate the problem. Horse and man function as one being, a joy to watch. The sport is dangerous, but injuries are infrequent because of the excellent training of the horses and the coordination between man and mount. Often I have seen men fall in a maelstrom of flailing hoofs and not be touched. Training and instinct combine to keep the horses' hoofs clear of a dismounted rider.

The training, however, is long and arduous. Chapandaz or mehtar (special trainers.) carefully work with the horses. Most chapandaz own their mounts. Horses remain in training for five years before being committed to action on the maydan or dasht, in the great plains of the north. Good horses play for twenty years, and many Afghans claim the better chapandaz must be at least forty years old. The diet of the horses, sometimes better than that of many Afghan peasant, consists of barley twice a day, melons in season, and occasional meals of barley mixed with raw eggs and butter.

The lengthy training pays off. Horses seldom step on a fallen rider, and also swerve away from collisions without a gesture from their riders. The old Afghan saying stands: "Better a bad rider on a good horse than a good rider on a bad horse." When both are good, a chapandaz is born.

After a rider grabs the calf, lifts it to his saddle, and secures the calf's leg under his own leg against he pommel, he heads for the turning-point, carrying his whip in his mouth. He must circle this predetermined spot, sometimes two to three miles away, but more often under a mile, then return and drop the carcass inside the original circle or another near it. After each goal, the calf must be carried around the turning-point before another goal can be scored. If the carcass slides outside the circle, no goal is scored. When a chapandaz thinks he has bord (scored a goal), he lifts his whip high in the air and the sponsor of the match (and all the spectators) quickly and very vocally decides whether or not the rider has scored and therefore rates a prize.

Naturally, the other riders attempt to snatch the calf from any opponent clinging to the carcass. Often, like intricate flowers, folding and unfolding, riders in a circular mass, arms dangling to the ground, will hover over the calf, trying to grab the fallen corpse. When a rider picks up the calf the action begins anew. Strung out like cavalry after an initial clash of arms, the riders whiz across the landscape, exhibiting breathless skill. Sometimes, two or three chapandaz simultaneously grasp the calf, and attempt to wrest it one from the other, at times literally clinging to their mounts by their stirrups, whips clenched in teeth.

If the carcass breaks, riders with various parts of the anatomy gallop to the circle and drop the grisly remains. The sponsor and judges (usually retired buzkashi riders) must decide who controlled the largest portion. Play continues until the sponsor or sponsors of the match run out of money and prizes. Even then someone else often pays the prize money for a few additional goals.

Not only is buzkashi played on the maydan (open plain) but also in the river, buzkashi~yi-darya. A greased pig is probably easier to manage than a wet, slimy 50- to 100-pound calf carcass. The game rules of buzkashi-yi-darya continue the same as on the maydan, but the play is more difficult. Over river bank and cobble beds, through water over their heads, gallop the riders.

Teamwork supposedly plays an important role in buzkashi, and it does in the more sanitized matches held by the Afghan Olympic Federation. But in the mountains the play continues to characterize the main themes in Afghan culture, best described as close cooperation within a framework of fierce, individual competition.

Informal horse races and tent-pegging (naiza bazi, literally "lance game," a practical cavalry maneuver in past centuries) sometimes share the spotlight with buzkashi and. pahlwani on national holidays, religious festivals, and personal rites-de-passage (life-crisis ceremonials such as birth, circumcision, and marriage). The number of wrestlers and buzkashi players varies with the wealth of the family involved.

Another warfare training (now disappearing), chub bazi (stick playing or fighting), relates to sword training. Two or more men, each holding a stick in either hand, alternately hit each other's sticks in a traditional pattern. If one misses a beat, his fingers or another part of his body will get a vicious whack. At times a small shield about two feet in diameter replaces one of the sticks.

One interesting recreational institution, askari bazaar (the soldiers' bazaar), grew up in response to the need for cheap entertainment -for the low-paid Afghan soldiers stationed in the Kabul area. Every Friday or ium'a (the Muslim equivalent of the Sunday holiday in the West), off duty askar gather in the large open field (chaman) near Ghazi Stadium or in the new Zarnegar Park near the tomb of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan to sing and dance, watch qawk fights, or engage in general roughhousing, including pahlwani. Few Afghan soldiers have enough maney to attend the local movie theaters, so the askaribazaar is always crowded.

The cultural uniqueness of Nuristan extends to its sports and games. Several variations of bujul, wrestling, and ballgames exist. Whereas most Afghan groups avoid body contact sports in order that no blood may be spilled, both Nuristani men and boys revel in a team sport which more or less resembles rugby. The men choose an equal number for each team, select two goals (trees or rocks), establish boundaries, and the play begins. The opposing teams face one another, and the blocking, grabbing, and tripping begin. One man on each team tries to dash past the blockers and cross the goal line. His opposing number tries to prevent him. Balance, speed, and blocking ability are necessary for this bone-rattling game.

In some Pushtun areas, khusay resembles the Nuristani game, but each player must hold one foot behind his back and hop toward the goal. A player is disqualified if he drops the foot to the ground, giving the other team a numerical advantage. The group teases a leg-dropper, saying he is like a cow who has given birth to a calf, not a flattering simile.

Among the several Greek-like elements in Nuristani cultural patterns is a field-hockey game (wakranea) played with a stick, which has a cylindrical, bulbous head and is used to hit a wooden ball or an opponent. Since a contingent of Kafir (meaning "heathen" in Arabic, the pre-Muslim name for the Nuristani) fought with Alexander in his Indian campaign, it is not surprising' that they brought back soldiers' games with them, a. common acculturation process in armies, past and present.

Much rough-and-tumble wrestling, ballgames and field hockey takes place on rooftops in Nuristan, with drops of thirty feet or more for those who fall off. Few do, but outside observers shudder as the participants roll to the edge and lean over, much like the antagonists in western movie cliff-hanger fights. But the Nuristanis laugh at the danger and remain as surefooted as the mountain goats they stalk so realistically.

Western-type sports began in the rarified upper-class atmosphere during the reign of the Amir Habibullah (1901-19), an avid gadgeteer, who introduced the automobile to Afghanistan, was a good amateur photographer, and an admirer of Jules Verne. He also introduced tennis, cricket, and golf to the country. A Scots engineer, James Murray, employed by Habibullah to construct a bridge near Jalalabad, the Kabul woolen mills, and a dam at Ghazni, also constructed two or three golf courses.

Probably the most important trend since World War II has been the introduction of organized team sports and individual sports, which demand physical coordination. A special type of hand-to-eye coordination needed in a mechanized society is not required in an agricultural-pastoral milieu. Physical coordination is, after all, a product of cultural conditioning as well as individual ability. A body or any part of it reacts in an eye-to-mind-to-relevant-muscle sequence. Watching a villager or tribesman cross Kabul's increasingly crowded streets illustrates this. His peripheral vision tells the villager something moves toward him, but his cultural experience leads him to expect a slow-moving camel or donkey, or possibly a fast-moving horse. Unfortunately, in Kabul, it would probably be an automobile. The villager will take an extra step or two, actually looking at the car, but not reacting. Many accidents occur in this way. In addition, self-trained Afghan motorists often have difficulty in judging time-motion ratios.

Several contact sports have been recently introduced, new to the Afghan way of competition, but the fierce competitiveness and desire to win (group and individual pride) and do honor for family and tribe have given impetus to such team sports as basketball, soccer, volley ball and field hockey (in which several Nuristanis have made great names for themselves). Olympic wrestling and weight-lifting, easily related to informal rural contests, have become very popular, and the Afghans have sent field hockey, wrestling and weight-lifting teams to several Olympiads since World War II.

Although neither a game nor a sport, picknicking is a great Afghan pastime, and on Jum'a and other holidays, whole families take to the fields and gardens, to loll about or wrestle, to drink tea and eat, to listen to the bulbul (nightingale), transistor radios, watch the hoopoe, to pick and garland flowers.

But in both sports and games, be they traditional or modern sports introduced from the outside, the Afghan, product of a harsh, inward-looking, group-oriented society, plays to win. To paraphrase an American ideal: It's not how you play, but whether you win the game. (Deep down where it counts, I suspect American athletes-and particularly their coaches-feel the same way).