The North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan have for long been a source of fascination for outsiders. But few have ventured into the region and spent long years living the harsh lives of the local people in the way that Grima has. The author, an ethnographer who currently teaches Pashto at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent twelve years in Peshawar, the Swat valley, Quetta, Zhob and other adjoining areas. At the very outset she tells us that Pashto, the language of this region which she mastered, is not just a language but a complex conglomerate of cultural behaviour. “One does not merely speak, but one does, one performs Pashto.” As she explains elsewhere in the book, in Pashto, behaviour is rooted in maintaining honour and reputation and the persistent fear of being shamed. Here one would recall that the title of her other book, published in the 1990s, is The Performance of Emotion Among Paxtun Women. Since laughter, dancing and singing are considered undesirable activities for women in that region, it is perhaps only through grief or gham that women could express themselves.
May 2006, volume 30, No 5