LAHORE: Uzbek musicologist and cultural anthropologist Razia Sultanova said that before the Taliban, there were Uzbek songs sung on marriages by mothers and grandmothers and little girls which meant there was knowledge transmission from one generation to another.

She termed it very important for the Afghan culture to have this process going but they were not allowed to do it now. “Music transcends language and culture and time and just listening to these songs and performances show the reach of culture of Afghanistan. We can ask the question what’s future of this heritage. Will it survive or not under the very difficult and draconian rule of the current government.”

Sultanova was commenting on the videos of folk songs being sung by Afghan women while playing Duff.

She was speaking in a session on “the arts and education for women in Afghanistan and Central Asia” on the last day of the Lahore Literary Festival. It was moderated by Ahmed Rashid.

When asked about the current situation and whether the weddings were being celebrated in Afghanistan under the Taliban, Sultanova said, “the Taliban don’t accept any instrumental music unfortunately. But weddings without music also do not exist now and we don’t know what’s happening there although the Taliban supported the idea of mosque weddings. There are some evidences on YouTube of 200 couples marrying without any music. It was kinda mosque cultural flow imposed by the Taliban, which is against any kind of Afghan traditional culture.”

Sultanova said Afghan women were experts in embroidery and carpet making and they would sing songs while working. “The only female wedding singer in Afghanistan Sabzi Gul passed away recently. She did not have pupils to transfer her knowledge. The genre of wedding singing is disappearing, the reality we are facing due with the appearance of the Taliban,” she deplored.

Dutch journalist Bette Dam said in Afghanistan it was easier for her to interview being a woman because the Taliban did not trust men who could be spies or carry weapons in their bags. She said being a woman gave her access to the sources and she had long interviews with them. There is an underrepresentation of journalism from the Taliban side. Journalism should be non-emotional, involving all sides of the story.

Dam visited a person, a good source on the Taliban, in Kandahar village, where she went in burka and the only question he asked was whether she had any weapon on her. He won’t talk to a person with weapons, including Americans, in the past.

FOLKLORE, MYTHS AND FICTION: Novelist and translator said he started translating Dastaan-i-Amir Hamza, which has a long passage about Amir Hamza and Amar Ayyar going to Celon where both of them receive most of their divine gifts and their visit to the Adam’s Peak.

“My current fictional work is mainly influenced by my reading and translations of myths and folk narrative,” he said while speaking at a session on folklore, myths and contemporary fiction, on the last day of the LLF.

“Once I came upon a term, Mah-i-Naqsha, which was mentioned as al-Mughanna in Khurasan. While looking at the meaning of Mah-i_Naqsha, I found the whole legend behind it and I am writing about it now.” Farooqi said what one reads and one intimately works with, translation in his case, shapes what one writes most of the time. He said due to reading folk narratives, his fiction had got into a completely different direction.

Sri Lankan writer Ameena Hussein said for her novel, she delved into Adam’s Peak and the footprint that various religions revered for different reasons and myths.

“The Buddhists believe it’s Buddha’s footprint. The Christians believe its St Thomas’s foot and Muslims believe its Adam’s.”

Some people believe that Adam, after being thrown out of heaven, landed there and then he met Eve after a thousand years, she said and added that since the early centuries, the place had been considered a place of pilgrimage.

Taiba Abbas said we find our deepest selves in myths and folklores. She said her book, The Night in Her Hair, was retelling and reimagining of the folklore, including that from Kashmir, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. She said there was a geographical unity in our folklore or cohesion which is very unique to us. She said when she and her mother, her co-author, decided to write the book, it was an attempt to preserve stories that belong to all of us. Interestingly, when the process of writing started, we experienced something very personal because the stories were of love.

Uzbek journalist and novelist Hamid Ismailov also spoke.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2023