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question from life behind the veil  4) How are purdah, protection of the patriline, and the pakthun view of women interrelated?

question from life behind the veil  4) How are purdah, protection of the patriline, and the pakthun view of women interrelated?

Social Psychology (10th Edition)
Social Psychology (10th Edition)
10th Edition
ISBN:9780134641287
Author:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Publisher:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers
Chapter1: Introducing Social Psychology
Section: Chapter Questions
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question from life behind the veil 

4) How are purdah, protection of the patriline, and the pakthun view of women interrelated? 

11:27 Course Life Behind the Veil Ar... Life Behind the Veil Article 5 Family, Marriage, and Kinship quarrel with the old matriarch, their mother-in- law. This is usually a prelude to a couple moving out of the house into their own compound, and husbands always blame their wives for the breakup of the extended family, even though they, too, will be glad to become the masters of their own homes and households. 174 But the worst fights among women are the fights between women married to the same man. Islam permits polygamous marriage, and legally a man may have four wives. Not all men are fi- nancially able to take more than one wife, but most men dream of marrying again, despite the Swati proverb that says "I may be a fool, but not so much of a fool as the man with two wives." Men who can afford it often do take a second wife. The reason is not sexual desire, for wives do not mind if their husbands have liaisons with prostitutes or promiscuous poor women. Rather, the second wife is brought in to humiliate an overly assertive first wife. Bringing in a second wife is a terrible insult; it is an expression of con- tempt for the first wife and her entire lineage. The insult is especially cutting in Swat, where divorce is prohibited (though it is permitted in the Koran) and where a disliked wife must either en- dure her lot or retreat to her family's household and a life of celibacy. Small wonder then that households with two wives are pits of intrigue, vituperation, and magical incantation, as each wife seeks to expel the other. The Koran says a man should only practice polygamy if he is sure he can treat each wife equally; the only man we met who was able to approximate this ideal was a man who never went home. He spent his time in the men's house, talking with his cronies and having his meals sent to him. The men's house is the best-built structure in any village, along with the mosque, which is also prohibited to women. It is a meeting place for the clan, the center for hospitality and refuge, and the arena for political manipulation. This is where the visitors will be received, surrounded by men who gossip, doze, or clean their rifles. Here, the guest might well imagine that women do not even exist. Only the tea and food that is sent over from the compound nearby tell him of the women working behind the walls. Formerly, in Swat, most men slept in the men's house, visiting their wives secretly late at night and But many women do not live to see their triumph. In northern Swat, for every 100 women over the age of sixty there are 149 men, compared to the more equal 100 to 108 ratio below sixty. The women are worn out by continual childbear- ing, breast feeding, and a lack of protein. Though fertile in places, the Swat valley is heavily over- populated with an estimated 1 million people, and survival is always difficult. The diet consists chiefly of bread, rice, seasonal vegetables, and some dairy products. Meat is a rarity and goes to the men and boys as a matter of course. They per- petuate the patrilineal clan and must survive, while women can always be replaced. The lives of men are hard, but the lives of women are harder, as witnessed by their early dontha + returning before daybreak. But now only a few elders and some ne'er-do-well youths live perma- nently in the elegant, aging buildings. Sometimes, however, a man may be obliged to move to the men's house for a few days if his wife makes his home too uncomfortable, for women have their own weapons in the household battles. Arguments may flare up over almost anything: the husband buying a rotten piece of meat or forgetting to bring home a length of material, the wife ruining some curd or gossiping too much with a neighbor. The wife may then angrily refuse to cook, obliging the husband to retreat to the men's house for food. The man's weapon in fights is violence, while the woman can withdraw domestic services at will. In the early days of a marriage, when the bride is new to the household and surrounded by her husband's people, she may be fairly meek. But when her status has improved as a result of pro- ducing sons, she will become more aggressive. Her lacerating tongue is renowned, and she will also begin to fight back physically as well as verbally. Finally, her exasperated husband may silence her with a blow from a heavy stick he keeps for that purpose. No shame is attached to beating one's wife, and men laugh about beatings they have administered. The women themselves, though they decry their men's brutality, proudly display their scars and bruises, characterizing a neighbor who is relatively gentle to his wife as "a man with no penis." The older a woman gets, the more powerful and fearless she becomes. She is aided by her sons who, though respecting their father, regard him as an obstacle to their gaining rights in land. The old man, who gains his stature from his landholding, is always reluctant to allot shares to his grown sons. Furthermore, the sons' ties of affection are much stronger with the mother. The elderly fa- ther, who is generally ten or fifteen years older than his wife, is thus surrounded by animosity in his own house. The situation of the earlier years has reversed itself, and the wife, who began alone and friendless, gains allies in her old age, while the husband becomes isolated. Ghani Khan, a mod- ern Pakhtun writer, had described the situation well: "The Pakhtun thinks he is as good as anyone else and his father rolled into one and is fool enough to try this even with his wife. She pays for it in her youth, and he in his old age." Life Behind the Veil have hypothesized that swaddling actually serves to develop a certain character type: a type which can withstand great restraint but which also tends to uncontrolled bursts of temper. This hypothesis fits Swat, where privation and the exigencies of the social structure demand stoicism, but where violent temper is also useful. We often saw Swati children of all ages lose themselves in tantrums to coerce their parents, and such coercion was usually successful. Grown men and women as well are prone to fits of temper, and this dangerous aspect makes their enemies leery of pressing them too hard. 175 Both sexes are indoctrinated in the virtues of their family and it. 11 A RA
Transcribed Image Text:11:27 Course Life Behind the Veil Ar... Life Behind the Veil Article 5 Family, Marriage, and Kinship quarrel with the old matriarch, their mother-in- law. This is usually a prelude to a couple moving out of the house into their own compound, and husbands always blame their wives for the breakup of the extended family, even though they, too, will be glad to become the masters of their own homes and households. 174 But the worst fights among women are the fights between women married to the same man. Islam permits polygamous marriage, and legally a man may have four wives. Not all men are fi- nancially able to take more than one wife, but most men dream of marrying again, despite the Swati proverb that says "I may be a fool, but not so much of a fool as the man with two wives." Men who can afford it often do take a second wife. The reason is not sexual desire, for wives do not mind if their husbands have liaisons with prostitutes or promiscuous poor women. Rather, the second wife is brought in to humiliate an overly assertive first wife. Bringing in a second wife is a terrible insult; it is an expression of con- tempt for the first wife and her entire lineage. The insult is especially cutting in Swat, where divorce is prohibited (though it is permitted in the Koran) and where a disliked wife must either en- dure her lot or retreat to her family's household and a life of celibacy. Small wonder then that households with two wives are pits of intrigue, vituperation, and magical incantation, as each wife seeks to expel the other. The Koran says a man should only practice polygamy if he is sure he can treat each wife equally; the only man we met who was able to approximate this ideal was a man who never went home. He spent his time in the men's house, talking with his cronies and having his meals sent to him. The men's house is the best-built structure in any village, along with the mosque, which is also prohibited to women. It is a meeting place for the clan, the center for hospitality and refuge, and the arena for political manipulation. This is where the visitors will be received, surrounded by men who gossip, doze, or clean their rifles. Here, the guest might well imagine that women do not even exist. Only the tea and food that is sent over from the compound nearby tell him of the women working behind the walls. Formerly, in Swat, most men slept in the men's house, visiting their wives secretly late at night and But many women do not live to see their triumph. In northern Swat, for every 100 women over the age of sixty there are 149 men, compared to the more equal 100 to 108 ratio below sixty. The women are worn out by continual childbear- ing, breast feeding, and a lack of protein. Though fertile in places, the Swat valley is heavily over- populated with an estimated 1 million people, and survival is always difficult. The diet consists chiefly of bread, rice, seasonal vegetables, and some dairy products. Meat is a rarity and goes to the men and boys as a matter of course. They per- petuate the patrilineal clan and must survive, while women can always be replaced. The lives of men are hard, but the lives of women are harder, as witnessed by their early dontha + returning before daybreak. But now only a few elders and some ne'er-do-well youths live perma- nently in the elegant, aging buildings. Sometimes, however, a man may be obliged to move to the men's house for a few days if his wife makes his home too uncomfortable, for women have their own weapons in the household battles. Arguments may flare up over almost anything: the husband buying a rotten piece of meat or forgetting to bring home a length of material, the wife ruining some curd or gossiping too much with a neighbor. The wife may then angrily refuse to cook, obliging the husband to retreat to the men's house for food. The man's weapon in fights is violence, while the woman can withdraw domestic services at will. In the early days of a marriage, when the bride is new to the household and surrounded by her husband's people, she may be fairly meek. But when her status has improved as a result of pro- ducing sons, she will become more aggressive. Her lacerating tongue is renowned, and she will also begin to fight back physically as well as verbally. Finally, her exasperated husband may silence her with a blow from a heavy stick he keeps for that purpose. No shame is attached to beating one's wife, and men laugh about beatings they have administered. The women themselves, though they decry their men's brutality, proudly display their scars and bruises, characterizing a neighbor who is relatively gentle to his wife as "a man with no penis." The older a woman gets, the more powerful and fearless she becomes. She is aided by her sons who, though respecting their father, regard him as an obstacle to their gaining rights in land. The old man, who gains his stature from his landholding, is always reluctant to allot shares to his grown sons. Furthermore, the sons' ties of affection are much stronger with the mother. The elderly fa- ther, who is generally ten or fifteen years older than his wife, is thus surrounded by animosity in his own house. The situation of the earlier years has reversed itself, and the wife, who began alone and friendless, gains allies in her old age, while the husband becomes isolated. Ghani Khan, a mod- ern Pakhtun writer, had described the situation well: "The Pakhtun thinks he is as good as anyone else and his father rolled into one and is fool enough to try this even with his wife. She pays for it in her youth, and he in his old age." Life Behind the Veil have hypothesized that swaddling actually serves to develop a certain character type: a type which can withstand great restraint but which also tends to uncontrolled bursts of temper. This hypothesis fits Swat, where privation and the exigencies of the social structure demand stoicism, but where violent temper is also useful. We often saw Swati children of all ages lose themselves in tantrums to coerce their parents, and such coercion was usually successful. Grown men and women as well are prone to fits of temper, and this dangerous aspect makes their enemies leery of pressing them too hard. 175 Both sexes are indoctrinated in the virtues of their family and it. 11 A RA
170 Cherry Lindholm and Charles Lindholm Harvard professors Cherry Lindholm and Charles Lindholm metaphorically remove the veil from Moslem women in Pakistan, who are of a strict purdah society, to reveal how this "institution of female seclusion" influences all Pakhtun societal practices and institutions. Drifting among the mobs of men are, here and there, anonymous figures hidden beneath volumi- nous folds of material, who float along like ships in full sail, graceful, mysterious, faceless, instilling in the observer a sense both of awe and of curiosity. These are the Moslem women of the Middle East. Their dress is the customary chador, which they wear when obliged to leave the privacy of their homes. The chador is but one means by which women maintain their purdah, the institution o of female seclusion, which requires that women should remain unseen by men who are not close relatives a and strikes Westerners as so totally for eign and incomprehensible. Sometimes the alien aspect is tempered with a touch of Western familiarity. A pair of plastic sunglasses may gleam from behind the lace that covers the eyes, or a platform shoe might peep forth from beneath the hem of the flowing chador. Nevertheless, the overall presence remains one of inscrutability and is perhaps the most striking of Middle Eastern societies. image of M We spent nine months in one of the most strict of all the purdah societies, the Yusufzai Pakhtun of the Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. ("Pakhtun" is the sudnsed Fate men away from rational decisions The bazaar teems with activity. Pedestrians throng the narrow streets, wending past donkey carts, cyclists, and overloaded vehicles. Vendors haggle in the dark doorways of their shops. Pitiful beggars shuffle among the crowds, while bearded religious mendicants wander about, their eyes fixed on a distant world. Source: Reprinted by permission of the authors. effected traditional gender roles. Modernity how it has Globalization designation preferred by the tribesmen, who were generally called Pathans in the days of the British raj.) We had come to the Swat Valley after a hair- raising ride on a rickety bus from Peshawar over the 10,280-foot Malakand Pass. Winston Churchill came this way as a young war corre- spondent attached to the Malakand Field Force in 1897. As we came into the valley, about half the size of Connecticut, we passed a sign that said WELCOME TO SWAT. We were fortunate to have entrée into the community through a Swati friend we had made eight years before. In Swat, women are secluded inside the domestic compound except for family rituals, such as marriage, circumcision, and funerals, or visits to saint's tombs. A woman must always be in the protective company of other women and is never allowed out alone. It tells a great deal about the community that the word for husband in Pakhto, the language of the Pakhtun, is wawund, which also means God. However, as everywhere, rules are sometimes broken or, more frequently, cleverly manipulated. Our Pakhtun host's stepmother, Bibi, an intelli- gent and forceful woman, was renowned for her tactics. Once, when all the females of the house- hold had been forbidden to leave the compound t receive cholera inoculations at the temporary clinic next door, Bibi respectfully bowed her head and assured the men they could visit the mosque with easy minds. Once the men had gone, she promptly climbed the ladder to the flat roof and summoned the doctor to the door of her com- pound. One by one, the women extended their bare arms through the doorway and received their shots. Later Bibi could honestly swear that no wornan had set foot outside the compound walls, Despite such circumventions, purdah is of paramount importance in Swat. As one Pakhtun proverb succinctly states: "The woman's place is Moments of Culture Clash L Adaptation 172 Family, Marriage, and Kinship head or across the shoulders; she may even decide to adopt modest Western dress. The extent of this transformation will depend partly upon the atti- tude of the community in which she lives. In the urban centers of the stricter purdah re- gions the public display of purdah is scrupulous, sometimes even more striking than that of the tribal village. Behind the scenes, though, the city-dwelling woman does have more freedom than she would have in the village. She will be able to visit not only relatives but friends without specific permission from her husband, who is out at work all day. She may, suitably veiled, go shop- ping in the bazaar, a chore her husband would have undertaken in the village. On the whole, the city woman will have a great deal more indepen- dence, and city men sometimes lament this weak- ening of traditional male domination. wom- The urbanized male may speak of the custom- bound tribesmen (such as the Swat Pakhtun, the Bedouin nomads of Saudi Arabia or Qashqai herdsmen of Iran) as country bumpkins, yet he still considers their central values, their sense of personal pride, honor, and autonomy, as cultural ideals and views the tribesmen, in a very real way, as exemplars of the proper mode of life. Elite fam- ilies in the cities proudly emphasize their tribal heritage and sometimes send their sons to live for a year or so with distant tribal cousins, in order to expose them to the tribesman's integrity and moral code. The tribesman, on the other hand, views his urbanized relatives as weak anly, especially with reference to the slackening of purdah in the cities. Though the purdah female, both in the cities and in the tribal areas, rarely per- sonifies the ideal virtues of silence, submission, and obedience, the concept of purdah and male supremacy remains central to the male identity and to the ideology of the culture as a whole. The dynamic beneath the notion of male su- premacy, the institution of purdah, and the ideol- ogy of women's sexual power becomes apparent when one takes an overall view of the social struc- ture. The family in the Middle East, particularly in the tribal regions, is not an isolate element; kinship and marriage are the underlying prin- ciples that structure action and thought. Individ- uals interact not so much according to personal preference as according to kinship. Patrilinial The Middle Eastern kinship system is known to anthropologists as a segmentary-lineage orga- nization; the basic idea is that kinship is traced through one line only. In the Middle East, the sys tem is patrilineal, which means that the male line is followed, and all the links through women are ignored. An individual can therefore trace his re- lationship to any other individual in the society and know the exact genealogical distance between them; i.e., the distance that must be traced to reach a common male ancestor. The system obliges men to defend their patrilineal relatives if they are attacked, but if there is no external force threatening the lineage, then men struggle against one another according to the principle of ge- nealogical distance. This principle is nicely stated in a famous Middle Eastern proverb: "I against my brothers, my brothers and I against my the world." The cousins in question are of course cousins; my cousins, my brothers and I against patrilineal. Within this system, women appear to have no role, though they are the units of reproduction, the mothers of the sons who will carry on the pat- riline. Strange as it may seem, this is the core con- tradiction of the society: The "pure" patriline itself is actually descended from a woman. This helps explain the exaggerated fear of women's promiscuity and supposedly voracious sexuality. In order to protect the patriline, women must be isolated and guarded. Their sexuality, which threatens the integrity of the patriline, must be made the exclusive property of their husbands. Women, while being absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the social order, are simultane- ously the greatest threat to it. The persistent denigration of women is ex- plained by this core contradiction. Moslem society considers women naturally inferior in intelligence and ability-childlike, incapable of discernment, incompetent to testify in court, prey to whims and fancies. In tribal areas, women are prohibited from inheritance, despite a Koranic injunction, and in marriage they are purchased from their fathers like a commodity. Were woman not feared, these denials of her personhood would be unnecessary. Another unique element of Middle Eastern culture is the prevalence of marriage with the Down orga- 올려 숨질문 섬 등 관꼽을 꼽토주로록 보 aced :sys- :line iety veen reen i to tem Ives xce ge- ted ܘ ܘ ܗ ܘ ܐ ܝ ܩ ܕ not Fist my nat men are weak to this mens Place 15 14 the nome MI Stoning of Syrayah in the home or the grave." Years ago in Swat, if a woman broke her purdah, her husband might kill her or cut off her nose as punishment and as a means of cleansing his honor. If a woman is caught alone with an unrelated man, it will al- ways be assumed that the liaison is sexual, and public opinion will oblige her husband to shoot her, even if he does not desire her death; to go un- avenged is to be known henceforth as begherata, or man without honor. As such, he would no longer have the right to call himself Pakhtun. A shameless woman is a threat to the whole so- ciety. Our host remembered witnessing, thirty years ago when he was a child, the entire village stoning an adulteress. This punishment is pre- scribed by Islamic law, though the law requires there be four witnesses to the sexual act itself to establish guilt. Nowadays, punishments for wifely misdemeanors have become less harsh, though adulterous wives are still killed. In the rural areas, poorer families generally cannot maintain purdah as rigorously as their wealthier neighbors, for often a wife must help her husband in the fields or become a servant. Nevertheless, she is required to keep her hair covered at all times and to interact with men to a minimum. Here again, the rules are sometimes 2 flouted, and a poor woman might entice a man with her eyes, or even, according to village men who claimed personal experiences, become more aggressive in her seductive attempts and actually seize a man in a deserted alleyway and lure him into her house. Often, the man is persuaded. Such a woman will accept money from her lover, who is usually a man from a wealthy family. Her husband is then a begherata, but some men ac- quiesce to the situation because of the money the wife is earning or because of fear of the wife's so- cially superior and more powerful lover. But most poor men, and certainly all the elite, keep their women under strict control. In the Islamic Middle East, women are viewed as powerful and dangerous beings, highly sexual and lacking in personal discipline and discrimina- tion. In Middle Eastern thought, sexual inter- course itself, though polluting, lacks the same negative connotations it has in the West. It has al- ways been believed that women have sexual cli- maxes, and there is no notion of female frigidity. Male impotence, however, is well-documented, 3 Life Behind the Veil 171 mitted to us that they had lost their interest in and some middle-aged and even young men ad- women. Sometimes, though rarely, a young bride- groom will find himself incapable of consummat- ing his marriage, either because he finds his bride unattractive or because he has been previously en- chanted by a male lover and has become impotent in a heterosexual relationship. Homosexuality has never been seen as aberrant in the Middle East. As a famous Afghan saying humorously declares: "A woman is for bearing children, a boy is for. pleasure, but ecstasy is a ripe watermelon!" How- ever, with Western influence, homosexuality in the Middle East is now less overt. But even when it was common and open, the man was still ex- pected to marry and produce children. Men must marry, though women are regarded as a chaotic and anarchic force. They are believed to possess many times the sexual desire of men and constitute a potential threat to the family and the family's honor, which is based in large mea- sure on the possession and control of women and their excessive and dangerous sexuality. Among the Pakhtun of Swat, where the male- female relation is of the most hostile in the Middle East, the man avoids showing affection to his wife, for fear she will become too self- confident and will begin to assert herself in ways that insult his position and honor. She may start by leaving the compound without his permission and, if unchecked, may end by bringing outside men into the house for sexual encounters, secure in the knowledge that her husband, weakened by his affection for her, will not take action. This course of events is considered inevitable by men and women alike and was illustrated by a few ac- tual cases in the village where we lived. ✓ Women are therefore much feared, despite the power pronouncements of male supremacy. They must be controlled, in order to prevent their alarming power less basic natures from coming to the fore and causing ally described as a system that serves to protect dishonor to their own lineages. Pundah is gener + the woman, but implicitly it protects the men and da society in general from the potentially disruptive actions of the powerful female sex. in the modern urban centers. The educated urban Changes are occurring, however, particularly woman often dispenses with the chador replacing it with a simple length of veiling draped over the A strang grans weakness is father's brother's daughter. In many areas, in fact, this marriage is so favored that a boy must give explicit permission to allow his patrilineal female cousin to marry elsewhere. This peculiar marriage form, which is found nowhere else in the world, also serves to negate the woman by merging her lineage with that of her husband, since both are members of the same patriline (in- deed, are the offspring of brothers). No new blood enters, and the sanctity of the patriline is steadily maintained. However, this ploy gives rise to other prob- lems. Cousin marriage often divides the brothers rather than uniting them. Although the bride- price is usually reduced in such marriages, it is al- ways demanded, thus turning the brothers into opponents in a business negotiation. more, giving a woman in Swat carries an implica- Further tion of inferiority; historically, victors in war took women from the vanquished. Cousin marriage thus renders the brothers' equality questionable. Finally, the young couple's fights will further alienate the brothers, especially since such mar- riages are notoriously contentious. This is be- cause patrilineal male cousins are rivals for the common grandfather's inheritance (in fact, the Swati term for father's brother's son is tarbur, which also means enemy), and a man who mar- ries his patrilineal cousin is marrying the sister of his life-long opponent. Her loyalty is with her brother, and this is bound to cause frequent disputes. Though the girl is treated like goods, she does not see herself as such. The fundamental premise of tribal life is the equality of the various landed families. There are very few hierarchies in these societies, and even the leaders are often no more than first among equals. Within this system, which as been described as a nearly perfect democracy, each khan (which means landowner and literally translates as as superior to all others. The girls of the house- family sees itself as king) hold feel the same pride their lineage as their brothers and cannot help but regard their hus- band's families through jaundiced eyes. The new bride is prepared to defend the honor of her fam- ily, even though they have partially repudiated her by negotiating the marriage. Her identity like that of man, rests on her lineage pride women ·3 →>>> ?!! women are & fear Life Behind the Veil which she will fight to uphold. The husband, meanwhile, is determined to demonstrate his domination and mastery, since control of women s the nexus of a man's sense of self-respect. 173 test to Hostility is thus built into marriage by the very structure of the society, which pits every lin- eage against every other in a never-ending con- s markedly egalitarian culture. The hostility of of power within the e marriage bond is evident from its beginnings. The reluctant bride is torn from her cot in her family's house and enscon and ensconced on a palanquin that strongly resembles a bier. The war drums that announce the marriage procession indicate the nature of the tie, as does the stoning of the palan- quin by the small boys of the village as it is car- e will creep ried through the dusty streets. When the bride arrives at her new husband's house, his family triumphantly fires their rifles into the air. They have taken a woman! The young wife cowers in her veils as she is prodded and poked curiously by the females of the husband's house who try to persuade her to show her face. The groom him- self is nowhere to be seen, having retreated to the men's house in shame. In three days, he w to her room and consummate the marriage. Tak- ing the virginity of the bride is a highly charged symbolic , and act, in some areas of the Middle East the display of the bloody nuptial sheet to the public is a vital part of the wedding rite. Breaking the hymen demonstrates the husband's posses- sion of his wife's sexuality. She then becomes the junior adult in the household, subordinate to everyone, but, most especially, under the heavy thumb of her mother-in-law. The household the bride enters will be that of her husband's father, since the system, as well as being patrilineal, surrounded by also patrilocal. She will be his relatives and will be alone with her husband only at night. During the day he will pay no attention to her, for it is consid- ered shameful for a man to take note of his wife in front of others, particularly his father and mother. Within the compound walls, which shield the household from the rest of the world, she is at the mercy of her new family. Life within the compound is hardly peaceful. squabble Wi PIC COLLAGE
Transcribed Image Text:170 Cherry Lindholm and Charles Lindholm Harvard professors Cherry Lindholm and Charles Lindholm metaphorically remove the veil from Moslem women in Pakistan, who are of a strict purdah society, to reveal how this "institution of female seclusion" influences all Pakhtun societal practices and institutions. Drifting among the mobs of men are, here and there, anonymous figures hidden beneath volumi- nous folds of material, who float along like ships in full sail, graceful, mysterious, faceless, instilling in the observer a sense both of awe and of curiosity. These are the Moslem women of the Middle East. Their dress is the customary chador, which they wear when obliged to leave the privacy of their homes. The chador is but one means by which women maintain their purdah, the institution o of female seclusion, which requires that women should remain unseen by men who are not close relatives a and strikes Westerners as so totally for eign and incomprehensible. Sometimes the alien aspect is tempered with a touch of Western familiarity. A pair of plastic sunglasses may gleam from behind the lace that covers the eyes, or a platform shoe might peep forth from beneath the hem of the flowing chador. Nevertheless, the overall presence remains one of inscrutability and is perhaps the most striking of Middle Eastern societies. image of M We spent nine months in one of the most strict of all the purdah societies, the Yusufzai Pakhtun of the Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. ("Pakhtun" is the sudnsed Fate men away from rational decisions The bazaar teems with activity. Pedestrians throng the narrow streets, wending past donkey carts, cyclists, and overloaded vehicles. Vendors haggle in the dark doorways of their shops. Pitiful beggars shuffle among the crowds, while bearded religious mendicants wander about, their eyes fixed on a distant world. Source: Reprinted by permission of the authors. effected traditional gender roles. Modernity how it has Globalization designation preferred by the tribesmen, who were generally called Pathans in the days of the British raj.) We had come to the Swat Valley after a hair- raising ride on a rickety bus from Peshawar over the 10,280-foot Malakand Pass. Winston Churchill came this way as a young war corre- spondent attached to the Malakand Field Force in 1897. As we came into the valley, about half the size of Connecticut, we passed a sign that said WELCOME TO SWAT. We were fortunate to have entrée into the community through a Swati friend we had made eight years before. In Swat, women are secluded inside the domestic compound except for family rituals, such as marriage, circumcision, and funerals, or visits to saint's tombs. A woman must always be in the protective company of other women and is never allowed out alone. It tells a great deal about the community that the word for husband in Pakhto, the language of the Pakhtun, is wawund, which also means God. However, as everywhere, rules are sometimes broken or, more frequently, cleverly manipulated. Our Pakhtun host's stepmother, Bibi, an intelli- gent and forceful woman, was renowned for her tactics. Once, when all the females of the house- hold had been forbidden to leave the compound t receive cholera inoculations at the temporary clinic next door, Bibi respectfully bowed her head and assured the men they could visit the mosque with easy minds. Once the men had gone, she promptly climbed the ladder to the flat roof and summoned the doctor to the door of her com- pound. One by one, the women extended their bare arms through the doorway and received their shots. Later Bibi could honestly swear that no wornan had set foot outside the compound walls, Despite such circumventions, purdah is of paramount importance in Swat. As one Pakhtun proverb succinctly states: "The woman's place is Moments of Culture Clash L Adaptation 172 Family, Marriage, and Kinship head or across the shoulders; she may even decide to adopt modest Western dress. The extent of this transformation will depend partly upon the atti- tude of the community in which she lives. In the urban centers of the stricter purdah re- gions the public display of purdah is scrupulous, sometimes even more striking than that of the tribal village. Behind the scenes, though, the city-dwelling woman does have more freedom than she would have in the village. She will be able to visit not only relatives but friends without specific permission from her husband, who is out at work all day. She may, suitably veiled, go shop- ping in the bazaar, a chore her husband would have undertaken in the village. On the whole, the city woman will have a great deal more indepen- dence, and city men sometimes lament this weak- ening of traditional male domination. wom- The urbanized male may speak of the custom- bound tribesmen (such as the Swat Pakhtun, the Bedouin nomads of Saudi Arabia or Qashqai herdsmen of Iran) as country bumpkins, yet he still considers their central values, their sense of personal pride, honor, and autonomy, as cultural ideals and views the tribesmen, in a very real way, as exemplars of the proper mode of life. Elite fam- ilies in the cities proudly emphasize their tribal heritage and sometimes send their sons to live for a year or so with distant tribal cousins, in order to expose them to the tribesman's integrity and moral code. The tribesman, on the other hand, views his urbanized relatives as weak anly, especially with reference to the slackening of purdah in the cities. Though the purdah female, both in the cities and in the tribal areas, rarely per- sonifies the ideal virtues of silence, submission, and obedience, the concept of purdah and male supremacy remains central to the male identity and to the ideology of the culture as a whole. The dynamic beneath the notion of male su- premacy, the institution of purdah, and the ideol- ogy of women's sexual power becomes apparent when one takes an overall view of the social struc- ture. The family in the Middle East, particularly in the tribal regions, is not an isolate element; kinship and marriage are the underlying prin- ciples that structure action and thought. Individ- uals interact not so much according to personal preference as according to kinship. Patrilinial The Middle Eastern kinship system is known to anthropologists as a segmentary-lineage orga- nization; the basic idea is that kinship is traced through one line only. In the Middle East, the sys tem is patrilineal, which means that the male line is followed, and all the links through women are ignored. An individual can therefore trace his re- lationship to any other individual in the society and know the exact genealogical distance between them; i.e., the distance that must be traced to reach a common male ancestor. The system obliges men to defend their patrilineal relatives if they are attacked, but if there is no external force threatening the lineage, then men struggle against one another according to the principle of ge- nealogical distance. This principle is nicely stated in a famous Middle Eastern proverb: "I against my brothers, my brothers and I against my the world." The cousins in question are of course cousins; my cousins, my brothers and I against patrilineal. Within this system, women appear to have no role, though they are the units of reproduction, the mothers of the sons who will carry on the pat- riline. Strange as it may seem, this is the core con- tradiction of the society: The "pure" patriline itself is actually descended from a woman. This helps explain the exaggerated fear of women's promiscuity and supposedly voracious sexuality. In order to protect the patriline, women must be isolated and guarded. Their sexuality, which threatens the integrity of the patriline, must be made the exclusive property of their husbands. Women, while being absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the social order, are simultane- ously the greatest threat to it. The persistent denigration of women is ex- plained by this core contradiction. Moslem society considers women naturally inferior in intelligence and ability-childlike, incapable of discernment, incompetent to testify in court, prey to whims and fancies. In tribal areas, women are prohibited from inheritance, despite a Koranic injunction, and in marriage they are purchased from their fathers like a commodity. Were woman not feared, these denials of her personhood would be unnecessary. Another unique element of Middle Eastern culture is the prevalence of marriage with the Down orga- 올려 숨질문 섬 등 관꼽을 꼽토주로록 보 aced :sys- :line iety veen reen i to tem Ives xce ge- ted ܘ ܘ ܗ ܘ ܐ ܝ ܩ ܕ not Fist my nat men are weak to this mens Place 15 14 the nome MI Stoning of Syrayah in the home or the grave." Years ago in Swat, if a woman broke her purdah, her husband might kill her or cut off her nose as punishment and as a means of cleansing his honor. If a woman is caught alone with an unrelated man, it will al- ways be assumed that the liaison is sexual, and public opinion will oblige her husband to shoot her, even if he does not desire her death; to go un- avenged is to be known henceforth as begherata, or man without honor. As such, he would no longer have the right to call himself Pakhtun. A shameless woman is a threat to the whole so- ciety. Our host remembered witnessing, thirty years ago when he was a child, the entire village stoning an adulteress. This punishment is pre- scribed by Islamic law, though the law requires there be four witnesses to the sexual act itself to establish guilt. Nowadays, punishments for wifely misdemeanors have become less harsh, though adulterous wives are still killed. In the rural areas, poorer families generally cannot maintain purdah as rigorously as their wealthier neighbors, for often a wife must help her husband in the fields or become a servant. Nevertheless, she is required to keep her hair covered at all times and to interact with men to a minimum. Here again, the rules are sometimes 2 flouted, and a poor woman might entice a man with her eyes, or even, according to village men who claimed personal experiences, become more aggressive in her seductive attempts and actually seize a man in a deserted alleyway and lure him into her house. Often, the man is persuaded. Such a woman will accept money from her lover, who is usually a man from a wealthy family. Her husband is then a begherata, but some men ac- quiesce to the situation because of the money the wife is earning or because of fear of the wife's so- cially superior and more powerful lover. But most poor men, and certainly all the elite, keep their women under strict control. In the Islamic Middle East, women are viewed as powerful and dangerous beings, highly sexual and lacking in personal discipline and discrimina- tion. In Middle Eastern thought, sexual inter- course itself, though polluting, lacks the same negative connotations it has in the West. It has al- ways been believed that women have sexual cli- maxes, and there is no notion of female frigidity. Male impotence, however, is well-documented, 3 Life Behind the Veil 171 mitted to us that they had lost their interest in and some middle-aged and even young men ad- women. Sometimes, though rarely, a young bride- groom will find himself incapable of consummat- ing his marriage, either because he finds his bride unattractive or because he has been previously en- chanted by a male lover and has become impotent in a heterosexual relationship. Homosexuality has never been seen as aberrant in the Middle East. As a famous Afghan saying humorously declares: "A woman is for bearing children, a boy is for. pleasure, but ecstasy is a ripe watermelon!" How- ever, with Western influence, homosexuality in the Middle East is now less overt. But even when it was common and open, the man was still ex- pected to marry and produce children. Men must marry, though women are regarded as a chaotic and anarchic force. They are believed to possess many times the sexual desire of men and constitute a potential threat to the family and the family's honor, which is based in large mea- sure on the possession and control of women and their excessive and dangerous sexuality. Among the Pakhtun of Swat, where the male- female relation is of the most hostile in the Middle East, the man avoids showing affection to his wife, for fear she will become too self- confident and will begin to assert herself in ways that insult his position and honor. She may start by leaving the compound without his permission and, if unchecked, may end by bringing outside men into the house for sexual encounters, secure in the knowledge that her husband, weakened by his affection for her, will not take action. This course of events is considered inevitable by men and women alike and was illustrated by a few ac- tual cases in the village where we lived. ✓ Women are therefore much feared, despite the power pronouncements of male supremacy. They must be controlled, in order to prevent their alarming power less basic natures from coming to the fore and causing ally described as a system that serves to protect dishonor to their own lineages. Pundah is gener + the woman, but implicitly it protects the men and da society in general from the potentially disruptive actions of the powerful female sex. in the modern urban centers. The educated urban Changes are occurring, however, particularly woman often dispenses with the chador replacing it with a simple length of veiling draped over the A strang grans weakness is father's brother's daughter. In many areas, in fact, this marriage is so favored that a boy must give explicit permission to allow his patrilineal female cousin to marry elsewhere. This peculiar marriage form, which is found nowhere else in the world, also serves to negate the woman by merging her lineage with that of her husband, since both are members of the same patriline (in- deed, are the offspring of brothers). No new blood enters, and the sanctity of the patriline is steadily maintained. However, this ploy gives rise to other prob- lems. Cousin marriage often divides the brothers rather than uniting them. Although the bride- price is usually reduced in such marriages, it is al- ways demanded, thus turning the brothers into opponents in a business negotiation. more, giving a woman in Swat carries an implica- Further tion of inferiority; historically, victors in war took women from the vanquished. Cousin marriage thus renders the brothers' equality questionable. Finally, the young couple's fights will further alienate the brothers, especially since such mar- riages are notoriously contentious. This is be- cause patrilineal male cousins are rivals for the common grandfather's inheritance (in fact, the Swati term for father's brother's son is tarbur, which also means enemy), and a man who mar- ries his patrilineal cousin is marrying the sister of his life-long opponent. Her loyalty is with her brother, and this is bound to cause frequent disputes. Though the girl is treated like goods, she does not see herself as such. The fundamental premise of tribal life is the equality of the various landed families. There are very few hierarchies in these societies, and even the leaders are often no more than first among equals. Within this system, which as been described as a nearly perfect democracy, each khan (which means landowner and literally translates as as superior to all others. The girls of the house- family sees itself as king) hold feel the same pride their lineage as their brothers and cannot help but regard their hus- band's families through jaundiced eyes. The new bride is prepared to defend the honor of her fam- ily, even though they have partially repudiated her by negotiating the marriage. Her identity like that of man, rests on her lineage pride women ·3 →>>> ?!! women are & fear Life Behind the Veil which she will fight to uphold. The husband, meanwhile, is determined to demonstrate his domination and mastery, since control of women s the nexus of a man's sense of self-respect. 173 test to Hostility is thus built into marriage by the very structure of the society, which pits every lin- eage against every other in a never-ending con- s markedly egalitarian culture. The hostility of of power within the e marriage bond is evident from its beginnings. The reluctant bride is torn from her cot in her family's house and enscon and ensconced on a palanquin that strongly resembles a bier. The war drums that announce the marriage procession indicate the nature of the tie, as does the stoning of the palan- quin by the small boys of the village as it is car- e will creep ried through the dusty streets. When the bride arrives at her new husband's house, his family triumphantly fires their rifles into the air. They have taken a woman! The young wife cowers in her veils as she is prodded and poked curiously by the females of the husband's house who try to persuade her to show her face. The groom him- self is nowhere to be seen, having retreated to the men's house in shame. In three days, he w to her room and consummate the marriage. Tak- ing the virginity of the bride is a highly charged symbolic , and act, in some areas of the Middle East the display of the bloody nuptial sheet to the public is a vital part of the wedding rite. Breaking the hymen demonstrates the husband's posses- sion of his wife's sexuality. She then becomes the junior adult in the household, subordinate to everyone, but, most especially, under the heavy thumb of her mother-in-law. The household the bride enters will be that of her husband's father, since the system, as well as being patrilineal, surrounded by also patrilocal. She will be his relatives and will be alone with her husband only at night. During the day he will pay no attention to her, for it is consid- ered shameful for a man to take note of his wife in front of others, particularly his father and mother. Within the compound walls, which shield the household from the rest of the world, she is at the mercy of her new family. Life within the compound is hardly peaceful. squabble Wi PIC COLLAGE
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