Land and People of Light
Its name means “Land of Light”, and the landscapes of Nuristan hold up to its epic name. But it’s a new-ish name for the remote province in eastern Afghanistan, given about a hundred and fifty years ago when the people converted to Islam either forcibly or to avoid heavy taxes on non-muslims under the rule of the crude and brute king, Abdul Rahman. I haven’t done a scholarly dive into its history, but a layperson’s read, so my knowledge of Nuristani history is limited. Nevertheless, before Islam, Nuristan was called Kafiristan, the “Land of Unbelievers”. These kafirs, or infidels, followed some form of pagan religion, and they ended up in eastern Afghanistan, fleeing religious persecution. They took refuge high in the pine tree-lined mountains and deep in lush valleys in a place that was hard to reach back then because its incline and narrow road alongside a rushing white river was (and still is) unforgiving. The place they inhabited became known as Kafiristan, and after adopting Islam, it became known as Nuristan. It was a remote place back then, and it remains remote today.
Nuristani faces give a glimpse into their long-lost and forgotten ancestry. Tanned faces and deep lines in their thin skin from soaking in the alpine sun create a stark contrast with their electric blue, sage green, and caramel eyes. Brown eyes are rare in the districts of Parun and Waigal, and they’re more revered because brown eyes are Arab eyes. Blue and green eyes are a reminder that they used to be kafir, that they might be the descendants of European conquerors. Straight and pencil-drawn noses, medium-sized to thin lips, high cheekbones, heart-shaped faces or angular jaws and blue or green eyes, neither large nor small; if it weren’t for their clothes, you’d think they were European. We saw young girls and boys with white blonde or strawberry blonde hair and bright orange hair, gingerness that pales Ed Sheeran’s carrot top. But Nuristani people don’t like to admit that they are possibly descendants of European conquerors, and they believe what their grandparents have told them: that they have always been Muslim and came from Arabia. Never mind that they look nothing like Arabs.
Nuristani people are their own people and ethnicity. They are not Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Pashaii or other Afghan ethnicities. Nor do they have much cultural resemblance to them, except perhaps that they are deeply conservative and identify as people of Afghanistan. Nuristanis joke that their language is so complex and harsh that not even the devil can understand it. And it’s true; I heard no resemblance to Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Turkish or Arabic. The Waigali accent is closest to a mix of Pashto and Urdu, but you must listen carefully to catch a word. Most Nuristani people don’t speak Farsi or Pashto; only some of their privileged Generation Z young men and ladies who go to boarding schools in Nangarhar speak Pashto, and perhaps an older man or a man that’s travelled out. Other than that, it’s all Nuristani, a language unbeknown to the devil itself. Most Nuristani people, men and women, are illiterate with no formal education. But, they take great pride in anyone with Islamic schooling from madrasas. This is a form of ilm or knowledge for them. Young kids attend schools either in a run-down building or on a mat in the forest, with bright blue backpacks donated by UNICEF but, from the schools I visited… let’s say that’s not education, but rather a place to go and trick yourself into thinking that it’s education. And since Nuristani is primarily an oral language, their academic and written language is Pashto. For the most part, I didn’t think I was in Afghanistan because Nuristan felt and looked like its own country.
Although every facet of Nuristani culture, language and way of life is fascinating, nothing is more admirable than the work, resilience and strength of Nuristani women.
From Sierra Nevadas to Nuristan
As an Afghan woman raised in Northern California, visiting Nuristan for the first time, I was constantly reminded that the Nuristani landscape is a cross between Yosemite and Lake Tahoe, a raw, epic, uncharted version of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. All of Nuristan is an awe-striking landscape. Boulder rocks, pine tree forests, high altitude mountains, and a wide rushing white and sage river throughout every district. Valleys squeezed between mountains lit by orange sunsets and pink sunrises. Wild fruits like black mulberries, strawberries, pine nuts, and herbs and plants like lemongrass, cumin and cannabis are growing wildly and freely. Reflections of metallic and crystal rocks scattered across a bed of mirrored mica, exquisite wood and invigorating tree sap. All of it is in abundance.
A favorite pastime of Californian Afghans is to set up barbecues and picnics in Tahoe or Yosemite, and if you’re in southern California, then it’s Laguna Beach or Big Bear. I always believed that it was innate in Afghans to do this because perhaps Afghans back home or our ancestors set up a mela like this. But in Nuristan, I was in for a rude awakening because although Nuristani people have the scene for a superior mela, they do not have the luxury of time and leisure to do so. In the two weeks that we spent in Nuristan, we divided our time between three districts: the capital Parun, the very isolated Waigal, and the closest to civilization, Kamdesh. Each district reminded me of Northern or Southern California. If it weren’t for how I was dressed or the language and people, I could have believed that I was either in Big Bear (Kamdesh) or Yosemite and Tahoe (Parun and Waigal).
Women Dominated Valleys and Mountains
Nuristani women, young and old, are primarily farmers. They reap and harvest potatoes, red beans, corn, spinach, onions and wheat. Dressed in bright hues of reds, pinks, purples, and head coverings of black or blue with some sequins, they stick out against the emerald green and chocolatey backdrop of their pattis like ladybugs on a house plant. Squatting over their crops, they pluck out weeds without wearing gloves. I realized they didn’t use gloves much when we shook hands in greeting. Rough, sun and labor beat, I had to remember that their tough grip in a handshake wasn’t to size me up or assert dominance but because they’re used to making the most of their hand strength. They use their hands to grip axes, chop wood, and pack it tightly to carry it down the mountain on their backs in a Nuristani cone-shaped basket, like a camper’s backpack. They pile heavy, silvery stones around their crops with their hands to keep excess water out or create borders from others’ patti. The skin goats and create wool and hide. They dig with their hands to part soil and plant, making canals to direct water flow to their grounds.
The first thing I noticed in Parun and then consistently in Waigal and Kamdesh is that no men were in sight on the valley and mountainside. This is very rare for Afghanistan because there is a wave of men with women peppered here and there elsewhere. Nuristani men are usually busy with animal husbandry or constructing homes and carpentry. The valleys, forests and mountains are no place for a man to be; it’s a women’s zone only. It’s the only place besides the home where women don’t cover their faces; otherwise, they have a sixth sense for spotting men in their vicinity, and it’s an immediate cover of their faces and an additional turn of the back. Cameras are akin to men, and Nuristani women have an allergy to having their photos taken. Revealed faces and eyes are a sort of nakedness to Nuristani women, which differs from major cities like Kabul. Kabul is inconsistent with how women cover, but if it’s one thing besides farming that Nuristani women are consistent in, it is that they all cover their entire face and, as an extra layer of security, turn their backs to the incoming male. And this is why men don’t venture where women work in the mountains and valleys. The women need to bend over and squat down; their scarves might slip off, roll up their pant legs, and have privacy to do this.
Deep in the valleys and mountains, women are at work or taking a lunch break from labour all day and every day. A young girl between 7 and 12 years old, a daughter or niece brings their lunch packed in the Nuristani cone-shaped basket. Their breakfast and lunch consist of high-fat foods to give them sustained energy; bluntly, there are limited variety and diet choices. Pungent cheese, local in-season honey (in Waigal, they top honey with hot yellow oil), the Afghan version of cottage cheese known as qroot, and bread are the staple breakfast and lunch. Lunch might differ a bit with the addition of potatoes. Dinner is some form of vegetables, like okra or potatoes, and if there’s a guest, they get lucky with goat meat, boiled and salted. Some families eat once a day, while others who might have some extra will eat twice daily. Each day is taken differently, and they adapt to whether a meal is served once or twice.
The burden of the women is the responsibility of planting crops, tending to them, and harvesting them for frigid alpine winters. And without access to modern farming machinery and tools, Nuristani women are consumed by manual and physical labor for seven months of the year. They’re mostly home in the winters, cooking, milling wheat, weaving wool blankets and coats, and having weddings. Weddings occur in late autumn and early winter because they’ve harvested food; they can feed their guests and gift the new in-laws with coveted yellow oil from their cows. From Spring until Autumn, there is no such thing as weekends or taking a day off. There is too much ground to cover, too many weeds to pluck out, too much to rake, too many seeds to plant and water and too much at stake to abandon their patti and let animals nibble at what they’ve grown. Failing to work on and attend to the patti means starvation in the winter for their family. And winters are about 4 or 5 months, so for 7 or 8 months, they prepare ample food to last them all of winter, gather a room full of wood and prepare enough wool and goat hide. So they hunch over or squat on their plot of land day in and day out and work on their patti, unhappy to do so. They hike up and down to chop and gather wood. Every woman I spoke with would rather not be on the patti or working outdoors. “It’s too much work, there’s too much land to cover”, “we’re a misfortunate bunch; instead of preserving our modesty and working inside the home, we have to work on the patti; otherwise there’s no food”. And they’re right; their village doesn’t have food without their labour.
The Perils of Isolation
Nuristan is the second most isolated place in Afghanistan, second to probably the Wakhan corridor. I’d argue that it’s more isolated because the roads leading to different parts of Nuristan deter most people from coming in and trading. As Afghans say, it’s an “uncooked” road, an extremely bumpy, dirt and rocky road, narrow, winding and entirely uphill. Most cars in Afghanistan are Toyota Corollas from the mid-90s and can barely survive on asphalt, let alone this brutality. And these roads need a special driver because of a wrong move, and you’re either sliding out and into the rushing white river below, or the car takes a bad beating, and you’re left stranded with no cellphone antenna and a failed engine. The car we were driving in was an early 90s Toyota Hilux, and our driver is a special breed. I’d call him some driver out of Mad Max or a roller coaster conductor because that’s exactly what the ride felt like getting into Nuristan — a clanky, whiplash-inducing, wild, carnival-type wooden roller coaster, but for 8 hours.
This isolation from the rest of Afghanistan and dire road conditions comes at a huge cost for Nuristanis. Not only is it tough for NGOs to come in and out frequently, but they also can’t self-sustain by exporting and importing at large volumes enough to bring in revenue for an entire province. Nuristan has cattle, from which they get their milk, cheese, butter and oil, but there is no infrastructure to store dairy products for the long term or to transport them. Entrepreneurship, business, and trade do not exist in Nuristani behaviour. They’ve never done it; if they do, it’s more of a barter system where they trade spinach for tomatoes. Most haven’t even left Nuristan to learn the concept of shopkeeping or business. It costs too much to leave Nuristan. You need to rent a driver and a car which isn’t cheap, something like $200. Or, you need a car to drive yourself in and out, which, as explained, is an inefficient, dangerous and unforgiving ride. For other items like fabric to sew new clothes, toiletries, blankets, pots and pans, a few men go down to the nearest town in Kunar, load up a shared station wagon and bring goods back because they’ve traded wheat or sold enough of it to buy what they need.
In the capital district of Parun, Kunaris have set up shop because they have cleverly identified that there is a need, and since Nuristanis aren’t savvy with business or shopkeeping, Kunaris are profiting from setting up a makeshift market that has eased the life of women a bit for example, they can get their fabric from Paski Bazar now to sew their clothes. Kunaris have the means and skills to travel between Kunar and Nuristan and use it to their advantage. The Kamdesh district, close to Pakistan’s Chitral and Kunar, has mini-marts around their village. But no such thing as a supermarket or a town grocery store. And so this is why women have to farm: there’s no business, little to no assistance from NGOs, no trade, no road to safely and efficiently go in and out, and for the most part, income is scarce because a majority rely on bartering.
Mountain Women and Girls
If living in a mountainous district like Waigal, women hike up a two-mile steep incline (with their toddler in tow or a newborn on their backs) to their crops, or if they live between valleys like in Parun, they walk miles to their fields, and there they work from morning until dusk. If there’s some aristocracy, like being the household of the village chief or the wife of the local mullah, then the patti is nearby home, either directly outside of their mud and wood homes or a short walk away. For most, it’s a workout getting to the patti. According to my Fitbit, somewhere between 2000 to 5000 steps.
Waigal women have it exceptionally harder than Parunian or Kamdeshi women. The former live in levelled valleys with a river at their feet, and the latter in a mountain range nearby Kunar and Pakistan, so trade and exchanging ideas and modernity are possible. But Waigali women live at the height of the mountains, with the river far below, completely void of outside contact because the way to the top of the mountain without a functioning road is not motivating anyone to visit Waigal. The village we were staying in was called Mundesh, and unlike other villages in Waigal, they did not receive any assistance from any NGO or the governments of past and present. The most they get are pouches of chocolate chickpea paste with clinical packaging distributed by the World Food Program and, of course, packages of high-calorie cookies that taste like cardboard mixed with sugar which has plagued all of Nuristan.
In Mundesh, women camp overnight with their newborns on their laps twice weekly because water that high in the mountains is first come, first serve. There’s a rush over rushing water because some women direct water flow to their patti in the mornings, leaving others dry. Because there is no dam to collect water and for everyone to use it equally, Mundeshi women water their patti at night; otherwise, they risk running dry. Camping overnight in Waigal is nowhere near what we think of camping. Wolves, snakes and wandering men are predators of lone women at night. The threat of freezing from dampened grounds, infections and their crying children is another ordeal. I asked if some women had died and, of course, had — a few from a snake bite and one from the cold and dampness.
Waigali girls as little as five years old hike up and down two kilometers (oneway), fill up “boushkas” from a waterfall that holds up to 3 to 5 liters of water, and carry them on their backs. In Nuristan, girls aged 5–13 are assistants to their mothers. While mom is tending to the crops, chopping wood, skinning goats to make leather, cooking and all the other things that come with being a mom and a wife in the village, younger daughters are caretakers of their younger siblings. They carry water, wood and hay as part of a makeshift unofficial after-school program.
It was pretty uniform in Parun, Waigal and Kamdesh for big sisters to care for their younger siblings. By big sister, I mean anywhere between 4 and 10 years old, and by younger, I mean between 1 and 3 years old. Newborns and infants are with their mothers. Some Nuristani teenage girls are sent to boarding madrasas in Nangarhar, a relatively new thing that their Gen Z only has the privilege of, and if they belong to a well-to-do family. Other than that, when a Nuristani girl is 15 years old, she’s eligible for engagement and marriage. And marriage isn’t by force; in Nuristan, a marriage does not occur unless a girl, not the parents, consents and accepts the proposal. Then, she does what her mother has done. Bring to the world sons and daughters, miscarry a few, lose a few to infant death, and by the time she’s 33 years old, be a mother to an average of 5 to 8 kids, all while working on the patti. All her kids and the kids of others roaming around valleys and mountains, hiking, drinking from streams, chewing on tree sap, unattended to except by their older siblings, faces and clothes caked with mud and dirt because mom needs to work otherwise, there’s nothing to eat in the winter.
Too Busy Looking Down to Look Up
We both felt constant sadness and regret during the two weeks my husband and I spent in Nuristan. All of the pristine and green landscape in Nuristan, the clean mountain air, the meditative sounds of the river, the scent of tree sap melting in the sun, all of it, not enjoyed by local women. They’re too busy looking down at the soil to look at their canopy. They’re too busy tending to corn to notice lemongrass; they’re too busy rushing to the crops in the morning to bask in the sunrise, too busy to make it home before dark to wonder at the sunset, too busy watering plants at night to notice shooting stars above, too busy at work, to get lost in the trance of river songs.
The valleys for them are confinement, the mountains are a barrier, and the landscape is work, not pleasure. They’re the only women in the country free to work, but their work is manual labour. The rest of Afghanistan and the world has abandoned the Nuristani people. Their land is fetishized as the most beautiful, but no Afghan government has done anything to alleviate their lives. NGOs like World Food Program distribute the occasional box of high-calorie cookies or sacks of flour and have spray-painted village walls and people’s homes with “WFP”, an undignified sight. There are no hospitals, no functioning schools, no roads, no markets, no hotels, no running tap water, bare minimum electricity, no facilities, and no infrastructure to host a viable community that has the time to enjoy its surrounding, to have a mela, let alone to host tourism.
As probably one of the first (if not the first) Afghan diaspora woman to visit and be immersed with Nuristani women, I immediately felt responsible for doing anything for the women who opened their homes and lives to me. And regrettably, the only thing I could do for Nuristani women was to humble myself before them, embed myself with them for two weeks and become their foreign friend. All I could do in my limited time was to spend time with them in their homes, mountains and valleys and listen to their stories. What they shared with me, their meals and stories, could pave the way to change their lives so they can live with some rest. To farm and garden for leisure, not a necessity. We are working to build the women of Mundesh water irrigation system so that they don’t have to camp overnight. But Nuristan needs roads, hospitals and schools, which isn’t a task two people can do alone. I hope that perhaps a few will read these words and help support the lives of the women who dominate valleys and mountains and give them some dominance over their lives.
