Friends and Enemies

There is much more that could be said about the role of women in this story, as well as about male-female relations in Pakhtun society generally, but I want to turn now to the third of the story's transgressions: the slaughter of the seven brothers in Sultan Muhammad's guest house. In order to make sense of this knot in the narrative, it is first necessary to consider the cultural logic and social structure of revenge in Pakhtun society.

Among Pakhtuns, all men of common descent are viewed as sials of one another. The term sial has the explicit meaning of “equal,” but it also has the more commonly understood connotation of “rival.” In theory, all members of a tribe are equal (and rival) to one another, and the killing of a poor tribesman in a feud is viewed as nominally equivalent to that of a wealthy man in tribal legal precedents. The only male residents in the tribal community who are not considered equal to other men are servants (nokaran), tenant farmers (dehqan), and client groups such as barbers and blacksmiths, collectively referred to as hamsaya (“same shade,” i.e., those living in the shade of a patron or of the tribe), who do not possess their own honor but rather share in the reflected honor of those under whose protection they live.

Rivalries in Pakhtun society generally coalesce along lines of age, wealth, and kinship relation—which delineation means that men of the same generation are more likely to become rivals than are men of different generations. Similarly, men of traditionally influential households will also tend to view each other (and be viewed by their fellows) as competitors for status and prestige if not also for land and women. Beyond such situational rivalries, every man also has a natural rival in his patrilateral first cousin, the aforementioned tarbur. When the word tarbur is joined with the suffix wali, it connotes something along the lines of “cousin competition” and is used to describe the endemic gamesmanship, rivalry, and sometimes open hostility that is thought to exist inevitably between the sons of brothers.

Most situations in which tarburwali comes into play are of an innocent sort. First cousins, for example, are expected to try to show each other up whether the opportunity arises in a sporting competition or in battle with some other group. The reward for proving oneself the better of one's cousin is the intangible advantage of being referred to as a “good youth” (kha tzwan). Whereas the term tarburwali is most often used in reference to first cousin rivalry, that all males in a tribe are categorically referred to as tarburs of one another means that the competition known as tarburwali can and frequently does extend beyond the range of first cousins to include all males of the same generation belonging to a tribe or tribal lineage. When good-natured rivalry escalates to deadly violence, the dynamic of reciprocal exchange that governs that violence is known as badal.

In its most general sense, badal signifies simply “exchange” and thus can be used to describe such phenomena as linked marriages in which two men marry each others' sisters. But badal is most commonly used to refer to exchanges of violence, most importantly, revenge killings, which, like marriage, are structured and regulated by custom. Revenge killings represent an extreme situation, but the very possibility of their occurrence sets the terms by which relationships in Pakhtun society are conceived, and they engender the common understanding that all alliances are necessarily formed because of the present existence or future likelihood of violent feud: which is to say, the existence of opposition creates the need for community. This conceptual complementarity is transformed into a practical unity of those allies who defend one another (malatar: those who bind their waists together) over and against the group of enemies (dushmanan) who, in different contexts, can be composed of one's cousins, a collateral tribal lineage, another tribe, or a temporary alliance of various kinsmen and allies not strictly related by ties of patrilineal descent.^[13]

A basic comprehension of the logic and structure of badal is a necessary prelude to uncovering the meaning of the story of Sultan Muhammad's revenge, for in certain respects this whole tale can be read as an extended meditation on the fragile nature of social community in the tribal world. Any act of friendship (dosti) can quickly turn into an act of enmity (dushmani). Every alliance can become a feud, and all that prevents this from happening is the individual's vigilant concern for defending his honor, which, in the final analysis, is all that he has. The narrative progression of Sultan Muhammad's story clearly reflects the structural logic of badal—from the initial act of violence by the enemy to the final destruction of the twenty-two members of the opposing faction. Like other feud stories that one hears in Afghanistan (and the Middle East in general), this story replays a number of familiar refrains: for example, the tendency to attribute base intentions, treacherous practices, and breaches of taboo to your enemy; and the tendency for violence to escalate with every stage in the progression of the feud.

Despite these common threads, Sultan Muhammad's story stands out as different from most other feud stories in several respects. First, few feud stories end in the total annihilation of one's enemies. As Emrys Peters and other anthropologists have noted, feuds tend to have no set beginning, just as they have no determinate end. In many cases, the origins of a feud are lost in a mythic past, and even as the tenor of a feud will change—occasionally rising to snarling ferocity in response to a killing or other offense, more often keeping to a low growl of mutual intimidation—it is generally presumed that a feud will have no resolution, if only because no outcome could ever be equally satisfactory to both sides and, in a more general sense, the feud is too important for it to be allowed to end.^[14]

Without an ongoing arena of competition, young men have no avenue by which to prove their mettle. Feuds provide this arena, and even when older men want to see a feud resolved, young men usually want to see it prolonged.^[15] Likewise, for the group as a whole, feuds provide individuals with their most vivid stirrings of identity and the principal context within which they can feel themselves to be part of a unified community. The feud story in this narrative therefore stands apart because it does have both a beginning and an end, the beginning being possible to inscribe as a beginning because the ending has happened, which is to say, it is because the enemy is annihilated that Safi can begin the narrative part of his tale with the declaration “Some man from Gul Salak, whose name I have forgotten, said to my grandfather.…”

The second feature of this story that sets it apart from other feud stories is the constructed character of Sultan Muhammad's “vengeance group.” Feuds almost always develop between related branches of a single tribe and are more often than not the product of cousin rivalries. As has been noted, the only rivalry worth pursuing is with an equal: to become entangled with someone who is not one's equal raises that individual in the eyes of others and lowers oneself. In this case, however, Sultan Muhammad allies himself with an assortment of relatives (mostly affinal and maternal) and lower-caste tenant farmers (most of whom we assume either do not belong to the Safi tribe or are Safis who have had to accept the demeaning status of working for others).^[16] Although the members of Sultan Muhammad's vengeance group are not agnatically related and many appear to be his servants and tenant farmers, the request that he makes of them and their ceremonial response to it explicitly erase the contradiction of their alliance with the principle that patrilineal descent should be the basis of partnership in defense of honor. The ethical significance of this exchange of oaths is initially signaled by its being presented in dialogue rather than simply being reported by the narrator. Quoting this exchange allows the narrator to show the ethical status of the pact and the voluntary compliance of those who are party to it.^[17]

In his address, Sultan Muhammad indicates that the cement binding him to all those who would choose to join with him is their common readiness to die for the sake of higher ideals. Sultan Muhammad does allude rather conspicuously to the fact that he is the salary-giver and provider of arms for the group, but he then denies the importance of these factors in comparison to the friendship and mutual regard that bring them together. The implicit message here is that while Sultan Muhammad may be their superior they will show themselves to be his equal in honor by their willingness to sacrifice their heads in the cause of honor. In their response, Sultan Muhammad's allies likewise hint at the economic nature of their relationship, but they then set this matter aside as an irrelevant consideration. Instead, they praise the murdered father for his loyalty in the past and commit themselves to Sultan Muhammad's cause, not because of anything he has done, but because he is his father's son and therefore worthy of respect. The mutual obliviousness to the exact nature of the undertaking and to the risks it entails demonstrates the disinterestedness of the parties to this negotiation and the moral righteousness of their bond (a righteousness that offsets and obscures the variegated nature of their social structural ties).^[18]

The third and final way in which this story is different from most feud stories is in its apparent attribution of treachery to family members. Feud stories are often full of incidents in which people are killed while praying or guns are fired in a saintly shrine or a mosque, but these actions are always carried out by enemies, not by allies. Here, however, we are confronted with what is a clear transgression of cultural norms when Sultan Muhammad lures his enemies into the sacred precincts of his guest house (hujra) in order to murder them. Just as there are examples of political blindings in Afghan history, so there are examples of kings laying out lavish banquets for their guests and then slaughtering them. However, I am unfamiliar with any instances—other than this one—of a tribal host violating the sanctity of his hujra in this way.

In Pakhtun culture, hospitality (melmastia) is a central principle and a core feature of identity. All Pakhtuns, rich and poor alike, pride themselves on their readiness to feed and care for their guests, even if it means denying themselves and their families. For the khan in particular, feeding many guests is one of the primary ways to convert wealth into power and respect, not simply because it ties people to him in a dependent relationship, but also because it allows the khan to demonstrate his personal humility and his corresponding commitment to the ideals of his culture. This attitude is demonstrated in a myriad of ways seen daily in Pakhtun communities, for example, when a host personally presents each of his guests with a pitcher of water and bowl to wash their hands before a meal is served or when a host carries in the platter of food for his guests and then sits off to the side until they have finished their meal. As the primary site where the rituals of hospitality are played out, the hujra takes on a special significance as the symbol of the khan's identity and the way in which he wants to be viewed by his fellow tribesmen.

Like hospitality, offering shelter and protection to all who request it is another sacred value of Pakhtun culture. Known as nanawatai, this principle requires that an individual safeguards those who place themselves under his control, even it means sacrificing his own life to do it.^[19] A common narrative motif in Pakhtun culture is thus of the tribesman fleeing from one set of enemies who is forced to seek refuge from a third party with whom he has also been feuding. The person from whom refuge is sought invariably accepts the request, refusing to surrender the enemy now under his protection, even if it means having to fight the enemies of his sworn enemy. Nanawatai is a principle that Pakhtuns not only talk about but also put into practice and that they invoke in discussing the virtues and merits of individuals. A man cannot expect to be accorded respect if he refuses to shelter those who (to use the Pakhtun phrase) “seize his skirt” (laman niwul) any more than he can if he is stingy with his resources or lax in monitoring the behavior of female family members. In the story of Sultan Muhammad, however, we see both the principles of protection and hospitality violated. What are we to make of this? Is it not the case then that in gaining his revenge Sultan Muhammad has sacrificed any claim he might have had to the honorable regard and respect of others?

The contradiction is not an easy one to resolve, but there are several steps that might be taken to help explain this part of the story. The first is to relate Sultan Muhammad's actions to those of his enemy and thereby evaluate the degree to which the prior offenses of the enemy made Sultan Muhammad's response qualitatively reciprocal and therefore justified. One incident from the story that is relevant here is the denial by the seven sons of their mother's plea that they desist from their plan of violence against Sultan Muhammad. The description of the mother, Qur’an in hand, begging her sons to spare Sultan Muhammad's life presents a profound and disturbing image to Pakhtuns, for it is recognized that the violation of such a sacred request is likely to bring ill tidings to those responsible.

In a more general sense as well, the sons' refusal to heed their mother's appeal can be seen as qualitatively similar to a violation of the principle of nanawatai. When one side to a conflict wishes to sue for peace, they will frequently signal their intention by sending a delegation of women carrying Qur’ans and accompanied by one or more mullas to the compound of their enemy. The women will go into the domestic quarters and lower their shawls so that their hair and faces are revealed. This gesture, which replicates what women normally do when visiting relatives, signals the readiness of the women's male kinsmen to negotiate and enter into friendly relations with their enemies. Likewise, when someone has accidentally injured or killed another person, the family of the responsible party will signal its responsibility and desire for peace by sending women with Qur’ans to the victim's home. When women have crossed the lines of conflict in this way, all fighting must cease, and those who refuse to acquiesce are recognized to have violated the law of nanawatai. The action of the sons is not precisely the same, but it is similar. In both situations, the relevant fact is that women holding holy Qur’ans have placed themselves in harm's way in order to secure a truce. Those who are implicated by this act are obliged to comply, at least temporarily, and the failure of the seven sons to honor their obligation places them in a position of moral culpability for what follows.

A similar logic can be applied to the scene in which the seven sons first confront Sultan Muhammad and ask him to accompany them to mark the boundary between their properties. Sultan Muhammad refuses, feigning illness, but sends a messenger to tell them to take “however much land you need, and wherever you want to place the boundary—that is up to you. You decide yourself, and take two white beards with you.” On one level, Sultan Muhammad's words can be interpreted as an elaborate deception: pretending to be sick, he makes his enemies think he is afraid and furthers this impression by sending them a message that seems to indicate his abject willingness to capitulate to their demands. That this act is part of a plan to trap his enemies demonstrates Sultan Muhammad's cunning and perhaps helps to justify his violation of the norms of hospitality. Cleverness, particularly when placed in the service of honor, is a laudable virtue in Pakhtun society, and to some extent at least, the end (reclaiming honor) can be said to legitimate the means (violation of the rule of hospitality).^[20]

This much is going on, I think, but there is an additional message embedded in Sultan Muhammad's words as well—a message that the seven sons rashly overlook in their rush to seize their rival's land and destroy his name. As all Pakhtuns know, someone who willingly relinquishes his ancestral land is the most ignoble of creatures, for he has not only sacrificed his claim to social identity and membership in councils of the tribe, he has also “sold the bones of his fathers.” A man without land may be pitied for his poverty, but if he is otherwise brave and steadfast he will still have the respect of those around him. A man who sells his land or who abandons it to his enemies is in another category, however. Such a man is seen as cowardly (be ghairati) and unworthy of the respect of others in his society. Attacks against land are attacks against honor, and they cannot go unrequited if the victim of the attack has any intention of retaining his name and place in society.^[21]

Given the symbolic significance of defending one's land, it can be argued that when Sultan Muhammad expressed his willingness to have Paindo's sons move his boundary markers, he was actually up to something more complicated and devious than it appeared on the surface. Feigning timid concurrence to his enemies' demands, Sultan Muhammad succeeded in duping Paindo's sons into believing that he was not man enough to defend his land. This was the impression that his message conveyed, and it was under its spell that they set off to disenfranchise Sultan Muhammad of his inherited estate. At his suggestion, they also presumably brought along a number of old “white beards” to witness the act, but what they seem not to have recognized is that these same old men could also serve Sultan Muhammad's interests. Specifically, they could act as witnesses to an act of unlawful and immoral trespass egregiously perpetrated in broad daylight for all to see.

In this sense, it can be argued that Sultan Muhammad's appearance of acquiescence was actually intended to provide a pretext for attacking his enemies, a pretext that he hitherto lacked. From the tribe's point of view, Paindo's murder would have wiped the slate clean between the two families. Each side had lost a man of comparable rank, and no one had any right to pursue the feud any farther. However, once Paindo's seven sons violated “the bones of Sultan Muhammad's father,” he had all the pretext he needed to escalate the feud to the next level. The sons, of course, didn't recognize this possibility, but in the context of the story that ignorance is a mark of their greed and stupidity, just as it is also a sign of Sultan Muhammad's singular cleverness.

The endpoint of the present argument is that the seven sons of Paindo have sealed their own fate. By ignoring their mother's plea for mercy and ignobly stealing Sultan Muhammad's land, they have given Sultan Muhammad adequate cause for seeking their deaths. From a cultural and a narrative point of view, there seems to be considerable justification for viewing the logic of the slaughter in this way. However, I am not ultimately convinced by this argument. In the final analysis, I cannot fully believe that these rationales are sufficient to solve the problem that this scene raises in regard to understanding Sultan Muhammad's position in Pakhtun society or honor as a cultural system and moral logic. In a sense, the variables that I have provided are rationalizations, present in the text no doubt, but still inadequate to explain, much less erase, the transgressive quality of Sultan Muhammad's actions.

This being the case, I would take the analysis of the story one step further by admitting the morally contradictory features of the tale while also trying to place them in a more inclusive, less strictly componential framework. In my view, the story of Sultan Muhammad's revenge is about all I have claimed it to be, but it is also finally about something else as well—the impossibility of honor unmitigated by other principles as a basis of social action. In following Sultan Muhammad's actions and the events that he brings about, the listener (reader) cannot help but notice the cost to the individual and to the society of an unswerving adherence to honor. No man, we are led to understand, could possibly care more for honor than Sultan Muhammad, and no man understands its terrible logic better than he or realizes it more completely in his life. At the same time, no man pays a greater price, and the price he pays is one to which society at large must also contribute. The first installment on that price comes when Sultan Muhammad must disobey his dying father. The second and third are met when Sultan Muhammad is compelled to withhold his love from his infant son and then when he blinds his mother, thereby forever estranging her from himself. After this, Sultan Muhammad's path leads to two final sacrifices, one of which, ironically, is the sacrifice of his own status as a host, a man who offers hospitality and protection, a man of honor. This dimension of Sultan Muhammad's sacrifice derives from the perception, logically arrived at given the presuppositions of honor, that it is only when he has gained his own revenge that it can be said of him that he even exists (that when his father died he left behind a child who could become a man of honor).

In this sense, to kill his enemies in the guest house can be understood as an act of renunciation by which Sultan Muhammad signals his willingness to give up what he values most—his own status—so that he can exist at all within the threshold of honor. The existence he seeks is of necessity a cursed state of incompleteness: a state in which antagonism is the existential condition for one's identity as an individual and as a member of a group; a state in which an individual is forever in the thrall of those whom he respects and those whom he despises; a state in which the man of power and authority is finally as dependent on others as the man of basest means and aspirations.

The last and in some ways most poignant of all the sacrifices that Sultan Muhammad must make in regaining his claim to honor is the killing of his friend, which appears in the story as the denouement of the climactic slaughter in the guest house. Interestingly, this is the only one of Sultan Muhammad's actions that elicits an emotional response, and it is an effusive one at that: “And my father cries because he had been his friend. He had been his friend and playmate, and for this reason he cries. He cries a lot, so much so that people say he didn't eat food for a week. He was simply crying, not thinking of anything else except this friend of his. But, since he had become his enemy, he was obliged to kill him.”

Given its placement in the story and the emphasis that it is given, one is led to see this murder of the friend as especially significant, and this view is strengthened when one takes into consideration the value that Pakhtuns attach to friendship as an ideal. The most common word that Pakhtuns use for friend is andiwal. The prefix of this word, andi, literally means the bundle that makes up half the load carried on the back of a camel, horse, or other pack animal. Combined with the suffix wal, the word refers to the second bundle carried on the other side of the animal's back to balance the load. The sense of the term is thus that friends are comparable to a pair of fully loaded saddlebags that balance and support one another on the journey of life. When one has a friend with whom to share life's burdens, the journey proceeds smoothly; but for those who do not, the journey is likely to be torturous and slow.

That this linguistic metaphor of friendship correlates with Pakhtun cultural realities is substantiated by research that Charles Lindholm has conducted among Pakhtuns in the Swat valley of Pakistan. As Lindholm has noted (and my own experience confirms), the Pakhtun ideal of friendship is much more intense than the casual concept of friendship that generally prevails in the West:

[Pakhtun] Friends should be together constantly; they should completely trust one another and reveal all their secrets to one another. … The friend should be willing to sacrifice himself in total devotion to the will of the other. His affection must be spontaneous, without reservation, and all-consuming. The true friend is called `naked chest' because the hearts of both parties are bared to one another, thus sweeping away the pervasive secrecy and mistrust of…society.^[22]

The extent of Sultan Muhammad's emotional response to the death of his friend indicates the applicability of Lindholm's assertion to the Afghan context, just as Lindholm's analysis helps us to realize the toll which obedience to honor has exacted on Sultan Muhammad's soul. For Pakhtuns, the friend represents the possibility of an uncomplicated, unmediated relationship contracted outside the bounds of kinship and honor. The friend is a refuge from the distrust and suspicion that are ubiquitous everywhere else in tribal society.^[23] In destroying this refuge of trust then, Sultan Muhammad has destroyed the last part of his self that is responsive to something other than honor. All other attachments have gone before. At each stage of the story, Sultan Muhammad has been forced to renounce some part of his identity, some affection that contradicts the inexorable demands of honor, and the last and perhaps greatest of these sacrifices is that of his childhood friend whose life is dearer than his own.

The triumph of honor is thus complete: parental love, the bond between men and women, social respect as a host and protector of other men, and finally friendship—all have been sacrificed on the altar of honor. And if we still question the genesis of Sultan Muhammad's actions, the narrative provides some further suggestions in the care that he subsequently takes to uphold the sanctity of honor: care, for example, in attending to the bodies of his enemies and, later, care in demonstrating the proper respect to the wives of his fallen victims. To show disrespect for one's enemies would be to show disrespect for honor itself and would throw into doubt the very foundation upon which this act of extreme vengeance has been undertaken. Sultan Muhammad, we are to suppose, has not acted for himself or for his own advancement. Rather, he has been motivated solely by his absolute and unwavering concern for honor. That alone could justify the magnitude of his revenge, and that alone, we are asked to believe, is what Sultan Muhammad strove to uphold.