Afghan Refugee Poets Behind Pashto Revival

PESHAWAR, May 28 (IPS) - Afghanistan’s tumultuous history of the last three decades is behind the incredible popularity of poetry in Pashto, the language of the majority Pakhtoons in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The Pakhtoons are ethnic cousins of the Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group. Both speak dialects of Pashto. Consequently, the NWFP was a natural second home for millions of Afghans who fled their war-torn country in waves through the 1980s and 1990s.

Jalozai and Kacha Garhi, near Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP, were the two largest Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. The camps are now shut, and millions of Afghans have returned to their country since the so-called ‘restoration of democracy’ there.

What has remained is a lasting impact on local culture and society. On music, wedding rituals and Pashto literature for instance. The most widely read Pashto poets today are Afghans from Peshawar’s refugee camps.

Take 28-year-old radio journalist Najib Amir whose Da Neemo Shpo Khabaray (Midnight Talks) has received wide critical acclaim. Originally from Darra Noor, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, he describes Peshawar as his home.

"I’ve grown up here," he told IPS. "I was four when we came and settled in tents and then in a mud house. My family was displaced by the Soviet invasion," he says. The first influx of Afghan refugees into Peshawar coincided with the arrival of tens of thousands of Soviet troops in 1979, to prop up the then communist regime in Kabul.

Amir, who has published three books of poetry, says he owes his success to the legendary Qalandar Mohmand. The Pakistani poet is a towering literary presence in Pashto. "He corrected my poetry," says Amir, disarmingly.

Living in Peshawar’s refugee camps, the Afghan poets were regularly invited to mushairas (a gathering of poets) organised by local literary organisations. While it greatly helped to increase their visibility, the mushairas, often held at the Peshawar Press Club, were occasions for poets from the two countries to exchange ideas.

"I drew immense inspiration from the Peshawar-based poets," admits Amir. His latest 112-page Da Neemo Shpo Khabaray is a classic example of how the assimilation of the dialects spoken by Afghans and Pakistanis has enriched Pashto. Amir believes his poetry is all the more accessible to people in both countries.

One of the best known Afghan poets, Pir Mohammad Karwan, had lived in Peshawar for 15 years before returning to Kabul in 2002. His top-selling Chinar Khabaray Kavee (The Talking Pine Tree) was written in 1998.

"That both Pakistani and Afghan Pakhtoons buy Karwan’s book reflects a new genre in Pashto poetry," comments bookseller Rehmanullah (who uses only one name) of the well-known University Book House here.

Afghan poetry can be roughly divided in three phases. The first was pre-Soviet, when poets were "progressive". They either lived in the then Soviet Union and Germany or were researchers of Pashto literature.

After the Soviet invasion, a large number of Afghan scholars emigrated to Pakistan, Iran and other countries around the world. Their poetry reflected a strong reaction to the Soviet aggression and dwelt on jihad, liberation with some veering to rightist views. In Peshawar, Quetta and other big Pakistani cities, Afghan poets and writers, both female and male, wrote alongside Pakistanis writing in Urdu and the English-language.

Afghans were published in Pakistani literary journals and newspapers. Among the big names are Abdullah Ghamkhor, Habibullah Rafi, Zareen Anzur, Zalmai Hewadmal, Sadiqullah Reshteen, Asif Sameem, Mustafa Salik, Baz Mohammad , MujawarAhmed Ziar, Abdul Hadi Hiran, Parveen Malal, Masooma Asmati, Dr Zarghuna, Wagma Amir and Pir Mohammad.

Events after 9/11 again changed Afghan Pashto poetry. While a section of poets dwelt on jihadi (fundamentalist Islam) issues, others focused on women’s concerns, the demand for a new nation of Pashto-speakers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and geo-politics.

Afghanistan’s cataclysmic past is reflected in every stage. Afghans who had never picked up a pen in their country wrote movingly in prose and verse about their personal tragedies, the misery of life in refugee camps.

Thousands of Pashto books were published. More books were churned out in the last 30 years than in the previous 60 years. Locals like Abdul Ghani Khan, Rahmat Shah Sail and Ajmal Khattak, who are widely read in Afghanistan, wrote in a pure Pashto, uncontaminated by words in Urdu or English as had become the practice in Pakistan.

For Afghan writers, their country’s tragic history broadened their literary canvas. A new genre of fine ‘ghazal’ writers has emerged among the refugee poets as a result of their interaction with local poets. Informal Afghan literary societies have sprouted that double up as training centres for beginners. Once the Pashto Tolana (gathering), which was controlled by the government, was the sole literary organisation in Kabul.

In Peshawar, before the arrival of Afghan refugees, Pashto writers published books only to gift it to each other. Today volumes of Pashto poetry are snapped up as soon as they arrive in shops. "The two-Pashto speaking countries came together and a refined form of the language emerged," observes Rasool Khan, owner of the University Book House.

(END/2008)