A Cultural Separation

Over the course of this week, I have been racking my brain over my project. Up until now, I had always thought that going to Pakistan and collecting folktale stories was enough. I wanted to promote a culture that wasn't well recognized. But recently, I discovered a TED video that forces me to question and hone in my motives for this trip.

In the TED Talk, the speaker, Khalida Brohi, talked about 'honor' killings. Honor killings occur when a family deems a behavior shameful, usually for relationships that occur outside of marriage. According to the UN, 1000 reported honor killings are performed each year in Pakistan. Click here for the video. 

Unfortunately, in many rural areas of Pakistan, honor killings and overall female oppression is a custom that stretches back for decades. Most of the time, women aren't even aware of their oppression and see themselves in a futile situation. Even more, political change, in many cases, does not reach rural areas enough to spark modification. Khalida Brohi has been trying to modify the culture of these rural towns through other means; by creating different centers (collective embroidery meetings, reading classes, collecting folktales, etc.) for women to participate in, she teaches them to empower themselves so they can be their own leaders.

In the back of my mind, I have always known that there are certain parts of Pakistani culture that scare me. It's ironic knowing that honor killings and acid attacks and abuse occurs in a country that preaches peace. These are hard circumstances to overcome, especially because most of it occur in areas where the people aren't well educated enough to grow out of their provincial beliefs.  

I looked at the comments under the video, and I couldn't help but feel sad at what I read. Because the topic was relating to Pakistan, an Islamic nation, a lot of the comments evolved around the negative view of Islam. Pushing aside the fact that most YouTube comments shouldn't be taken seriously, I feel that many of the comments are similar to what I hear in some real life discussions--"Islam promotes the oppression of women", "Islam is hindering gender equality", "It's safer to just kill all Muslims". Given the project that I am doing, I feel as though I should clear a few things up:

It is a well known fact that religion does, in many aspects, influence the culture of a group. Even in the US, there are many Christian ideals that hover over into mainstream society. So it really isn't hard to mistake a culture with a religion.

I'll start by saying that Islam means "peace" and is a religion that advocates for equality of man and woman (and every other type of gender a person could be) in every regard. The base for most of the abuse and oppression in Pakistan is because of the lack of education. Even if small town rural people do read the Quran, most of them do not understand what they are reading (the Quran is written in Arabic, and Pakistan's official language is Urdu or some other version of it).And if they do understand the words, they don not necessarily understand the meaning. Most of their education is based off of generations of oral preaching that have nothing to do with Islam. So though they might be Muslim, they do not know what it means to be Muslim, and because they are so uneducated, most of them confuse their provincial customs with their religion as one and the same--which is what many people do when they watch CNN or FOX or MSNBC as their only form of religious knowledge.

So now I look at my project. I am collecting folktales to, yes, record and help preserve a piece of history, but I also want to clear up that these folktales are a piece of culture (a piece of perspectives) and not a piece of religion solely. I remind myself that I am writing these stories to open up a new perspective of Pakistan so we can perceive another aspect of a culture we don't see in news media. I hope that in so doing this, I can help separate the religion from the culture for both the citizens of Pakistan, and the people outside looking in.

In other news, I made this teeny little video as a sort of trailer for the vlogs that I'll be putting up from Pakistan.

I hope you have a good remainder of your day!

Three Things My Father DREADS the Most About Me Heading Off to Pakistan

The struggle is most undoubtedly real as I continue to ready myself for this crazy, adventurous trip--the most coming from my good intent father.

I know he means well. I really do. It's just that when he comes into my room just to tell me how much my life is going to suck for the six weeks that I am there, I can't help but feel another ten billion stress-inducing rocks falling onto my shoulders.

I thought, hey, for this blog, maybe I should just list them all out, for my benefit and your enjoyment.

1. FOOD IS BAD

So my eating habits are a bit off onto the far end of the "Weird" spectrum. I am a lactose intolerant, gluten-free, wheat-free, sugar-free type of person, mostly because my body does this awful thing where it hurts whenever I eat foods containing those listed above. Needless to say, my father is more than a little worried I won't have any available alternatives in such a developing country as Pakistan.

Also, food is my one true weakness. My father has been, for the better part of my young life, the sole authority figure who actually cared about what went into my mouth, and knows that I am vulnerable to all lactose, gluten, wheat, and sugar containing things. Basically, he doesn't think I'll be able to keep myself away from all the mouthwatering, yummy, delectable, scrumptious cultural food that I will be immersing with.

I think he may have a point on that, though.

2. TOOTH FAIRY MAGIC

My front tooth is broken, and has been broken for the past two years of my life. I broke it in half one day (I don't care to dwell on such a frightful night), and my dentist kind of just super glued it together. He told me, "Sophia, this is temporary, and the tooth fragment is bound to come off at anytime." At first, I thought that meant, like, a week before it would fall out and I had to run back to the dentist's office for a crown. Then two years passed by, and that superglue material stuff is still holding strong.

So the point is that my dad is worried that during my six week journey, that tooth fragment is just going to fall off one day, and I would have to remain in the state of absolute shock for the remainder of my stay. I'll swear it now: I will NOT be opening my mouth if that does happen, and then you will know why all my pictures are of me crying.

I think he may have a point on this as well.

3. BOYS

"Just don't get married."
"No promises, pops."

(Let's just appreciate this moment where my father assumes I'm going to Pakistan just to help some poor bloke get a green card)

Nuh uh

Details, Details

Now there's a buffer zone in my Senior Research Project. Today is the 14th of February, my flight leaves the 18th of March, and in between these two dates, I have found myself still crunching for time. That could be considered one heck of a buffer time, but given my project, the more time to prepare, the better. There is *seriously* a lot of work to do before I fly over to Pakistan and collect a whole bunch of stories from people there.

It's a teensy bit stressful, if you really want to know.

So this week, I did some research, to prepare for the inevitable abundance of Pakistani culture I will have to face in the near future.

I researched known folktale stories from different regions of Pakistan and tried to dig deep for each. The sad part is that I only found a handful. The happy part is that each make the area of Pakistan come alive. Somehow, I imagine myself hearing a few of these very same stories, but from different perspectives and different perceptions. I even jotted down a few that mother used to tell me as a child. With all these--what I call "Base Stories"--, in situations where I find myself listening to the same story from somebody in a different region of Pakistan, I can compare the similarities and/or differences.

So I have here three of the few stories that I collected from the World Wide Web (curiosity never killed the cat):

1. The Gifts of Wali Dad
2. Heer Ranjha
3. Dulla Bhatti

Till next week!