Eid (spoken german Iid, english way ead)

After experiencing Ramadan, the muslim fasting-month, in five islam-influenced countries (Syria, Turkey, Iran, the united arab emirates, Pakistan), searching for food in closed or hidden stores that only opened in the night and mainly drinking or eating indoors on toilets or in my own room, had an end and Eid, the final celebration of Ramadan approached.

The first time I heard about Eid, some pakistani couchsurfing friends told me that it would be hard to get a train in the days before Eid, because everyone would be on the way home to the family into the villages or into other cities. When I came to Lahore, where I initially just wanted to stay for a day or two, I realized that I was stuck. I wouldn't get a bus to Islamabad -all full and not frequently going- and I would stay in a big pakistani family, celebrating Eid.

Eid is in the eyes of the children comparable to the christian christmas. People go and buy new beautiful clothes and the pakistani way to enrich the beauty includes gold-shiny bangles and mandis (the henna-decoration on hands).

There are feasts being cooked and the families gather. No more fasting. And the children get money and little presents from the adults.

Officially there are two days off. But honestly: all week long was celebrated as a holiday, no one went to work, the banks weren't open and the people enjoyed the free time in parks or with movies.

What did I do? I played „baraf pani“(/“ice water“), a traditional game with the children of the family, in which one person catches the other, who is „baraf“(/iced) and cannot move until another person touches you to make you „pani“(/water, fluid, moveable) again. And this definitely enriched my Urdu skills. So, if you really want to learn something: get stuck somewhere, celebrate what's being celebrated and play around. You're a child in the new culture anyway.

where the colours are

My first walks alone in pakistan were guided mainly by my own insecurity. Where is it ok to go? How should I act and what should I wear? How shall I react on staring or on approaches by men? Are there areas that aren't safe to go as a single female?

To be honest: I was thrown back onto my own role as a young western, fair skinned, blonde woman. I felt uneasy walking the street and had a constant tension in myself. How to behave, what to wear, where to look or where not.

Buying a shalwar kamize (the local dress) helped a lot as I felt I could hide a bit in it and blend in. Although there is no general rule in Pakistan to wear a head scarf, it sometimes helped to put a scarf over my hair (a „dupata“), so that not everyone from the far can see the blonde shine of hair. (In the first weeks until I came to Islamabad and met some travellers I didn't see any person with blonde hair!).

But there are some other things that helped me understand and get along. A friend of mine told me: „No matter what you wear, if it is with long or short sleeves, if your trousers cover your ankles or not: wear a loose piece of cloth, a scarf or something like this over your brest. This will make the conversation with people and especially men easier and more respectful.“

Pakistani streetlife is maledominated. In some cities or even just areas of a city you might feel it stronger in others lesser. So how do I know where to go and where not? „Look if there are women. When there are local females in the park or in the street, you can go there aswell.“ another couchsurfer lectured me.

How do you find out if there are women in the street or just men at the first glance? You look for the colours. Men usually wear white, brown or grey. Women dress up in bright colours, the shalwar kamiz mostly come in one colour with the fitting dupata (scarf).

Another beautiful thing I've learned: it's safe where the colours are!

in the train

„How did you meet your husband?“

„He was the neightbour of my aunt. As it became time for me to marry, my aunt asked him if he would be interested. So my parents met him. And his parents met me. They decided that we would marry. We didn't meet before the marriage. The night of our wedding in our bedroom was the first time we spoke with each other.“

Silence.


We both look at her child, a girl with such clear eyes she seems to look through my skin onto the shock that has frozen my tongue.

I cannot ask about what they spoke when they saw each other the first time. I cannot ask what she felt before, then or now. I cannot ask if she is happy or if she will do the same to her daughter. I cannot. I stay in silence, unable to ask. It's different when you read about it than from getting told.

Cause, where are the borders of intimacy? And, when do I hurt someone and might not see the line that I might have already crossed?

As we say „chuda hafez“, her face is closed and far.

And as she closed the door of the traincabin behind her, there's suddenly an empty space next to me that I cannot fill. Should I have asked?

In betweens

The train, bus or hitchhiking is an „in-between“. You're out of your normal context, out of your home or working place, displaced in a way from your family and friends to whom you remain in contact with via mobile phone or thoughts. The „in-between“- time can be an hour or two, but it can be a day or several ones, depending where you're travelling, if the traffic is smooth or gets stuck caused by street blockades or belated transportation.

In the „in-between“ you can close yourself to your own memories and thoughts, to another world in reading (in the european context this starts to get displaced by watching movies on a small laptop) or listening to music or you can make the experience of getting in touch with the other travellers.

In Pakistan, it seems, a lot of things happen in the in-between of travelling. Trainrides are long (Karachi-Lahore 15 calculated hours which turn out to be 24 in practice), busrides even longer (for example on the Karakorum Highway) and from wedding invitations, to „we cannot close the window, we need the cold air as this man has got a dead body with him“, everything can happen.

Karachi. welcome

I arrived in Karachi, one of the biggest cities in Pakistan with over 14million inhabitants and the economical hub ob the country.

Karachi lies in the south of Pakistan on the arabian sea. It feels a bit like an urban octopus that is fetching workers and is always expanding its boundaries (now stretching over 3500 sq km). Karachi is a cosmopolitan city where different ethnicities and religious groups live (not always) peaceful next to each other. There is a big Hindu, Christian and a Zoroastrian community to be found and I lived with some great open minded and well (better than me) educated christians for some days.

My first impressions of Pakistan?

I saw a lot of motor-rikshas, colourful busses and heavy loaded motor bikes in a crazy traffic that seemed to have no system (worse for me as they drive here left side, a british-colonial left over).

Modern clean shopping malls with fancy clothes co-exist with street bazars, where you can see the animals before they're being slaughtered.

I visited the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the pakistani state, who lies in white marble silence in the middle of the rumoring city.

The camels on the beach, which carried local tourists around on the fine and silvery sand amazed me

aswell as the sight of pakistani women bathing in full clothes (yes, we're not in bikini-showing europe anymore, swimming goes in full shalwar kamize for women. Just some westerners seem to have hired the right for jumping around in minimal clothing on the French beach, which is a beach just accesible for foreigners or for high society members (as there has been a scandal recently about a ministers daughter bathing in a bikini on the french beach).

Another thing that amazed me were the first unsecure spoken sentences in Urdu that I exchanged with a local family...

And then, after some days, which were like a rush of colours, smells and tastes to my head, I left the city, but for sure to come back there.

blanc page. Pakistan begins

What kind of pictures come to your mind, when I say „Pakistan“?

Bombed busses on muddy streets with wailing women crying aloud over the loss of their children?

Mountainous little villages without electricity, where children are being taught to be Taliban fighters?

Mullahs with turbans condemning America and the west?

I don't know what you saw on TV or on the news, but... have you ever thought how streets look like in Pakistan or a normal living room? How does an urban city centre look like or a university? Are there shopping malls? And what kind of sweets do the kids prefer? What is fashionable and what kind of music is on the radio? Do they write sms to each other? And what does the taxidriver think about his job? Maybe he's not a poor fellow without education, but recites a poem for you?

My imagination on Pakistan was basically a blanc page. The only pictures produced in the west about Pakistan are political meetings or about attacks on military infrastructure. A good friend of mine put it in very good words in saying: „they report about schools being closed or bombed or women not being able to teach there at the moment, but no one writes about the fact THAT there are schools, THAT there is a normal life and THAT there are women teaching. They're not interested in showing how life is, but on how bad the world is.“

So what happens when you go there and just find out? Come with me...let's try out some months at a university in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan!

Dave's guestpost 2

Talking about marriage in Iran

And here comes the true cultural shock: Let’s talk about marriage.

Maybe you have read that it it is possible in Iran to marry for 48 hours. Well, here is the story.

The following is a condensate of some talks I had with Iranian people.

When we go to Mekka and speak with the men from Saudi-Arabia, they are shaking their heads when they hear that we have only one wive. “Four, man, take four!” is what they say.

At the time of Mohammed, a lot of men died in wars and a woman had no legal protection if not married. So it was very important for the women that they were married. But with not enough men around it was a good invention that one man could take care for more than one wife. And that was not for fun, he maybe took care of an old widow.
But the Saudi-Arabis took the rule and use it for fun…

We have that one family in our town, they are two wives and one man. Everybody is wondering how this family is working, but nobody has contact with them. The wives don’t want their husbands to learn something from that man.

But there are situation that are different:
There is this neighbour couple, he is about 60 and she 70, he is fit and she already senile. She cannot really take care of him anymore. In one of her clear moments, she was asking her neighbours if they cannot find a woman for her husband, he needs someone who can take care of him.
Seriously. They think that way.

Before another example, let’s have a look at the law:

The Law

There is the official marriage. With name changing and everything. And then there is the religious marriage. You can do one without the other one. And now comes the funny thing: The religious marriage can have a time limit. This is based on one phrase in the Koran that is discussable [1]. It says something like: ‘You can take a wife to your home for some time.’ Some muslims see that relating to a servant that you can fixly integrate in your household for some time by marrying her, others think it relates to short time marriage. Anyway, this is possible now in Iran. You can go to a Mullah, pay some money (about 60 Dollar), speak some sentences and you are married for as long as you want: a year, a month, 48 hours or forever. (The thing has a constraint, the koran expects divorced women to first have their menstruation twice before marrying again.)
You may ask: What could a short time marriage be good for? Well, sex without marriage is illegal. You can get killed for that in Iran. It is just very funny for an outsider that the marriage does not have to be an official official one, a religious one is official enough. Seems like a religious marriage is some semi-official marriage with more flexibility but full protection of your sexual intercourse by the law. Crazy, isn’t it.

So, back to this little town:

There is a widow. She for sure wants to be with someone again. Not only for a relationship, but also economically it would be good. There are some man queueing up, but they all are married already. No unmarried men over 40 around. Most of them just want to marry her for one year. She will only accept a proposal from someone that marries her forever.

Now she got married again. I asked how this is going to work: They will see each other about once a week and she will get some money from him, the rest of the time he will spend with his family. The whole thing will be a big secret, because people would speak bad about you.
There are only few men thinking about marrying a second time, maybe one percent does even consider this, and this thinking is not liked in the community.

So what is the widows idea about that? “You have to take what you get.”
And I asked her son what he thinks about it: “You told me people here don’t like men that take a second wife. Men like the new husband of your mother. But you support him. Why?”
“He supports my mummy, so I support him”.

So, how can we as westerner think of the whole thing? Having a lover in Iran can kill you. Having a second wife can be like having a lover, equally disregarded by the society. And having a marriage on time can be thought of like having a boyfriend/girlfriend after you reached a certain age - just makes the whole thing legal. Still it is very strange what behaviour is excused here with religion.
But what looks very strange on first sight, is not so strange anymore after a closer look. People are also mostly living monogamous. But there are always some other relations around. And because of a different law systems and culture, the relations out of the norm find complete different niches to exist in Iran.

---

[1] Christians well versed in the bible can understand that well. Take one discussable sentence (or even just a word!) in a holy book and you can end up having two different theologies, split-up communities and so on

Dave's guestpost 1

What does it mean to have a girlfriend/boyfriend in Iran?

When it comes to pre-marital relationships, there are two cultures to talk about: the one in Teheran and the one in the rest of the country. That is somewhat like Paris and the rest of France. Let’s start of with the rest:

For a lot of Iranis, having a girlfriend/boyfriend only means to have a friend from the other sex. For most of the youngsters here, it is a special thing to be in contact with a girl/a boy. Relations between men and women who are not married or relatives are disregarded. Boys and girls live seperated. In school, in highschool, the first time they mix up is in university. One traveller suspected the Iranis to only study because of that ;-).
I heard of an Iranian boy who got arrested twice by the police because he was shopping with a girl he was not married to. It took some time to convince the police that it is in fact his sister.

But modern technology chances a lot… They talk, they send SMS. And maybe they meet. And maybe they even do more. The whole thing is always a secret. Not amongst the friends, where they may brag about who has the most girlfriends, but it is surely not something to tell your parents. Going to the shopping center together? Forget it.

In Europe, having a boyfriend/girlfriend means having a serious relationship, at least when you have reached a certain age. But in Iran, the term boyfriend/girlfriend is more related to the first contacts with the other sex and to something forbidden. A serious relationship? That means marriage, and that is a different subject.

It is still quite common that the parents look around for a good partner for their children. Or as one fellow pointed it out: “When it is time to get married, maybe my parents know a good girl, maybe I know one.”

Because having a girlfriend/boyfriend is neither something official nor something with a future it is also not something exclusive. Many youngsters are in contact with more than one possible partner. “Maybe I can get married to one of them? But if it does not work it is good to have more options at hand.” As time goes by, the whole story is slowly shifting away from “the parents are looking for a good partner and having a girlfriend/boyfriend is only a forbidden game” to “I search for a good partner myself”. And maybe after they have mastered that step, they will come closer and closer to the way we live in Europe.
Anyway, in Teheran everything is different, there you can find the whole spectrum of relationships. People that live as a couple and it is more or less official and others that still let their parents do the work.

Let’s talk about another term that is filled quite differently: Engagement. To be engaged here means that you have signed the legal marriage contract and that it will only take some more time until you held the wedding party. Having the paper in your hand means you can have legal sex and so, engaged people often live like husband and wive.

And now, knowing all that, how do you to tell Iranis what kind of a relationships you have? “I have a girlfriend” can find its reaction in giggling. “I am engaged” sounds over the top but is maybe closer to their thinking.
A typical question in Iran is: “Are you married or single?” There is nothing in between, no steps that indicate that you are seeing someone, dating someone, having a relationship with someone. No, marriage is something that happens to you from one day to the next. And that’s the way it is.

Who is Dave?

You think I am a weirdo, travelling over land to study in Pakistan? While travelling I came to know that the way I am taking is actually quite fast and that there's a climax to my crazyness: Dave.

Dave is a wonderful person I got to know because I bumped into him in Esfahan (Iran) on the street. As you can count the tourists you're meeting at the moment in Iran on two hands, you can count the likeminded ones with an understanding for culture and people on one hand.

Dave took all the way from Switzerland to Iran (and now even to Pakistan) by bike. Bike? Yes! Not a motor bike, but a single plain bicycle with his luggage and himself through bumpy streets, small villages and the desire to learn something new all the time.

As he has spend far more time in Iran than I have, he agreed on giving me his writings about relationships in Iran as a guest author on my blog. The following two pieces are not by me, but depict the situation far better than I had even known it. For more crazy, beautiful biking and culture stories, visit his blog: www.velotrip.ch

through the eyes of a woman

„If I want to travel, I have to get a passport. To get a passport, my father or my husband have to agree on it. As they don't want me to travel alone, I don't get a passport. I'm trapped.“



The freedom of a woman or a girl in Iran depends a lot on the place where she lives (as not all of the places are as westernized as Teheran) as well as on the family (how much the parents allow). This is how I perceived it first.



One girl told me that she would love to travel but that her parents don't allow it to her. Her only chance will be, as she put it, to marry an open minded man who let's her go to travel. But finding such a person isn't so easy in a gender separating society as the Iranian, where one of the first contacts with a person from the other sex is in university (besides the family relatives from the other sex that you might have contact with).And even if you get in contact with a possible open minded future husband: your parents will have to agree on him and what to do about it, if they want to choose or don't approve your choice?

Women have relationships before marriage, but one women in Tabriz summarized what a lot of women I spoke to, expressed: „When you have a boyfriend before marriage, which most of the girls have, and you might have sex with him (which is forbidden), he will not marry you afterwards, because he thinks that you are a bad girl.“


But the daily problems go further than the decision about relationships. They touch the decisions made on a personal level for an independend life. It is hard for a woman to divorce from her husband without his agreement and renting an appartment is not possible without the father's or husband's permission.

A friend whom I was walking in the streets the other day told me about her brother's wife. She had cysts and needed a life-saving operation. For this operation her husband had to sign a paper that he gives the doctors permission to make the surgery. Even before she went into the operation he was called again to confirm that he agreed on her being operated although she might loose her futility. And he was asked again and again how many children he already had and if he wouldn't like to have more. (Well...how can he have more, when his beloved wife dies? Except of the idea of „replacing“ her...).



These are just kaleidoscopick minipixels out of the talks I had in the recent days in Iran with some women.

Friends and family asked me how I cope with wearing a hejab, the in Iran compulsory covering of your hair. It is just a piece of cloth. Wearing a hejab and a manteau for two weeks isn't too bad. It is just some extra clothes that you have to get used to, despite the fact that most of the women wear the hejab more loosely than you might think. And by going into a catholic church in Italy you would also adjust to the dress code, I guess...


„It is not that we have to wear this“ said Afsane one day while pointing to the hejab, „or that we have to obey some extra rules and get along with our families: it is the whole society. Even if my family is open minded and I can do what I want, there'll be neighbours, gossipping and rules that can make a women's life hell here.“

travelling alone. as a female traveller

The joys and the sorrows of a female backpacker are numerous. The same as it will be for a male backpacker. You might miss someone to talk to, sometimes and sometimes you might be glad to be alone and to get easier in contact to locals as this does happen on a much broader scale when you're a lone traveller. But there are other phenomenas that might hit lone women travellers harder than male ones. At least in some countries.

As I was travelling in eastern Turkey and Syria I had to bear (as nearly any foreign female will acknowledge) the staring, which isn't only an interested „who is this person“-look, but more a checking of all your body features and eyes that are glued to you in a way that make you feel stripped and uncomfortable. Not only people who stare at you when they cross your way, but also from inside a bus. I sometimes felt like an

animal in a zoo.

Besides the staring, I was sometimes enerved by the cotinuous sound around me. „whereareyoufrom“/“whatsyourname“/“hellohowareyou?“ - shoutings formed a steady carpet on which I walked through cities, bazars, places. But this is something, which males might face aswell (maybe not accompanied with questions whether you are married or want to marry as soon as you get in a smalltalk conversation in which the person who poses the question might praise himself as a good object of marriage and proposes (half jokingly) a marriage, but still...)

The shouting got less and eventually absolutely vanished as soon as I came to Iran, where -besides- everyone had warned me that men would go crazy on a blonde woman. They didn't. They were nice and friendly and more calm in coming to talk to me than I had known it before. People were coming up to me, to talk, pracice their english, ask how I find the country, but in a calmer, nicer way than I was used to before.

What is a lot more fun (or annoyance after hearing it for the fourth-hundred time, depending on you), is the „you are travelling alone as a woman in these areas, is it safe?“-questions. These questions come preferably from people when you tell them about you

r next travel targets (for example Iran and Pakistan, or when you tell them some people in western Turkey you'll be going to Eastern Turkey...mostly everywhere when you tell them you're going in the neighbouring country, which is more east...). Or it comes from friends/family at home...

And then I smile. And I think of all the persons who have invited me for a cup of tea in a bus station. Or for lunch.

And ordered extra desert for me. Or I think of my hosts in Iran, who didn't only give me the directions of the busstation, but who brought me to the bus and waited half an hour patiently until the bus set off with me. People, who phoned relatives in other cities to get informations or a place to stay for me. Or the simple facts that you get women-seats and usually never sit next to a man. So: I feel safe travelling alone as a woman and especially in highly islamic countries as in Pakistan: if I will yell at a man in public for touching me inappropriately, for example, there'll be a lot of people coming to protect me, as this is behaviour which is against Islam and is considered a sin to do. So he'll have quite a big crowd of people giving him a hard time.

So, as everything, this has always two sides in it. You might have to adjust to clothing and behavioural rules, but you might find protection, help and interested people more than travelling alone in Europe.

Iranian curiosities 2

These are just some smaller bits and pieces of what I have found out while strolling around in Iran.

First: rebellion can come in different ways. It can be a headscarfs put very much in the back of the head so you can still see all the hair of the women with the elaborate styles or it can come in a male version of hair that is spiked in the air with gel:













Second: there are different ways to deal with plastic surgery. There's the "american way" of doing it and letting it be obvious that you're still looking like twenty in your mid-sixties. There's the "european way" of doing it, hiding and denying it and trying to let it look "normal". And then there's the "iranian way", where the ability to do a "nose job" is a status symbol. Something that you can show and that you should show, because you had the money to correct your nose. While I can present here just a snap shot of a male person who has had a nose job, you'll see a lot of women in the streets with these plasters over their noses, showing that they now have a straight nose...


Someone also told me that they sometimes just wear the plaster without having the operation. But that's unconfirmed gossip, of course... ;-)

artistically seen

If there's one thing that's Iran famous for (put aside politics in the recent years and the revolution), then it is artwork.
I had heard about the famous iranian carpets (my mother even send me a text message as I was in Tabriz saying: "now you're there where our carpet comes from"), but I have honestly never imagined that these carpets would be so magnificent, that they would look like paintings (yes, the pictures in the frames as woven carpets!):



Carpets come in a variety of ways:


but they are not the only art work, which can be found in Iran. Esfahan is very well known for the paintings and the cupper work and while walking through the streets of the bazar, you can watch them working on their art: