AFGHANS: Their History and Culture

Dari literature has a 1,000-year tradition of rhymed poetry.

Music and Literature

Afghan music, once banned by the Taliban but readily available on tape in Afghan communities in the United States, is very popular. Both sexes dance the atan, a national dance in which dancers with arms raised twist from side to side at the waist as they step in a slow, rhythmic pattern around a circle. It is danced in same-sex groups during weddings and other celebrations.

Dari literature is Persian literature, a 1000-year tradition mostly of rhymed poetry. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is probably the best-known example of Persian poetry, through the translation of Edward Fitzgerald. A rubai is a quatrain with a particular meter; rubaiyat is the plural of rubai.

Pashto also has a literary tradition, dating from the writings of Khoshal Khan Khattak, a larger-than-life Pashtun soldier and poet whose writings are full of life and energy. Pashto poetry mimics Persian poetry, with similar verse forms.

Pashto also has a thriving oral literature, a major feature of which is the landay, a two-line poem with nine syllables in the first line and thirteen syllables in the second. The lines do not rhyme, but in the more elegant examples there is internal rhyming. The second line always ends in the syllable [na] or [ma]. Landays are created by both sexes, and range from poetic expressions of beauty:

God's grace lies there in the high mountains.

At their summit there is snow; at their feet flowers.

to comments about everyday life (unrequited love is a frequent topic):

There's the sound of crying from upstairs.

Someone is sick, or a lover is going away.

There are emerging modern traditions in both Dari and Pashto that include short stories, novels, drama, and poetry outside the traditional rhyme and meter structures. Modern Pashto short stories are particularly illustrative of traditional Pashtun values and show a culture far different from what one would expect from the information available about the Taliban. One such story, written by the respected Pashtun writer Ulfat, tells of a man who unknowingly shelters a guest who has murdered the man's son. The man hears the circumstances of the murder, recognizes that his son was at fault, and publicly acknowledges his son's culpability and forgives the murderer.