Attarn
The writer has served as Chief Secretary, K-P. He has an MA Hons from Oxford University and is the author of two books of English poetry 'The Dragonfly & Other Poems' and 'Bibi Mubarika and Babur’
The attarn dance is a prominent feature of the Pashtoon culture with affiliations to both festivity and war.
According to some accounts its roots go back to folklore hero, Zorastrian King Maya, of Persia performing it on Naurooz. It is now more of a festive public dance performed by male Pashtoons. Females too take part but inside the four walls of their precincts on merry occasions of marriages, betrothals and childbirths.
Although the attarn is prevalent among all Pashtoons of Afghanistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, it is more common among the Karlarn branches of Pashtoon tribes, although certain Sarbarn tribes also perform it.
It is the national dance of Afghanistan customary in Wardag, Kandahar, Herat, Paktya, Lugar, Waziri, Khattak and Mehsud areas.
Among themselves the Pashtoons, lightheartedly, jest that a Khattak will not be a true Khattak if upon hearing the beat of a dhole (drum), he doesn’t spring dancing onto his feet. But truth be said, few Pashtoons can suppress the urge to sway and join in the communal merriment, whenever and wherever they hear the attarn beat, be it among the mountains of Tirah, Shawal, Khost or Kabul, the splendors of Toronto or the back streets of Hong Kong, wherever the fragrances of Pashtoonwali spread and the verses of Khushal resound.
The two sided drum plays a central role in the dance. With a hollow centre made out of resonating wood, its two sides are covered with stretched dried, animal skin, one having a base and the other a higher pitch.
The sizes of the drum may vary from area to area: it often is the same size used as a percussion instrument in Indian sub-continental music or may be large with a thunderous boom.
In the performance of an attarn, one, two or more drum beaters, depending upon the size of participants, stand in the middle of the dancing circle of men. The drummers take their lead or cues from the mashar or ustaaz drum-beater, who is normally the senior most in years, experience and proficiency.
It is the ustaaz who controls the evolution of the dance from its slow beginning, like an adagio, through the middle, corresponding to the andante and the fast crescendo, analogous to the allegro. It is he who keeps intact the structure, composition, development and various refinements in the dance. A surnay (shehnayi) is a common accompaniment although sometimes a neck-slung rabab may join.
There is no particular dress prescribed for the dance since it is essentially a public dance and no professional dancers are involved. By and large it continues to remain a collective tribal mode of expression of social merriment and jubilation.
The basic movements and steps of the dance are common among all the tribes involving a five or seven step forward, rotating movement in the middle of which is a pirouette in the air and the dancers keep rotating in a wide circle. In some variants hands are brought down to a clap in the middle and in others an intense twirl may end in a thudding sqaut on the ground.
Among some tribes the head and the hair bob is flicked forwards, sideways and backwards with the drum beat. The hair bob, kept neck long or even shoulder length, are called the khassarneiyn.
Long hair have fallen into disuse, yet they are not uncommon among Waziris, Mehsuds and more rural tribes of Afghanistan.
The number of the dancers may vary from as little as five or six and as many as forty — or even more. In a wedding ceremony all able-bodied are expected to join.
The dance is common to nearly all the tribes of Pashtoons on either sides of the Durand Line, Pashtoon of Afghanistan and Pakistan (in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan) tracing their lineage to a common ancestor and possessing a shared history, culture, language and a code of conduct called the Pashtoonwali.
Since philologists and phoneticists describe Pashto as an eastern Iranian language, the connection of most of Pashtoon cultural traits to old Persia seems plausible.
Occupying the historic central Asian routes which all northerly conquerors marching onto India adopted, the intimate connection of Pashtoons to war, battle and combat is self-evident. This reflects in the Pashtoonwali traits of nang, badal, protection and chivalry. The attarn dance is thus infused through and through with all the nuances and intonations of a war dance as a collective, motivational act in preparation for an encounter with a tribal or external adversary. After victory it was performed as a celebratory dance.
No wonder then that among a number of Pashtoon tribes, attarn is performed by performers flailing swords, notably among the Khattak. The Mehsuds holding rifles in one hand, after one circuitous twist, jointly fire bullets of jubilation in the air.
I gained a living experience and insight into the combative aspect of the attarn dance, serving as Political Agent, North Waziristan in 1982-86. Prior to me, the administration had terribly bungled up a barampta (an action, often involving use of force, against proven criminals refusing to surrender to state for legal action). During a barampta against a notorious criminal Naseeb, a former army soldier, the scouts, led on the spot by non-Pashtoon army officers, bumbled into the absolute forbidden. They lugged the dead bodies of women into a three-tonner truck along with the male bodies and drove them over to Miralli camp! That single act lit up a firestorm in the whole of Waziristan: it was open revolt, seeking revenge for the ultimate humiliation of tribal honor due to the desecration of womenfolk bodies touched by numehrams.
A 5,000-strong lashkar of the Ibrahimkhel Wazir tribes began, ominously, roaming around the agency punishing tribesmen suspected of siding with the administration during the barampta, burning their houses. Every day the lashkar would perform the attarn dance to motivate, exhibit and affirm their commitment to tribal nang and purdah.
Although womenfolk do perform attarn inside the houses on merry occasions, due to strict purdah they never perform in public. That is not to say Pashtoon women do not participate in male acts of valour. The heroism of Malala of Maiwand forms a central feature of Pashtoon folklore, their collective memory and an idiom indicative of the indomitable bravery, during war, of Pashtoon women.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 18th, 2023.
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