When you're the last surviving pagans of the Hindu Kush, I suppose you get used to the fact that every now and then you're going to be up to your ears in anthropologists.
And sometimes that's a good thing.
Wynne Maggi had come to the three remote valleys in Northwestern Pakistan where the Kalasha, a people some 4000-strong, continue to practice their ancestral religion, in order to study the women of the culture and, in particular, the role of the basháli, the moon-house, in their lives. Generally, when the missionaries come, the moon-house is one of the first institutions to go, and surprisingly little anthropological study has actually been done on the subject as a living concern.
One morning, while she was drinking tea with her hostess Wasiara Aya, two of Wasiara Aya's relatives, both converts to Islam, came to visit.
After some general conversation, one of them asked Wasiara Aya point blank: "Why don't you convert to Islam so you can go to Heaven, and not burn in Hell forever?"
Maggi was horrified, not realizing that most Kalasha deal with this level of proselytizing on virtually a daily basis.
But Wasiara Aya was unflappable.
"Why should we convert?” she asked her guests, “Kalasha is a good religion, a free religion." Turning to Maggi, she added, "Ne bâba [right, sister]?"
She continued. "Everyone comes here to see us....Americans, French, English, Canadians, Japanese—they all like Kalasha."
She paused, then pounced. "Nobody comes to see you."
Triumphantly, she drew her conclusion. "Kalasha religion is good religion. Ne bâba?"
Indeed. In these days, every pagan is a pagan-by-choice, the old with the new: some of whom, in fact, grew up Muslim. We choose the Old Ways anew every day, in the face of everything that stands against us. For all that it might be easier to choose differently, again and again, day after day, we make the decision to choose the Old Ways.
Not just because they are good, although they are.
But because they are better.
Already hard-hit by this summer's unprecedented flooding, the Kalasha valleys were devastated by last month's 7.5 earthquake. Although no Kalasha deaths have been reported, many houses were badly damaged, just as the cold northern winter sets in.
For updates on the situation: The Kalasha Times
To contribute: An Appeal to Restore Normal Life in Kalashadesh
Wynne Maggi, Our Women Are Free: Gender and Ethnicity in the Hindukush (2001). University of Michigan Press.