The shrine of Miāṇ̣ Abdul Karīm Dād in Tīrāth, upper Swat valley, Pakistan

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Prelude: At five o’clock in the afternoon

It is five o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun begins to disappear through the verdant mountains. The valleys, where life and death dwell side by side, swallow the sun. Through the cardinals of history, kissing the river that snakes its way, crawling, amidst the fertile lands painted with rice, wheat and corn. The river leaves in its passage a winged tattoo that, at times, brings a trail of destruction. As reminiscent of a time when the Nāga Apalāla, a sea dragon living near the Swat River, appeared unannounced to scare with rainstorms the local populations.[i] Only the Buddha Śākyamuni has managed to subdue this monster.

The waters of the Swat River are like ferocious animals that, for loving the earth so much, occasionally decide to leap over its domains and spread fragments of itself, throughout the world. The last major and overwhelming passion was in 2010. The river destroyed bridges, homes and schools. It uprooted trees that, though imposing, have surrendered to the brute force of its waters. The roots of the lives that have been lost plunge now, perpetually, into the souls of birds fluttering through the skies of the Swat valley.

It is not surprising, therefore, this interest of mine in the odour of death. The martyrs killed in combat (shahīds) and their ghosts, the spaces where their limbs rest. They interest me in their silence that seems to me noisier than the daily conversations. Sometimes, I distance myself and search for this emptiness full of hauntings to explain the life that surrounds me.

This obsession with death acquires an almost sickening nature. However, for the inhabitants of the Swat Valley, this interest seems to be received with open arms. The cemeteries blend with the surrounding landscape; there are no walls separating them from the cultivated fields. Death does not hurt the eyes. It does not seek to hide or to be forgotten; its active remembrance and importance manifests itself on various occasions. It is this landscape of death that fascinates me, and which I try to draw in my mental exercises, in the invisible leaves that bloom within my entrails. I draw maps of sacred landscapes; of magical places that time has not been able to destroy. Not even the Nāga Apalāla, nor the deadly waters, nor the wars, succeeded in sinking the haughtiness of the martyrs’ tombs, which either hide on the mountaintops or show themselves, capriciously, on the banks of the rivers. This persistence of a survival instinct, which seems to face any ignoble violence, has further contributed to the belief that an inviolable deity guards these places.

The shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād (c. 1562-1661) is one of these living examples of resistance: it has survived the flood of 2010, despite its proximity to the river. It has also survived the conflict between the Taliban and the Pakistani army, even assuming itself as a protective force. According to the population of Tīrāth in the Swat valley, and where I now find myself writing from the roof of a house, the Taliban have never been able to make their influence felt on this side of the river. Local people believe that it is a spiritual miracle of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād.

Ghosts, therefore, haunt this place. On one of those endless nights, some soldiers saw the ghosts of those whom they swear to be Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād and Miāṇ Rasūl Bābā.[ii] They were strolling on white-horses, by the narrow paths along the river. The soldiers fired thousands of shots, but none managed to stain with blood, the martyrs’ niveous cloaks.[iii]

Fragment I. First Circle of Initiation: Memories of an ancient Destruction

My living encounter with the humble

Things of Nature gives birth to souls,

Divine apparitions,

Which abstractly behold me from I don’t know where,

From I don’t know what unfamiliar place

Outside this space

In which trees and rocks appear.

I see specters, images of Mystery,

Fantastical figures,

Glowing outlines imprinted on the dusk,

Like so many omens…

Outlines of pallor emerging in the distance,

And sorrows that are fading portraits

Of unknown Divinities…

Statues of silence and melancholy

In the solitude of the hills…

– Teixeira de Pascoaes (1877-1952)

The destruction has reached the banks of this river, like violent waves that galvanize the sandy shores when the sea is rough. The brutally inflicted scars even if not exposed ostentatiously on the skin of its inhabitants, were apparent in the landscape still devastated, eroded by the force of the waters. Or on the temporary fragile bridges trembling over the river; like mother-of-pearl lace veils, chaining these eternal enamored rims.[iv]

Cemetery in the immediacies of the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād I [In the background, the Swat River], Tīrāth, Swat valley, Pakistan. © Ana Tomás 2013

The Initiation into the first sacred circle begins in Piyā, a village facing Tīrāth, on the right bank of the river Swat. We pass through a secret doorway; a wooden platform almost hidden in the shrubby vegetation, where two young men, guardians of this sacred space, control the chairlift that connects both banks of the river. As if the neophytes, who dare to tread the path of the Initiates, had to be first scrutinized by the innocent gazes on white robes.

Slowly, we traverse the thread above the abyss of the waters; the spider of destiny weaves omens of labyrinths to unravel: “O augury user, know that the ambergris-kneaded paradise has appeared in your augury. The rose of your desire has bloomed in the garden of good fortune, and the sapling of your life has been watered with the river of joy” (Falnama: The Book of Omens).

 The sky of thunders sinks in the bitter streams, amidst the ruins of silver moons; whispering, through the lips of effigies dyed in indigo rips, and gilded with Jupiter’s rings—god of Heaven and Thunder—the memories from our souls’ shadowy winds. Yesterday collapses into bits of spectrums and gives light to murky houses in dangling forests. We leave behind the horrors still lingering on the most obscure nooks of our being; the gardens of torture.

We finally reach our destination, on the other side of the river. The shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, also known locally as Shahīd Bābā (“the martyred saint”), is located in this riverside. This is one of my favorite corners of Tīrāth. In the bed of the river, starry gardens of alabastrine sepulchers with their katbas (ar. “epitaphs”) of innumerable configurations. Some present a complex work of wood: anthropomorphic stelae of flat wood or three-dimensional wooden pillars that resemble stupas.[v] Others have floral motifs chiseled on their grey stones. The trees rise out amidst their arcane breaths. Houses emerge from the selvedges frayed by the intermittent floods of the river.

Cemetery in the immediacies of the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād II,
Tīrāth, Swat valley, Pakistan. © Ana Tomás 2013

Two small streams (ps. khwar), demarcate the Tīrāth Union Council, as if reaffirming the existence of this minuscule sacred kingdom build of green emeralds and sheltered by fortresses of water. The floods of 2010 have cruelly devoured a magnificent spring, breathing near the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, and crowned by a maple tree.[vi] In the summer, its water was so cold that fell into the hands like lacerating needles. While in the winter, the waters would become balmy and pleasant, as though to remind us of the transience of nature and its seasons; as a dormant promise of summer. The girls from the families living in the immediacies of the shrine collected water from this spring. It was also suggested that its waters were miraculous and could help fight infections.[vii]

Nature is the guardian of these sanctuaries; of gardens concealed from the fate that, at times, brings storms and tides of destruction and finitude. The trees protect this sacred circle, nailed to the foot of a mountain stripped over time of its green leaves and tall stalks by the greed of men.[viii] In the distance, the clouds embrace the semi-denuded summits, wandering, as if bestowing the earth with its deity. Plum and apricot trees sprinkle its colours in seas inhabited of varied greens. The whispering winds of an August’s afternoon, sing ballads in a barely perceptible arcanum tune. Those are birds, breaking their souls through the branches and leaves of trees; through the bugleweed flowers tinged of lilac and warmed by the sun. Other birds flit a little away, near the crumbling wisps of clouds, in a sky-heaven running like a fast river to the east of me. They contemplate, witnesses to this metamorphic scene: the sky descends on earth and kisses earth’s chestnut lines and coloured craters; into the root of its mirror.

Shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, Tīrāth, Swat valley, Pakistan © Ana Tomás 2013

Nature is also imbued of a sacrality that finds its echoes in the local folklore and is substantiated through the religious texts. Some of these alar-souls erupt into the houses, carrying with them encrypted messages. Tūtakay, a swallow bird, only bestows its presence in the houses of people considered pious.[ix] The bird is highly respected in Tīrāth because of an episode narrated in the Qurʾān, in which the abābīl protected the Kaaba in Mecca from the Aksumite elephant army of Abraha al-Ashram (viceroy of southern Arabia for the Kingdom of Aksum, and at that time ruled by the Abyssinians), by dropping small clay stones on them as they approached.[x] On one of those afternoons, tūtakay graced us with its presence, swirling around the patio of a house I was visiting. Later on, I was presented with a rose-coloured tasbīḥ (ar. “Muslim prayer beads”) by one of the women in the house. Thirty-five unknown worlds, mirrored in those enchanted and diaphanous stones; a passage into the abode of the immortal beings.

The birds bear, therefore, the eternal presence of souls in the unchanging sphere of heaven’s blue feathers, oblivious to the mundane humanity waving at them from the chasm of the subterranean. Sometimes there are orchestras of thunderstorms that light up the gray skies. And there are invisible boats that connect the two banks of the river. Dreams remain in the empty caverns shattered by giant-ghosts, and silence reigns amidst the disemboweled valleys.

At each crepuscule, I carry those birds and trees inside the jaded obsidian pockets of my skin, as well as the thousand and one glassful memories that fate kept shattering with its haunting breeze, as if etching on life’s blanket the shadows of stars; the dust of our existence. In the inverted heavens, there are storms, invisible to others; reflections of the Divine, on which ruins ceaselessly float a constant reminder of an ancient Destruction. There are hidden words mirroring the eyes, and there is pain buried, pierced, on the lines of my hands; on the rivers of fates and hazy mounds that so many times I have tried to set on fire. And there are absent faces, invisible ghosts, encircling me, amidst the winds of my soul: of those who abide in Eternity.

Fragment II.  Second circle of initiation: Of those who abide in Eternity

“The dead of the earth are masters of the night; they slide sideways into our dreams.”– Gwendolyn MacEwen (2002: 112)

Detail from inside the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād [Windows with view towards the east], Tīrāth, Swat valley, Pakistan © Ana Tomás 2013

Many visit the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād. They come to pray for their intercession in the most varied problems: to have children, to obtain money, a new house, or to get married. Usually, they visit the sanctuary seven times since it is a common belief that in this way, their prayer will be heard.[xi] During periods of drought, people also come here. With the faces blackened of macerated charcoal, they cook sweets and pray to be blessed with rain. This is a custom that subsists in other parts of Pakistan.[xii] This practice possible derives from the idea that the black colour may be connected with the rain-clouds. In Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1925: 62-77), we can find several examples related to rain-making ceremonies—the “magical control of weather”—among different cultures, in which the black colour prevails; being it, in the form of black garments, black food, black animals, etc. Furthermore, in Swat (like in other parts of the “Muslim world”) people also perform salāt al-istisqā’ (ar. “prayer for rain”), the communal prayer for rain during periods of drought.

Small tomb of dog said to have accompanied Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, inside the shrine of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, Tīrāth, Pakistan, 2013 © Ana Tomás

In one of my many visits to the sanctuary, three women accompanied me from the house I had been staying as a melmana (ps. “guest”) in Tīrāth. That afternoon, menacing rain peered through the closed skies. I remember how we walked the paths amidst the graves of the dead, toward the holy precinct. We shared in the brotherhood of souls, unseen secrets that spread into the silence of our steps. Udder seeds with promises of flowers inhabited the face of one of these women. Asma,[xiii] now pregnant, carried with her a supplication: giving birth to a boy. She already had two small daughters. But she feared the birth of another girl. Although each life is received as a gift from God, boys continue to be preferred. They are the ones who will later be able to care for their parents, contributing monetarily to their families.

Arriving at the threshold of the sanctuary, we stepped barefoot into the cold stone, in preliminary injunctions. The shrine, with its white and cyan colors, imitates the river that runs impetuously outside.[xiv] From the windows of the shrine, his flamboyant music enters, cradling the senses in a constant remembrance of the divine. In the wooden beams of the ceiling, myriads of flowers hang; crowns made of yarn, other of fabric or metallized paper. Diffuse light bursts through the checkered gaps that appear on the top of the walls. Like fainted veils that separate the core and the outside, to then vanish with a part of this circle, fading through the firmament of the mountains.

Detail of the tomb of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād I, Tīrāth, Swat valley, Pakistan © Ana Tomás 2013

The tomb of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād is enclosed by a stonework canopy, on the top of which lays three cloth covers, embroidered with verses of the Qur’ān (ar. kiswah) in golden letters. It is possible to see the tomb through an opening located on its north and south direction, as if the human gazes had to be initiated, before they could penetrate this empyrean world. For it is not only the body that needs to undergo the ritual ablutions; the gaze must become a fountain of circular bowls filled with aromatic fragrances, in which the purified soul is emulated. The tomb has two rounded shaped knobs marking the ends of the grave. On the top of the tomb also lays a beautiful embroidered cloth cover (ar. kiswah) with intricate patterns. Inside the shrine, there is another small tomb whose history remains shrouded in mystery. Several sources attest that this tomb belongs to a “loyal dog that was accompanying Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, when this one died at the hands of the Kāfirs”. [xv]

The saint remains thus protected by the firmament of stone skies. The prayers are made of silences, reverberant annelids that move within the bodies. Magical alphabets tattooed in the perpetuity of unheard desires and whispered to the soul of the saint.

Detail of the tomb of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād II, Tīrāth, Swat valley, Pakistan © Ana Tomás 2013

 

Footnotes and references 

[i] The Nāga Apalāla was the source of the river S’ubhavastu (Swat), and converted by Buddha Śākyamuni shortly before his death. It is possible to find in many Gandhāran legends, different beings and entities—yakṣas, nats, phīs and devatās—that are used to illustrate their submission to the Buddha and, later, conversion. The Nāga is one of the figures commonly present in these narratives, e.g. Nāga Apalāla, or Nāga Kalika. However, the Nāga incarnates here, “indigenous forces, chthonic and aquatic spirits that are specifically linked to the fertility of the earth and the rains”. The Nāgas thus constitute a favourite subject in the art of Gandhārā, playing a vital role in the biography of the Buddha. The best-known examples are certainly the representations of the Buddha’s victory over the Nāga of the Swat River, the Nāga Apalāla, which can be found in the Peshāwar Museum in Pakistan (see Strong 2004: 169).

[ii] Miāṇ Rasūl Bābā is the son of Pīr Bābā. The descendants of Pīr Bābā, who are Sayyeds, live in the Shagae Shagram village, located in the Tīrāth Union Council, and establish matrimonial exchanges with the Akhūnd Khel. I open a parenthesis to remember that Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad married Pīr Bābā’s daughter.

[iii] Story collected during fieldwork and told by different sources.

[iv] During my fieldwork in 2013 and 2014, there were still several temporary bridges made of rope and wooden planks, connecting both sides of the river Swat, in the area of Fatehpūr (three kilometers south of Tīrāth), and Tīrāth. For the disaster risk mapping of the Tīrāth Union Council, see Hassan (2011).

[v] For additional information on cemeteries in Swat and surrounding areas, see Topper (2000). See also Burton-Page (1986), Frembgen (1998a), Khan (2011) and Minallah (2006).

[vi] Interview collected during fieldwork in Tīrāth, 2014 and informal conversation during 2018.

[vii] “That time most people of the area was suffering from infection, even myself… although I took a lot of medicine and treatments, but all in vain. So one day, I had an idea and took bath from the spring three times and I recovered. Then I suggested the same to so many people, and they got the same result” (story collected during fieldwork in the summer of 2014). There are springs and lakes in the Swat valley renowned by their healing properties. One of these is located near Kalam, in the upper Swat valley. See “’Dark water lake’” (2017) and Zareef (2013).

[viii] Deforestation is a major problem in the Swat valley, notwithstanding the current efforts to reverse the situation (see Khaliq 2012; Naeem 2018). For more information on this subject see Torwali (2018).

[ix] Story collected during fieldwork and told by different sources.

[x] The abābīl, identified as swallows, are the miraculous birds mentioned in Sūrat al-Fīl (“Sūrat of the Elephant”), that protected the Kaaba in Mecca from the Aksumite elephant army of Abraha al-Ashram (viceroy of southern Arabia for the Kingdom of Aksum), by dropping small clay stones on them as they approached. See Qur’ān: “Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the People of the Elephant?/ Did He not make their plan go wrong?/ He sent against them swarms of birds./ Throwing at them rocks of baked clay./ Leaving them like chewed-up leaves” (105: 1-5). There are numerous references in the Qur’ān related to birds. We can highlight the episode of Ibrahim and the four birds: “And [mention] when Abraham said, ‘My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.’ [Allah] said, ‘Have you not believed?’ He said, ‘Yes, but [I ask] only that my heart may be satisfied.’ [Allah] said, ‘Take four birds and commit them to yourself. Then [after slaughtering them] put on each hill a portion of them; then call them – they will come [flying] to you in haste. And know that Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise’” (Qur’ān 2: 260). See also Tlili (2012).

[xi] Interview collected during fieldwork in Tīrāth, 2014. This practice seems to be a variation of the practice of circumambulating some shrines seven times. This resonates with some Islamic rituals of pilgrimage, namely, the circumambulation of the Kabba (Ṭawāf), during the Ḥajj or ‘Umrah.

[xii] See Chauburji (2017) and Panhwer (2015).

[xiii] In order to preserve the anonymity of the interviewees, all names used here are pseudonymous; this applied both to the interviewees themselves and other people mentioned in the interviews, except when historical figures.

[xiv] The tomb of Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dad, the small tomb and the walls of the shrine are coloured with greenish cyan. Green has always been a positive colour in Islam, associated with vegetation, spring, the sky, fertility, water, riches, and paradise. For a contextualization of the green colour in Islam, see Pastoureau 2014: 46-49; and Nasr 1983: 51, 62, note 29.

[xv] Interviews collected during fieldwork in 2013 and 2014. Although dogs are seen as ambiguous figures, traditionally held as “impure” or “unclean,” in the Sufi literature they usually portray the image of loyalty and humility (see Berglund 2014; Nurbakhsh 1989). Devin DeWeese has also written about a tradition of dog saints and dog shrines in Central Asia connected with the Kubrawī Sufis (DeWeese 2000). In the case of the shrine of Pīr Abbas in Pattoki (Pakistan), a Saint known as a “protector of dogs” or “dog master,” dogs are allowed inside the shrine and fed by the devotees (see Khalid 2016; 2015). However, it is intriguing how local people in Tīrāth, when questioned about the burial of a dog inside the shrine, do not seen this as something “impure”; but, on the contrary, as something legitimated by its association with Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād: “The dog was accompanying Miāṇ Abdul Karīm Dād, so naturally he would be buried with him, for its loyalty” (conversation with an inhabitant of Tīrāth, living in the United Kingdom, 2018). This is the only case in the Swat valley, according to my knowledge, in which dogs are associated with the shrines of Saints.

For more bibliography on the subject of dogs and shrines, see Hofer (2016). See also D. DeWeese (2000) and Kalamov & Alomo (2008).

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