Marriage after disaster

  The marriages in Baluchistan are very interesting. People are doing a lot of arrangements for this event.

  Groom’s family, relatives and friends are preparing for the event one month before. Females and children are wearing new clothes and they start to celebrate the marriage almost 3 days before. The women are gathering in the Groom’s and bride’s house at night and singing together with the beat of drums, although this area is considered to be a conservative Muslim area, but still they show their joy and happiness in that way. The food for the marriage is rice with the sheep’s meet and curry.

  As the other regions, here in Baluchistan also Groom and bride can see each others after they agree verbally, that they accept each others as a couple in presences of Molvi (a religious teacher) and two or three witnesses. Bride and groom are mainly selected within the family or tribe.

  There are a few cases of love marriages, but it is highly dislike by the parents and elder community. The divorce rate is too low.

  In many villages, men are celebrating the marriage with traditional dance called ATTAN, which is national dance of Afghanistan and very common in Pashtun tribes of Pakistan. The dancers which are friends of groom and some professional dancers move in circles while clapping their hands to the rhythm and spinning around.

  All those information I got from the local people while working in those areas, but in my presence I saw two marriages, one was in Quetta and other was in Ziarat. I didn’t see any ATTAN dance or other celebration in the marriage at Ziarat; it was due to the sorrow of earthquake. People said they are happy but they can’t show their happiness in the way of dancing and singing, because they remember the people who were killed by the earthquake a few months ago and they remember their houses which were destroyed in the same earthquake. Now they are living in the shelters and tents provided by the humanitarian agencies.

  It is sad that the people can’t celebrate their weddings in their traditional ways due to the disaster, but at the same time it is encouraging seeing that they didn’t stop the marriage ceremonies and still doing that social and spiritual union of individual; even they don’t have proper rooms for living, but they use JEN tent as a room for this good purpose.