Occasionally there would be real weddings with big feasts which went on for days and left the family bankrupt or in debt. The brides would wear exquisite clothes and be draped in gold, necklaces and bangles given by both sides of the family. I read that Benazir Bhutto insisted on wearing glass bangles at her wedding to set an example but the tradition of adorning the bride still continued. Sometimes a plywood coffin would be brought back from one of the mines. The women would gather at the house of the dead man’s wife or mother and a terrible wailing would start and echo round the valley, which made my skin crawl.

有时，村里会有真正的婚礼，庆祝活动连续进行好几天，这会让新人家里破产或负债。新娘会穿上精美的服饰，全身挂满金饰，两方家庭都会送她项链和手镯。我看过一篇报道，是关于贝.布托坚持在她的婚礼上戴上玻璃手环，以开创新的风气。但是，赠新娘以金饰，以表达对新娘的疼爱的传统没有改变。有时，也会有夹板棺材从矿坑被送回来。妇女们就会到去世的男人的太太或母亲家，一起放声大哭。悲凄的哭声回荡在山谷中，令我全身起鸡皮疙瘩。

At night the village was very dark with just oil lamps twinkling in houses on the hills. None of the older women had any education but they all told stories and recited what we call tapey, Pashto couplets.

夜里，整个村子黑漆漆的，只有山丘上的屋里有点点油灯闪烁。村里年纪比较大的妇女全都没有受过教育，但她们都会说故事，也会转述拓帕，也就是普什图的两行诗。

My grandmother was particularly good at them. They were usually about love or being a Pashtun. ‘No Pashtun leaves his land of his own sweet will, ’ she would say. ‘Either he leaves from poverty or he leaves for love.’ Our aunts scared us with ghost stories, like the one about Shalgwatay, the twenty-fingered man, who they warned would sleep in our beds. We would cry in terror, though in fact as ‘toe’ and ‘finger’ in Pashto is the same, we were all twenty-fingered, but we didn’t realise.

我的外祖母特别擅长讲拓帕。拓帕通常讲的是爱情故事，或是怎样成为一个普什图人。“没有任何一个普什图人会自愿离开他的家园，”她说道，“不论是因为贫困，还是为了爱。”我的姑姑们则拿鬼故事吓我们，例如萧谷帝的故事，讲的是一个有着20只指头的男人。她们说他会爬上我们的床，跟我们一起睡觉。我们会吓得大叫。在普什图语里，“手指”和“脚趾”都被称作“指头”，因此，其实大家都是二十个指头，但我们当时却没有认识到这一点。