Transparency is the other side of Dialogue. This picture has a story of transparency at first and of dialogue afterwards.

It was on the Karakoram Highway, somewhere near Chilas, only a few hours away from Gilgit. With some friends we were driving south towards Islamabad when we stopped for a break.

It was very early in the morning and I was sitting on a rock looking around me.

It was very silent. Only the Hindus - running down at its winter pace - broke the stillness of the sunrise. But it was a perfect harmony: the bareness of the mountains, the emptiness of the space; the deserted highway, the shadows of some clouds over mountains and hills.

And then these shepherds with their cattle came into the picture.I pretended I didn’t exist and stayed still on the rock, fascinated by their silent move.They pretended I didn’t exist too, staring at the animals, the highway, the mountains all around.

We didn’t meet; we didn’t share that moment of proximity. For some frozen time we were transparent to each other. Irrelevant it seemed.

And yet eventually curiosity broke the spell and so the eldest man turned his head and stared at me, including me into his own landscape.

I looked at him in return and - as he kept on looking attentively at me - I slowly took the picture.

Transparency had ended, turning into a mute dialogue of reciprocate acceptance and respect.

Now, I had included him into my own landscape and memory.

Delle Donne e il Velo...

In questi anni sento molto parlare di donne islamiche qui in Europa. Accesi dibattiti circa la questione dell’ hijab (il velo), se sia un bene o un male portarlo o favorirne l’uso; se sia dovere dei paesi occidentali abolirlo sul proprio suolo o se sia piu’ laico e civile invece il rispettarlo e acconsentirne l’uso. Spesso, sui giornali o alla televisione, in Francia come in Italia, Germania o Regno Unito si esprimono accese ed estreme posizioni sul velo islamico, con alcuni che ne difendono l’uso - paragonato ad uno schermo quasi difensivo rispetto al Mondo terreno, maschile, invadente - e altri che, furibondi, accusano il significato castrante e tutto sommato umiliante del nascondere il volto, gli occhi, il naso e la bocca di donne bambine, giovani e vecchie. Intervistate, alcune studentesse di Ankara difendono la possibilita’ del velo, altre, piu’ significativamente nel Maghreb o negli Emirati Arabi, ne denunciano il carattere reazionario e l’imposizione. Che pensare ?

Spesso, per me che ho passato molti anni tra i monti del Karakorum o tra le valli del Kashmir, tra le donne totalmente velate di Peshawar e quelle piu’ lungimiranti del Nord dell India, spesso dicevo, tutta questa discussione resta oscura, inafferrabile nel suo significato finale, forse addirittura inutile. Cosi’ come resta tuttora incomprensibile la certezza (di alcune) di poter capire il mondo femminile islamico se guardato attraverso un filtro diciamo cosi’ europeo e occidentale. Quando ho provato a capire alcuni fenomeni femminili o, piu’ in generale, di genere, in Pakistan – cercando di analizzarli, dissettarli e interiorizzarli secondo categorie teoretiche di stampo prettamente europeo – beh, ho fallito. Il mio pensiero infatti non arrivava a comprendere nel suo percorso quei dubbi, quelle contraddizioni e quelle domande senza risposte di cui e’ costituito per tanta parte il mondo femminile islamico, se non altro nella sua accezione piu’ asiatica.

E lo stesso potrei dire di percorsi al contrario, diretti cioe’ dall’ Oriente all’Occidente, secondo per altro costruzioni metageografiche che non hanno piu’ molto senso. Quando sento o leggo interventi di donne islamiche sulla questione del Velo (e per fortuna, piu’ in generale, della questione femminile in se’) spesso mi imbarazzo, e mi innervosisco, mi spazientisco (com’e’ ricco l’italiano !). Che senso ha, mi dico, comparare in maniera trionfalistica il nostro modo di vivere e il vostro, decidere cioe’ quale sia il migliore ?
La Bellezza in occidente e’ Esibizione, la Bellezza in Oriente e’ Mistero… Ma per favore ! Che banalita’, quanti schemi e costruzioni mentali contorte per cercare di inquadrare un discorso cosi’ ampio, astratto e pieno di idee, pensieri, miti, idiosincrasie personali e tradizioni collettive. Mi ricorda un po’ la Quadratura del Cerchio, che non ho infatti mai capito. E perche’ poi bisogna quadrarlo ‘sto cerchio ?

Spesso a Islamabad come a Lahore, a Gilgit, Peshawar, Srinagar o a New Delhi mi sono ritrovata costretta in circoli femminili, asfissianti nella loro inevitabilita’. Seduta tra donne imbellettate e ingioiellate, intente a divorare pistacchi e mentine all’anice, ero studiata e analizzata, messa in questione e spesso anche criticata per tutto cio’ che in me ineluttabilmente evocava le mie origini europee moderne. Mi si chiedeva perche’ mi depilavo l’arcata sopraciliare, perche’ tenessi i capelli medio corti, perche’ non volessi indossare una cinquantina di braccialetti di vetro, quelli che a metterli devi massaggiare le mani tanto sono stretti… Tutte queste domande, questi sguardi inquisitori, questa certezza di superiorita’ morale a me han sempre fatto sorridere. Perche’ non ce n’e’ bisogno al mondo, di dimostrare la superiorita’ di scelte e tradizioni. Ognuno ha le sue e dovrebbe essere anche libero di separarsene e crearsene delle nuove se questo e’ cio che desidera. La liberta’ mi sembra cosi’ tanto piu’ importante del Velo.

E tuttavia io andavo entusiasta a questi incontri, perche’ da questi incontri talvolta nascevano dialoghi avvolgenti in cui le donne mie interlocutrici si aprivano a se stesse e allora i loro sogni e le loro aspirazioni, semplici e gioiose, oltrepassavano il Velo e l’Oriente e perfino l’Islam per avventurarsi in mondi forse possibili e forse non troppo lontani. Ecco, quando questo succedeva allora li si’ che eravamo unite, io e loro, quelle donne nella forma cosi’ diverse da me eppure poi, in certi sogni, cosi’ simili.

Winter in the Northern Areas

Ms Gambouri is very happy. Her eggs production is raising and her poultry farm is one of the best of her village, Ishkoman, located in a spectacular valley of the Ghizer District, in the Northern Areas of Pakistan.

Now we are all sitting on the ground, around a plastic tablecloth where Ms Gambouri is laying pieces of her own homemade bread, old butter, slices of onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and cups full of milk tea (chai) and glasses full of mineral water. Her recent wealth is unequivocal and it shines on the glasses themselves, which remind you of the new Chinese bazaar of Gakhuch, or the bigger one in Gilgit, full of beautiful goods, rich merchandise, porcelains and lamps and clothes and leather bags…


Ms Gambouri comes back with a couple of double fried eggs and smiles and laughs with her toothless smile. Oh, she is so happy! These days the whole world is looking at Beijing as the UN Conference of Beijing on Women and Development is going to start in a few days. Is a stupendous opportunity to talk about women and plan about women and so hundreds of thousands of articles are leading the first pages of the main newspapers around the globe, while thousands of women are packing their suitcases to fly to the Chinese capital with all their stories and projects, interventions and declaration. Also Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani Prime Minister, is preparing to go, a female leader from one of the most male dominated society, beautiful and tragic heroin of what the western world still sees as a black, barbarian, traditional theocratic world.

Ms Gambouri doesn’t know about Beijing, China, the UN Conference. Nor does she know about Benazir Bhutto, that the PM is going to China or that in a few years the Iron Lady of Pakistan will have to leave the country on corruption charges, while her husband - Mr 10% - will languish in a Punjabi jail for several years. But Ms Gambouri is very happy because her eggs production is growing and she is saving some little money and her husband can work less – and love her more (this she says out laughingly, while the other women blush and hide laughingly as well behind their dopattas); and her children and their own children, they all enjoy this new well worked for wealth. And so it is, that while I sit in this beautiful courtyeard of a beautiful house in one of the most beautiful valleys of Northern Pakistan, the world is moving on, and thousands of women are going to meet in Beijing to declare that the time of the women is finally arrived, that there will be no more disparity, no more pain, no more poverty. Women all around the world, unite!

At sunset, we leave Ishkoman and its spectacular valley that reminds me of alpine scenarios from the Italian mountains. I look at Narghiss, my colleague at the Agha Khan Rural Support Program, and at the way she tightens her dopatta up on her head while the jeep is fast approaching Gilgit. How big this little market town looks like after a day spent in Gakhuch, Yasin, Ishkoman. A nest of lights and life encased in yet another valley along the feet of the Karakoram range. Is late evening when we reach Gilgit. Home.

I called this blog Dialogues because this is what we possibly have with life.
We can speak many languages and have many thoughts and ideas, feelings and plans.
But if we do not engage in dialogues with the surrounding then those thoughts, ideas, feelings and plans will remain barren and no life will result from them.

A dialogue can be with another person, or with many. It can be a talk or a walk in the mountain. It can be a moment or it can last years. Usually what I intend for dialogue involves a deep insight, a sharing of thoughts, an intense moment when we believe we understand a person, a landscape, a horror, or a country. And as dialogues are rarely fruitless, what is left after they vanish is a sense of something we have just learned, something that we feel like representing or capture in a picture or a novel.

Another thought is that from dialogues decisions may be made, changes may be faced, and lives can be transformed.

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The women in the picture were reunited up in Jutial to celebrate the wedding of a young couple. The bride was a handsome woman in her thirty, strong black-jet hair, hexagonal face, a troublesome beauty in a way. The groom, her cousin, was a striking army man. They were bound to be happy or so we all wished
I took part in the amazing ceremony, as the whole valleys of Hunza and Gilgit and Yassin and Ishkoman did. That day, I sat with those elderly ladies from the picture you see on the right. I didn’t talk to them – they were not there for me. And yet, we exchanged greetings and affectionate looks. They most certainly wondered about my ancestors, my home country, and my origins. Didn’t I speak Urdu with Sherullah Begum? My nose and look had hinted at a sort of oriental aura and let me go on for an eastern Afghani or a northern Iranian. I didn’t care; it was definitely much more comfortable that way, to be there and not to be.