Masculine Versus Feminine, Muslim Versus Buddhist

Well, here I am again with the wild and wacky fundamentalist Muslims. I have been living among the essentially feminine, light-hearted and frivolous northern Thai Buddhists for almost three years now and the differences are stark. Northern Thailand joined the rest just three hundred years ago to form Siam, prior to that it has its own long history and particular traditions. Up until just one hundred and fifty years ago all men from the north owed the king six months of every year in labor. The men went off to be soldiers or whatever the king assigned them and the women learned how to run things on their own in the men's absence. When the men came home they found everything working and took a (well-deserved) rest, this became a tradition that has made the northern Thai man, even today, famously lazy while the women are industrious.

In my town of Chiang Mai you will find most shops, restaurants and offices run by women while the men abandon their children, cheat, drink and gamble. When one walks down the street the women meet one's eye and invariably return an honest smile.

Transvestites and homosexuals are folded easily into the social mesh and the only prejudice they might be subject to, is being liked more readily. Personally, I found it very easy to get used to going to the post office, bank, or anywhere else, to be greeted by an, often, beautiful man dressed beautifully as a woman. Everywhere, everything is clean, service is eager and everyone smiles easily, like I said: a feminine culture.

When I stepped off the thirty-six seat Fokker* onto the tarmac in Peshawar my first impressions included the big, belligerent, grey-headed crows familiar from years ago further south in India. Above their cackling swoops though, wheeled far larger birds in still and flapless flight: falcons. More falcons than I've ever seen together, falcons the colour of the sun-dried brick that made the buildings, the colour of the earth that filled the dusty air, the colour of the men who trod beneath them. Upon walking to the airport building from the 'plane, I found the people there were all men, all bearded, or at the least- moustachioed, and all but the uniforms dressed in Shalwa, mostly white with two other popular colours- light blue or cream. In my entire three weeks there I never saw another foreigner. In the street outside, the cars competed with flat topped wooden wagons (in other words: a flat platform on wheels) pulled by skinny horses, tiny donkeys no larger than a Great Dane, cows, or pot bellied water buffalo all black-skinned and shiny as if their hides had already been tanned.

When I reach my friend Zahir's house, I am greeted with Arabic hospitality, the best in the world. Within minutes I have washed the sweat off and am lounging like a Roman on the beautifully carpeted floor of a cool room on a dripping hot day. We four or five men lie in a rough circle, feet to head, left elbows propped on pillows. The carpets are the colour of wine, the walls are a rusty, sunset-orange marble with veins of blood red, the high windows are coloured glass that bend warm light through the hash smoke of our atmosphere. Big brawny men with big black or white beards, one wears a Pakistani beanie (the tupee) another an Afghan turban. They break the chewy, flat medallions of bread with right hands only (the left being used for intimate hygiene never touches food at a polite cloth) strong, veined, peasant hands. They laugh easily, even childishly, but are fundamentally serious; men who pray five times a day and mean it.

I try to remember Islam's table etiquette, never dip the same bread twice in the communal dishes we share, wait until the head of the household offers before helping yourself to the meat dish... in my experience even in the simplest Muslim farmhouse, everyone will notice your manners though they would never be so discourteous as to show they don't like them. The mutton is as soft as butter and redolent of a dozen herbs and spices. The women billow in like shadows every once and awhile, to set the cloth on the carpet, cover it in food, remove the detritus, bring more courses, replace the teas (though the head of the household does at least the first pouring, everyone helping themselves after).

The women are dressed in pleated black tents that hang from the only place they show a body shape: the top of their heads. The only skin visible is their hennaed hands or if they wear a veil instead, sometimes just one eye, the other covered by the veil attached to the cloth at the forehead and obscuring the other eye. Their hems are weighted against an honour-damaging breeze and their sleeves are connected by a loop to their middle fingers against any accidental revelation of the wrist.

I have never been introduced to my host's wife, for all I know she may be bearded or be a different woman each time I visit. None of the men there look at her or address her in any way, what conceivable reason, after all, could a man have to speak to another man's wife?

Lunch is followed by talk in five or six languages, broken English and French added for my benefit, otherwise they all speak Pashtoo, Arabic and Urdu and many speak Parsee or Turkish as well. Talk is accompanied by a series of different and delicately spiced teas along with dried or fresh fruits, nuts and olives. In this pleasant atmosphere and good company I didn't notice the time (in-fact at one point I asked the time only to discover that not one of us wore a watch) until, without having shifted my position, we were being served dinner.

Between lunch and dinner Zahir sent someone out at my bidding to do two things, namely, put a local SIM card in my phone and to fetch a tailor. The tailor measured me for a few Shalwas that he brought back by lunch the following day (and I had to fight with Zahir to pay for!). With my Shalwa shirt hanging to my knees, baggy pantaloons with wide cuffs, lovely white-silk Tupee on my head and the beard I'd been growing for some time (one suffers an intangible but palpable diminution of respect if he finds himself a hairless pussy among fiercely bearded Muslims!) and despite my light skin and green eyes I was, as often as not, mistaken for a light skinned Kashmiri or as being of the tribe of Afghans that are blonde and blue-eyed, thus avoiding the attention that I would otherwise be smothered with. Like most countries the first question to the stranger is inevitably : "Where are you from?" To which I usually shrug my shoulders and answer: "I don't know; I can't remember" which is much closer to the truth than mentioning any of the places I have lived or the one I happened to be born in (which I left in infancy) but still, it usually gets a laugh.

I remember the same results when bearded and caparisoned in a beautiful Chilaba in Morocco, but though my few words of Arabic and couple of hastily learned Pashtoo words (the first? Thank you) couldn't get me past a greeting and first interaction without giving myself away- To 'Salam Aleykum' I answer: 'Aleykum Salam', handshake and bring the hand to the heart with a slight bow of the head. "Would you like tea/food?" "Yes please" after that, anything they said to me was likely to be incomprehensible and even when it was not I had to answer in English or my painfully thin French.

But even then, once they realise I am European, my beard & dress might mean I am Muslim which, in itself, is enough to erase political borders and allow me in the club. It is this quality, the clearly defined morality and behaviour that makes Muslim societies so comfortable and, in a sense- noble in attitude.

Once back in Thailand the social pressure is so overwhelming that I must shave my beard, to the Thai a beard is just something that holds sweat and dirt. To them Santa Claus, rather than evoking feelings of huggability, is instead, thought of as a little disgusting with his big dirty beard.

Many of these men walk around armed and I don't mean little pansy pistols neatly holstered, but Kalashnakovs, and not strapped over a shoulder but held in the hand, to all appearances ready at a moment's notice. Once, when walking with Zahir past one of the many shops with their hand-painted signs proclaiming their office as: 'Arms Dealers' I asked: "What do you need to go in and buy a gun?" He looked at me like I was daft and answered: "Money...?"

Unlike Thailand, outside the home, everything is done by men, shops, restaurants and offices are all staffed by men for every task. Hence, everything is dirty and unkempt and service is slovenly as well as inefficient. On the streets men jostle each other to pass without ever saying "Excuse me" or "Sorry". The streets are hard-packed earth running muddy where the sidewalks should be. There are no public trash bins and everyone just throws their refuse to the ground where they happen to be standing. A minimal waste removal effort can be seen mostly in the form of an occasional man pushing a wheel-barrow literally overflowing and being filled by him with the aid of two small pieces of wood- one for scooping, the other for scooping on to. As a consequence many of the town's streets and food markets smell of putrefaction. It is the antithesis of Thailand, it is a place that takes its socks off and throws them on the floor, leaving them there until they become its cleanest pair, then wears them again.

It is a masculine place and I must admit, despite everything, it is nice, very nice, to be a man among men again.

* This same little Fokker went down a few days after my arrival, killing the 41 people on board. My return was on an old army cargo plane (it looked, to me at least, of pre-jet-engine design!) Just me and a few soldiers who were transporting some equipment. The plane was minimalist on the inside with a few cloth seats along its length, some hammocks strung one above another and all the workings visible since there was no covering on the inside, we looked at the inside of the metal wall that made up its outside, well, barely visible as the only light came from a couple of port-hole windows placed too high to see out of. No seat belts, no temperature control, no emergency exits, just the platform that drops at the back and allows men to push cargo up it. I tried to photograph the aeroplane from the outside but the soldiers stopped me in no uncertain terms, I did, however, sneak a couple of shots of the inside, I will publish them when I get them developed.