In some rural areas of Malakand division children kill the Teghak bird (long-tailed shrike) and its chicks. The bird, which is a member of the Laniidae, the shrike bird family, is considered ‘sinister’ and even a ‘sinner’ by the local Pashtun children. In some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the long-tailed shrike is called the Laato.
Different myths are associated with the bird, claiming that it committed sins: the Teghak had stolen kohl from paradise it is alleged. The bird is also blamed for setting a mosque on fire. Another sin attributed to the bird is planting needles (thorn) in the way of a saint in order to torment him. Some people also claim that it copies the azaan (call to prayer) and that this is somehow ‘sacrilgeous’.
And what, then, is the punishment for these ‘sinner’ birds? Children destroy their nests and break their eggs whenever they find them. The small chicks are mercilessly trembled under feet. Different methods are used to kill the bird’s young chicks. The most popular method is suffocating the chick by tying a cord around its neck. After choking its throat, wheat straw is put in its vent to fill its body with air and then it is trampled underfoot to produce a crushing sound. This practice is called “Teghakan parsawal”, or ‘putting air in the shrikes’. When the chicks are very small and their bodies can’t be filed with air then they are thrown out of the nest into the open field. Sometimes chicks are drowned in water. Chicks are also used as targets during slingshot competitions.
Children destroy their nests and break their eggs whenever they find them
Like many other birds, the meat of Teghak is considered ‘haram’ by local people. Other birds with ‘haram’ meat enjoy freedom while the case of the long-tailed shrike is different. Hunters target shrikes to check the accuracy of their air-guns. The Teghak is capable of mimicry of different birdcalls, which sometimes deceive the hunters and make them angry - leading to the shooting of the innocent bird. In this case the killers are not children but grown-up young men.
As the harvesting period for peaches arrives, Arshad Khan, 18, aka Gajni, comes to Khadagzai village in Lower Dir from Thana, a town across the River Swat in Malakand Agency. At daytime, along with other workers, he picks fruits from peach trees and spends the night inside a tent erected in the fields. He receives a reasonable payment (Rs 20,000 per month) for his work but it is not the only outcome of his job: work in fruit farms also provides him with an opportunity to “receive God’s blessing”, according to his belief, by killing the Teghak and its chicks.
He tells me:
“My name is Arshad. I’m popular as ‘Gajni’. I love to kill the chicks of Teghak - during my life I have killed around 900 Teghak and chicks. In the past, after picking young chicks from nests, I would fill them with air and put them on the road. I would enjoy the sound of them bursting when the air-filled chicks would come under a passing vehicle’s tire. At the moment, I enjoy targeting them with a slingshot. It fills my heart with happiness.”
These birds usually build their nests in fruit trees (especially peaches) in the surroundings of farms. Summer, the harvesting season of peaches is also the breeding time for Teghak birds that made their nests from twigs and rags; the birds lay around 6 eggs and the hatching period is around two weeks according Jahanzeb Khan, a local Zoologist who thinks that building nests in the lower parts of trees and bushes makes them vulnerable to the children.
Sinful bird?
According to Professor Abasin Yousafzai, Pashtun poet and head of the Pashto department at the Islamia College University Peshawar, the bird is considered “sinister” and local people don’t like its ‘artificiality’ - that it mimics other birds’ calls and does not have its own identity.
“No one knows when this trend came to the region but since my childhood I remember that children would kill the Teghak’s chicks.”
Pashtun poet Sajid Afghan from Lower Dir says, “Children fill them with air and trample them under their feet; it is due to their ill fate. Otherwise the Teghak is a master of mimicry without any training.”
The practice of killing the innocent bird has automatically reduced. Neither clerics in the region nor animal rights activists spoke against this brutal act.
'Hindu' ants
Said Muhammad, 93, popularly known as Pacha, who lives in Nagram village of Lower Dir, said “I never heard a Mullah or school teacher calling the locals to stop the killing of the bird. However, when cricket and other games were introduced in the region and in general, people started sending their children to schools and TV reached the area, the kids started taking an interest in newer pursuits and lost interest in old practices like killing birds”. However, he says the practice has not vanished completely.
A small fish known as Hindu mahay also receives punishment or is looked down upon in some parts of Malakand division due to its name. People living on both sides of the River Swat in Malakand Agency and Lower Dir are familiar with the ‘Hindu fish’ which belongs to the Sisoridae family. It is a small fish which is found usually in streams and in the low-water level of the river. When it is caught, some kindhearted people let it go but no one eats the fish. “We throw it out of the water because it is Hindu,” said Salim Khan, a young boy who I saw catching fish at the Mayaar stream in Lower Dir.
Some people of Malakand Agency and Lower Dir call the carpenter ant as ‘Hindu Megay’ (Hindu ant). Children in villages traditionally used the ants for fighting. With the availability of Chinese low-priced toys in the market now, children rarely arrange ant-fights in urban areas. However, in backward and far-flung areas the fighting ‘Hindu’ ants still exist.
Bakht Rawan Umarkhel, a writer and critic who lives in Batkhela Malakand Agency, said that such practices are limited to children, especially those living in far-flung areas of Malakand division. Before the Partition of the Indian subcontinent many Hindu families, with the majority of them businessmen, were living in Malakand Division. The local Pashtun population looked down upon them and suspected them of grain hoarding. “As the carpenter ant stocks grain, so it was named as the ‘Hindu Ant’; these names are common amongst children”. According to him, naming the fish ‘Hindu’ was another manifestation of intolerance towards minorities.
