Buzkashi is one of the ancient games of the steppes of
Central Asia. It is played in an extensive area
including many of the various newly formed “stan”
countries as well as in northwest China.
It is said that Genghis Khan brought it to the more mountainous
Afghanistan with the Mongolians in the 13 century.
The game is most popular in the north, in
Mazar-e-Sharif, where these pictures were taken but it
is also played in the capital, Kabul.
Buzkashi is a traditional sport of Afghanistan, akin
to kite flying, a boy’s no rules ultimate football
aerial battle game with possibly Persian Zoroastrian
roots played with a kite (a falcon substitute) rather
than a ball or “boz”. These sports were banned during
the Taliban years (1995- 2002) along with music, poppy
(opium) growing and modern items such as tv or videos.
The Taliban had puritan streak (similar to Cromwell’s
roundheads banning Xmas and its rowdy feast of English
twelve nights/days). In addition, Taliban (“talib”,
Arabic for student) drew their support from the
Pashtun south and other agricultural areas with
different traditions (IE “madrass”, Arabic for school)
far less enthusiastic about the game of buzkashi and
ancient steppe land invaders.
The game is off limits to women (“harem” or prohibited
in Arabic). Women don’t watch it, though foreign women
can be an exception.
Buzkashi is a composite word found in the Persian and
Tajic languages. “Buz” means goat. “Kashi”, grab or taking out.
Put together it means goat grabbing or snatching. This
is what occurs in the game. Though, at times, the game
can be played with a calf, if available.
One kills the goat day before, cuts its head cut off,
and guts the insides. What remains, the full torso and
limbs (often cut at the knees), are then soaked in
cold water. Since the intestines have been removed,
sand is added and it is sealed. The final product,
called a “boz”, (the “u” vowel of “buz” is replaced by
an “o” either reflecting the changed status of the
goat or the informality of spelling) is very heavy,
and weights up to 150 pounds, closer to the weight of
a human than a goat.
There are two teams of men on horseback, a player must grab the goat and throw it into the circle of “hallal”, which means justice in Arabic. This results in a point. Whoever scores most points wins. In
another variation, there is only one point or score made. This results in even more intense defensive play.
The goat, the “boz”, starts its voyage in a circle or
pit. Once removed it has to be taken around two poles
on the far left and right, and returned to the pit.
Another version makes the pit a pole so it is taken
around a pole on a far side and then returned to the
pit.
Watching the game is a very dusty experience as much
of the dry semi barren earth gets kicked up by the
horses. The teams can be composed of an unlimited
number usually up to 100 men respectively, the numbers
are decided the night before. In old days these games were battles played between small armies of men and involved great distances. That is, the poles were miles apart.
The spectators watch the players’ ability as well as that of the horses. There is a lot of polo-like technique involved since the men and horses keep on starting and stopping, the players bending down and grabbing, or even dismounting, then accelerating.
Horses and ponies (the sturdy “qataghan”) are specially trained for this.
Momentum starts and stops, balance and timing is
always involved, as well as physical strength and a
strong back. But the resemblance to polo soon ends.
As mentioned, the goat is very heavy, and if not
soaked the night before it would soon be torn to
pieces. Calves are actually more durable. Regardless
of its substance, the “boz” tends to disappear.
The action is between men more than anything else. It is like a miniature war, a huge brawl, with whips, held by the teeth in one’s mouth when not used on other horsemen and horses. In old days even daggers (now prohibited, “harem”, under the interdiction of no stabbing allowed) were common.
The field also includes non participants, none of whom
are referees or umpires. Old men scoop up horse manure
while spectators mill about alongside more men and boys with rifles
who may shoot horses that get out of control and storm
the viewing stands. This latter event rarely occurs
especially given the value of the horses/ponies. In
addition, a rare photographer taking pictures can be
sometimes found in the field.
The riders, the “chapandaz”, wear hats usually made
with fox or wolf fur, animals known for cunning and
craft. In fact, the Turkic name for buzkashi (the game
is common throughout Central Asia is “kokboru”.
“Kokboru” is another composite name (“kok” = blue,
“boru” = wolf) and refers to the grey wolf, the
mystical animal/symbol of Turkic tribes.
Wolves hunt (wolves do goat snatching) in packs, but
the separation into teams or packs is not so apparent,
the sport seems more a free for all involving
individuals.
This effect is increased since there are
no distinguishing uniforms between teams; in
Mazar-e-Sharif, the difference between teams is the
saddle covering, a blue or red blanket which leads to
more confusion if one loses one’s horse and finds
another’s riderless horse.
Fox fur seem more fitting. The rule that whoever puts
or throws the “boz” into the circle (justice or
“halal”) wins or scores, regardless of how much or
how far he has carried it, augments fox like
qualities of ruse and deceit if not downright
treachery, something that seems to favor older
players.
The most famous “chapandaz” are often in their 40’s or
more. This may be due to hierarchy as well as to
experience. Could factors beyond the field be
involved? These “chapandaz” seem to control their
teams like a clan. They are close to the owners (most
players don’t own their own horses) and could make the
younger players do the hard work of riding and
fighting and then grab the “boz” and the credit at the
end. Life can be unfair. Outside of the circle resides
injustice and inequity, the “harem” of prohibition:
things not to do which implies that they are all too
commonly done.
Such behavior contrasts strongly with the inner
circle, the stable “halal” of justice which lies
marked, a mutually shared end zone of peace in the
middle of the field. Within this area it feels like
the spirit of the body is brought to its resting
place, a dimension of unseen verticality.
This is probably the real meaning of “kashi”, or
taking out. The body is taken out of the field of play
and brought into justice. It is more than simply
grabbing. This concept of justice strongly differs
with that of some other horsemen or cowboys. IE, in
Texas justice, one is brought “to justice” by swinging
on the end of a rope. Here, in Mazir-e-Sharif, the
roped circle (the circle can be delineated by chalk,
rope, or hole) is one of peace and wholeness. One
enters, albeit headless, “into justice”.
Snatched and brought into the circle of eternity, the
more I learned about the game, the more I saw it as a
metaphor of the men’s lives and deaths, or even more:
that of all lives and deaths, that is, of all life.
One enters life from a hole, goes in a looped path and
returns to a pit. All the while everything is
contested.
It is like a hare appearing and disappearing from a
magician’s hat.
—————————————————
Stefania Zamparelli is an independent photographer who
has traveled and shot extensively. She has exhibited
in Europe as well as in the US.
After earning her masters in foreign languages and
literature at the renowned L’Instituto Orientale in
Naples, Italy, she moved to NYC in 1991 where she
presently lives as her main base.
“I wanted to look at the more joyful aspects of the
land rather than focus on human misery so often
portrayed when dealing with Afghanistan.”
She had considered doing the poppy (the beautiful
flower fields), whose vast and an extensive fields
flower in a good part of the land. But given the
illegality involved, massive connections are
necessary, which she did not have. All her travels and
activities in the area were done independently
without government or international support.
She took photos of the matches during four early
afternoons in November. The light and the dust created
a certain kind of haze. In this fog, men and horses
appeared then disappeared. They themselves were like a
“boz”, coming in and out of view, becoming detail then
falling into an amorphous mass.
“It felt like I was seeing energy itself even though
energy can not be seen. And when it left, there
remained the dust created by the movement, this was
the ghost imprint of substance, the actors had already
departed, this was like a shield between the camera
and the subject.”
When she came back to NY and stared putting together
these photos she began to think about certain
traditions. The colors and trappings of the horses and
men makes one think of Delacroix’s colors. This is not
accidental. He had a good eye, sensitive to color and
movement. This matched with his interest in the exotic
Islamic world that the colonialists of his day were
taking over.
Stripped of any quaintness or orientalism (the game is
vigorous), the photos’ high aesthetic sense matches
that of any art, be it painting or dance.
Things of beauty, be they buzkashi, kite flying, poppies have
another side: the tangible flow of life and death,
struggle and awesome beauty. Delacroix saw the same
thing. Above the Arab Riders on Scouting Mission by E. Delacroix.
Paolo Uccello (nicknamed “uccello”, Italian for bird),
the 15th century Florentine master painter, also did
paintings and sketches of mounted horses, his equine
pieces explore space looking for a vanishing point (in the above picture Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello). As
his name, bird, suggests, his early renaissance view
left the gothic in search of perspective.
In Zamparelli’s works there seems to an almost
opposite search for perspective, or at least a
different kind of perspective that finds its vanishing
point in the obscurity of movement, between what was
and what is. This blur of movement settles into the
frame of the photo giving equilibrium. Two movements
or directions mark what is still. That is, what is
left (the residue, dust, shadow) is a trace of what is
projected (the life or force) elsewhere.
However life is not elsewhere. In this field of
sequence lies a third element, the receptive space or
point where things connect. In the event of the
“buskashi”, it appears in the dust kicked up by the
horses, in the juxtaposition of objects and beings,
and even in the strange masklike faces that appear in
things such as hats.
Such captured phenomenon points back to the “uccello”
in flight, the life force that left the trace of its
wings as a wind or shadow in time. This bird leaves an
unseen vanishing point, an egg, or intersection
(wind/bird/shadow) between dimensions, a dimensional
point that Zamparelli documents, where the spirit or
whatever that animates life resides.
This “perspective” point, actually field, receives all
life and affects all beings, human, animal or mineral.
It speaks of time and action, and animates the
inanimate and makes the animate inanimate.
“La Zamparelli” is in the field tracking it. It is
like a hare that leaves the magician’s hat, runs its
course, and finds the “hallah”. What we see of it are
the faces of its whirlpool.
Peter James La Verne
The writer, born in NYC, studies animistic and
hermetic practices. Most recently in Northeast Asia.
He is presently working on a piece on climate change
as related to the Ice Age. He can be reached at
peterjameslaverne@yahoo.com
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The Great Game 