© Atiq-Ur-Rehman / Gulf NewsA Kalash woman in the Rumber valley. The Kalash lead a centuries-old primitive way of life with a religion which has no name and no written book.
Kalash Hazrat Gull, 23, was not wearing her traditional headgear as a sign of mourning for her uncle who had passed away a few days back but the community accorded him a burial after three days of celebrations over his body with dancing, feasts and a sacrifice of 40 goats. Welcome to Kalash.
"Please don't take my picture as our culture doesn't allow us to do so in mourning," Gull told me as we went to her house in the middle of wheat fields in Bumburet, one of the three valleys that the Kalash inhabit.
Gull, who is relatively well off in the community and also proud of her education, is among a few Kalash women who have completed secondary school. She invited us to her house and treated us to tea and walnuts, a staple for most people in the area.
Several historians have written about the Kalash and most of them have linked them to descendants of the army of Alexander the Great since many of their rituals, customs and traditions are indicative of the way of life of the ancient Greeks.
Gulf News travelled to the valleys inhabited by the Kalash in an attempt to glean more information about them and to find answers to the mystery of their heritage.
"Are you [the Kalash] descendants of Alexander?" My first question evokes laughter from Gull. "Not sure," she answered when she had composed herself and I felt a tinge of disappointment thinking my visit had lost its purpose. But I was wrong, for there was much to learn from the beautiful woman.
"We are not bothered whether we are descendants of Alexander or not but we are worried about the fact that our community is on the verge of extinction," she said.
There are less than 4,000 Kalash left. They were 3,554 to be precise when the last count was done in 2009.