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In Pakistan's deeply conservative Northwest Frontier Province, the veil is simply a way of life. Whether in the teeming bazaars of the capital Peshawar or high in the many Himalayan villages bordering Afghanistan, women wishing to leave their houses do so under the cover of a full black niqab or a billowing burkha. So important is the concept of purdah that the fort-like houses in the region's tribal areas usually contain separate living quarters for women and men.
Give or take the occasional advertising hoarding or glitzy film from Lahore most men are unlikely to see an adult female face outside their immediate family until they marry.
But in the remote Chitral Valley nestled high up in the Hindu Kush mountain range are the last remnants of a tribe where the women walk unveiled in bright red and black dresses.
Lavishly decorated with orange bead necklaces and colourful hats made from cowrie shells, they dance in public and are often free to marry and take lovers. They are the Kalasha, one of Pakistan's only remaining indigenous non-Muslim communities and a remarkable living throwback to a pre-Islamic era.
Yet according to the Kalasha, their unique way of life is under attack. Thanks to rising extremism among a minority of Pakistanis and the growing appeal of populist orthodox mullahs, who espouse the imposition of Sharia law and Taleban-like austerity, the Kalasha are increasingly in the firing line.
"We've always been called kafirs but most people simply left us alone," says Azam Kalash, one of the few members of his 3500-strong community who managed to go to university and now campaigns for his tribe's welfare. "Now, we are deemed enemy number one, particularly after September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The missionaries and mullahs are determined to see us wiped out."
Isolated from the outside world by the remoteness of their valleys and the heavy Himalayan snows that block the mountain passes in winter, the Kalasha somehow managed to survive successive waves of Muslim invaders and missionaries that pushed back the pre-Islamic Hindu, Buddhist and pagan tribes who once filled the fertile plains of the Indus valley.
Until last century few outsiders had ever made it as far as the three forested valleys of Rumbur, Bumboret and Birir where the Kalasha now live.
But 20 years ago, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the religious mujahedeen, things began to change.
"For a long time the Kalasha lived in total isolation," says Cecil Chaudhury, General Secretary of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance.
"I remember going there in the 1950s with a mountaineering expedition and they were blissfully happy living in their own distinct social system. But with the mujahedeen came the missionaries and the Kalasha were always an easy group to target. Now the extremists are back."
Although the fighters have largely disappeared from the Chitral Valley, the Kalasha are outnumbered in their own villages by converts and outsiders.
During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the notoriously brutal Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar used the Chitral Valley as his hideout and many believe he has returned to the region to continue his fight against Nato forces and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
AFTER a 10-year lull, the missionaries are returning and many fear that if orthodox preachers such as those who, until recently ran Islamabad's Red Mosque, continue to increase their appeal among Pakistan's dispossessed, the country's last non-Muslim tribe may one day sink into oblivion.
No Kalasha would mean no Zonor Bibi. The mother of five sits on the front porch of her mud-walled house perched high above the swollen glacial river that roars through the heart of her village. It is harvest time and a batch of succulent apricots lie drying in the summer sun, which her 8-year-old daughter Walena eyes greedily.
Her husband has just set off for the daily three-hour walk to the grazing meadows that lie high above the village, but that does not stop Bibi from welcoming outsiders with open arms, an act that would be unthinkable to her Muslim neighbours.
Deeply proud of her culture she bursts into laughter when asked how long it takes to make the iconic cowrie shell hats that all Kalasha women wear. "They take us months," she laughs. "It is important to continue our traditions to not anger our spirits and god."
Kalasha believe that failure to practise their ancient traditions has profound religious implications and can bring disaster on the village, which may explain why their dress and distinct practices have managed to survive against such odds.
The role of women in Kalasha society is perhaps the most obvious aspect that separates their culture from their Muslim neighbours.
Where Muslim women generally remain indoors or hidden from public view, their Kalasha counterparts are conspicuously visible in the fields working alongside their men.
During the festivals that celebrate the various summer harvests and preparations for winter, it is not unusual to find Kalasha women drinking apricot wine and dancing in public with males who are neither their husband nor family.
Although some marriages are arranged by families, it is perfectly acceptable for Kalasha women to choose their own husbands and if they are treated unkindly during the marriage the women are expected to leave the house and take a lover.
Such comparative sexual and social freedom has led to the false but commonly held perception among many lowland Pakistanis that the tribe's women are sexually promiscuous. But while Kalasha men do seem to extend a greater level of physical and social freedom to their other halves, the lives of their women are still strictly regimented.
To the Kalasha, the world is divided into two states, onjesta (pure, sacred) and pragata (impure, profane). Women are considered pragata particularly during menstruation and childbirth, where they are exiled to special huts away from the village. Only once they have purified themselves can they return to the tribe.
Certain fields and shrines considered pure and sacred to the community are also out of bounds for the tribe's womenfolk.
Such peculiarly distinct customs have fascinated anthropologists, linguists and travellers alike for centuries, not just because the survival of the Kalasha in a sea of Islam is so unusual but because no one is sure exactly where they came from.
Kalash oral history tells that they are descended from Shalak Shah, one of Alexander the Great's generals whose armies conquered as far as the Indus River before turning back towards Europe. Although blond hair and blue eyes are common, recent genetic testing has suggested that they may be an aboriginal group that are, in fact, completely indigenous to the area.
But how did the Kalasha manage to cling on to their distinct polytheistic pagan traditions in an area renowned for its particularly orthodox brand of Islam?
"I think they were just lucky," says Siraj Ul Mulk, a descendant of the Sunni Muslim royal family that once ruled the Chitral Valley until they ceded to Pakistan in the 1960s. "Despite their orthodox appearance Chitralis have always been relaxed about the Kalasha and other minorities. The missionaries always tend to come from outside."
Walking through the dusty fort that his father, the Mehtar of Chitral, once used as his summer palace, Ul Mulk also offers another explanation for why the Kalasha of Pakistan remained unharmed: India's Partition.
"Under British partition, we were lucky enough to be placed on the Pakistani side," he says. "If we'd ended up in Afghanistan I doubt the Kalasha would have survived."
Two hundred years ago, Afghanistan was also home to numerous Kalasha tribes, known locally as the Red Kafirs, but they were annihilated at the end of the 19th century.
After receiving a bloody nose in two disastrous conflicts with the Afghans, the British simply stood by as the founding father of modern Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, systematically forced at the point of a sword the non-Muslim tribes in the east of the country to covert.
A small number of Afghan Kalasha managed to flee towards Chitral and can still be seen in the upper valleys wearing their distinctive red dresses, but all Kalasha are fully aware of the threat that extremist beliefs pose to their survival.
That the Kalash are frightened of the current climate in Pakistan is testament to how seriously they take the threats. They survived the marauding armies of Tamerlaine, the religious zeal of Abdur Rahman and even the anti-Soviet mujahedeen. But now, like many of Pakistan's religious and ethnic minorities, they once again feel unprotected and vulnerable.
"We've survived so much over the years and we're not about to give up now," says Azam Kalash. "For centuries we have lived happily alongside our Muslim neighbours but thanks to extremism our numbers are dwindling.
"Whether we'll survive this century I simply don't know."
- Independent
