Bacha bazi

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Bacha bazi (also Baccha baazi or Batscha basi , Persian بچه بازی battsche bazi , DMG baččeh bāzī ; Uzbek bachabozlik ); from bacha , “child; Junge, Knabe ”and bazi ,“ game ”, that is,“boyplay ”, actually“ play with child ”; Bacha baz , "[adult] who plays with boys", other transcriptions bacabozi, baacha bazee , also known as bacha birish ("beardless boy"), is acommon namein Central Asia until the beginning of the 20th centuryand is still in some regions of Afghanistan todaypracticed form of child prostitution with various manifestations. During the Taliban's rulefrom 1996 to 2001, Bacha bazi was severely punished and disappeared from the public eye. In the eponymous “boys' game”, a boy ( bacha ) in women's clothesdances and singsin front of a group of men. The boy shows himself to be complacent to the men with tenderness, in many cases sexual acts occur. Bachas, who are mostly between twelve and 16 years old, must mostly serve married men and satisfy them sexually. They live mostly with their own families and appear as often as possible in the vicinity of a man of high social standing, from whom they receive gifts and money. For men, their bacha is a status symbol; For the boys, who mostly come from poor families, the relationship with a man is primarily the only source of income.

There are also boys who are bought from their parents and who live in a slavery-like relationship with a pimp. Bachas in this criminal milieu are encouraged to engage in commercial child prostitution in certain places.

Pederasty is banned in Afghanistan; The more or less secret contact with the bachas in puberty appears, however, according to the moral ideas of the tribal tradition for some men as tolerable and part of the social norm, in contrast to the frowned upon sexual acts among same-sex adults, which are not spoken about in public.

Halekon and Ashna ("beloved", Hindi aashna ) are other old names for sexually available "lust boys" in Pashtun society. The beauty of the Halekon, often made up with cabbage , is praised in poems. The historical Khorasan in Central Asia including Afghanistan has been considered the region of origin of pederasty in Islamic tradition since the time of the Abbasids (from the middle of the 8th century).

Cultural background

Shah Abbas of Persia (r. 1587–1629) with a boy who hands him a wine vessel. Miniature by Muhammad Qasim, 1627. European travelers reported the Safavid ruler's preferences for wine, feasts, and youthful servants.

A concrete origin of the phenomenon that previously existed in Central Asia and today still in Afghanistan has not yet been proven. There are, however, parallels to three areas of culture with which Central Asia was historically related: the Arab-Persian culture in the period of the Islamic High Middle Ages, the ancient Greek culture, which dealt with Hellenism from the end of the 4th century BC. BC, and China, with which trade contacts have existed since earlier times.

Islamic-Persian culture

Relationships with “lust boys” have a long history with rulers and poets of the Arab Middle Ages. Since the 8th century at the latest, pederasty has been a part of social morality and everyday life in the higher strata of the Muslim population in the Orient . There are contemporary reports from the Abbasid capital, Baghdad , of the effeminate appearance of these boys (Arabic ʿilq , “woo boy”), which was expressed in clothing and manners. Effeminated men (Arabic muḫannaṯūn ) or transvestites already existed in the Arab countries in pre-Islamic times. In early Islamic times they played a key role in the development of Arabic music in Mecca and Medina as singers of love songs and instrumentalists , although they had an insecure social status that corresponded to that of slave girls. The historian Abū l-Faraj al-Isfahānī (897–967) reports in his work Kitāb al-Aġānī ("Book of Songs"). The social position of the effeminate musicians and their connection with alcohol consumption and sexual permissiveness could have led to the fundamental condemnation of music by conservative Muslim circles. There is unequivocal evidence of homosexual activities from two effeminates known by name from before the Abbasid period.

Medieval Muslim poets not only sang about the beauty of young men, love for boys was also part of the dissolute way of life for some poets. A poet in the Abbasid era even boasted that he had seduced some boys in the great mosque of Basra . In general, “beardless” adolescents (Arabic amrad , plural murd ) or boys were considered sexually attractive to adult men and they cultivated such relationships alongside their marriage. The man always played the dominant role, while the boys were forced into the dishonorable passive role of women. Although boy love is forbidden under the laws of Sharia , it seems to have been socially accepted to the extent that in some cases men talked about it more than about their wives.

The founder of the Indian Mughal empire , Babur (1483-1530), reports in his autobiography Baburnama , written in 1499/1500, of his love for a boy whom he called Baburi ("belonging to Babur"). Babur composed a few verses for the boy and asked for him after he had married several women and had children. Lustknaben also belonged to other Mughal rulers and their environment. In late Mughal times, boyish love was extolled in Ghaselen (for example, "Words to the Beloved"), a Persian form of poetry.

In the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century dance boys ( köçek ) performed in women's clothes in front of men's groups. The task of these boys brought to the Sultan's court as slaves and educated there was to entertain the aristocratic society with music and dance. They also danced in village taverns. The Köçek held cymbals (Turkish zil ) or the frame drum def, which is otherwise only played by women .

According to the prevailing view based on Sharia law, Islam forbids homosexuality as fornication ( zinā ). This results, among other things, in the common interpretation of Sura 27 , 55 f. ("Do you really want to deal with men in (your) sensual pleasure instead of women? No, you are a foolish people." This is what the messenger Lot said about the events of Sodom and Gomorrah , similar to sura 7 , 80-84). The offense of the Lot people mentioned in these passages of the Koran is mostly interpreted as sex between men, and some also as sex with underage boys. In contrast to the Old Testament ( Leviticus 20, 13), where the death penalty is required, the Koran does not pronounce a punishment for homosexuality. Although a strictly conservative Islamic legal conception also provides for the death penalty for homosexuality, in practice Islamic society has proven to be tolerant over the centuries. Ingeborg Baldauf writes about the Uzbeks of northern Afghanistan :

"According to the Central Asian-Islamic legal conception, there are no binding sources of law for boy love, so there is no possibility of punishment. In practice, as far as I know, deeply religious Özbeken, even members of the clergy, were not averse to boy play. "

Regardless of this, the mystically exaggerated, sensual love for boys is part of the tradition of Sufi poetry. In this context, Sufis refer to a dubious hadith : "I saw my master in the form of a handsome young man (with a crooked hat)." The expression "with a crooked hat" was often used as a poetic description of the beloved. The majority of Muslims try to read the Sufi poets' boy-related love poetry as if it were women. This is possible - apart from clear descriptions of physical characteristics - because there is no grammatical gender in Persian and Turkish .

In Persian and Turkish poetry, the fourteen-year-old boy was extolled as the ideal of human beauty. According to Islamic belief, in paradise, next to the eternally beautiful virgins ( ḥūr ), beardless young men (pl. Ghilmān ) appear who act as cupbearers. Many Sufi poets complained about the problems it brought about, in addition to describing the mystical love directed towards God, at the same time cherishing a desire for real “unbearded” young men. The Sufis' “love for the unbearded” was branded a danger in some descriptions and was counted among the forbidden practices by al-Hudschwiri (around 990-1071 / 77). When Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi criticized the Sufi doctrine of a union of divine and human nature (Arabic ḥulūl , “incarnation”, “dwelling”) in the 13th century , he did so in his poem Mathnawi using the example of the young man: “ Like the unbearded youth whom they call God in order to give him a bad reputation with this hypocrisy. ”(Cf. homosexuality in Persian love poetry .)

In traditional Islamic culture, the social gender assignment is based on the part that the person takes during sexual intercourse, regardless of biological gender. A man with a full beard is considered to be such, from which the social obligation arose to let the beard grow. The beard is less used to distinguish man and woman, but rather a grown man from a young man ( amrad , “hairless”, “soft”). The beard-bearer can therefore no longer be coveted as a handsome boy by other men. For the shaved adult man there is the word amradnuma ("look like an amrad ") in Iran .

A man is considered male in the social structure if he takes on the active, dominant role in intercourse with a woman or equally with a "beardless" boy. Wife and boy are on the same level as desirable sexual objects. It is not about the exchange between equal partners. A woman, a male prostitute and an enslaved boy generally have to submit to the free adult male. There are theoretical treatises, including medical literature, and literary works in which the merits of women and boys are contrasted and discussed. According to the conservative Islamic understanding of law, the desire for boys is therefore a natural instinct of the man, from which the prohibition to look at boys in order not to be tempted was derived. In contrast, passive homosexuality ( ubna ) is seen as degrading and, in the adult man, a form of illness. This does not apply to “beardless” boys who, according to this idea, could take up their passive role without prejudice to without becoming pathological passive homosexuals. While the passive adult homosexual was stigmatized as permanently ill, this was not the case for the pleasure boy, who could outgrow his role and become an active man. According to such an understanding of roles, the relationship of an adult man to a boy or an effeminate was not seen as a disruption of the social order, which makes the earlier widespread use of these practices in the Islamic world understandable.

In the 1950s and 1970s, Anthony Shay observed male dancers in Iran who performed publicly on the occasion of the New Year holidays ( Nouruz ) and - rightly - had a reputation for being passively sexually available, as everywhere. The dancers in Iran belonged to an entertainment ensemble ( dasteh-ye motreb ), whose musicians played the violin, the long-necked lute tar , the cone oboe sorna and the drums zarb , dohol and daira . The dancers hit finger cymbals or wooden spoons for rhythmic accompaniment. Actors acted alongside them, one of them in a female role and often with sexual innuendos. The performers / musicians ( motreb , derogatory word) belonged to a lower class and were little respected. In Iran, children are told not to behave as raqas bazi ("playing the male dancer", raqas different from raqaseh , "dancer", Arabic raqṣ, "dance") , i.e. not behave improperly.

Ancient Greek boy love

The parallels shown between the phenomenon of ancient Greek boy love and the Central Asian boy play have been achieved through the influence of Greek culture on the historical region of Bactria since the conquest of Alexander the Great around 320 BC. A certain plausibility. The Bactrian capital Balch is located in the center of what is now northern Afghanistan, where boy play is particularly widespread among the Uzbeks living there .

The older form of ancient Greek boy love is known as the “Cretan boy robbery”, which Erich Bethe (1907) first discovered by using the available sources from the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Evaluated as a social institution. An adult man kidnaps a boy with the approval of his parents, who break off the persecution of the man in front of his house. In a secluded place “in the country”, the man instructs the boy in hunting and warfare for two months. This initiation time also includes ritual homosexual intercourse, through which the adult (the “breather”) passes on something of his masculinity to the boy (the “recipient”). The two months end with the sacrifice of a cattle, the handing over of a suit of armor ("honor dress") and a mug to the boy, as well as the promise of the boy that he will continue to trust his adult admirer and stand by him during war missions. The described process corresponds to a temporary seclusion with a ritual learning process, as it was common in initiation ceremonies of some peoples in Africa or New Guinea.

In the later classical period, the character of initiation took a back seat. The relationship between the boy ( Eromenos ) and his adult partner (Erastes) is strictly regulated. The adult is not allowed to pay the boy, but has to give him gifts. Both attend men's groups together, where music and verse are recited. In Hellenism , a form of decay remained from the original act of initiation, which is only used for entertainment. The admirer is primarily interested in his needs and no longer in the boy's development, while the latter no longer seeks instruction, but demands money and power. The latter stage of dancing and singing at social gatherings resembles, at least in a superficial way, the relationship between the two actors in Central Asia. Even if the original meaning of initiation has been lost, Ingeborg Baldauf sees both cultures in the relationship to the adult as a transition period into a new phase of life for the boy.

Boy prostitution in China

Boy love in China, mentioned only in a few reports by European travelers, is assigned to profane prostitution. Jean-Jaques Matignon, a member of the French embassy in Beijing, differentiates between La chine hermétique. Superstitions, crime et misère (Paris 1936) Lower class boys' brothels, into which orphans or boys were forced into by beggars, from an upscale boy prostitution milieu. The boys belonging to the latter received a refined education so that they could entertain male societies with cultivated music. An overseer ensured that in these societies the exchange of tenderness with the men continued. If an adult wanted to enter into a sexual relationship with a boy, he had to court the boy for a long time and give him expensive gifts. Such “luxury boys” could choose their suitors; with some of them they maintained a steady relationship over a long period of time until they were about 20 years old for this job and often became actors or took up another profession. The financial aspect of upscale boy prostitution is the main thing in common with Central Asia. In contrast to the widespread use in Central Asia, this phenomenon was only known to a small section of the population in China.

Bacha bazi in the 19th and 20th centuries Century in Central Asia

Ensemble with a bacha in southern Central Asia, 1865–1872. Photograph by Aleksandr L. Kun, published in an ethnographic book about Turkestan in 1872 . The musicians play a cylinder oboe , the pair of kettle drums naghara , two cone oboes sorna , a frame drum dāira , a cymbal and rattle.

Bazi comes from Middle Persian wāzīg , "game" ( wāzīdan , "move", "play") and this probably goes back to the old Persian root waz- , "move", "fly". As a suffix , bazi occurs in many words that denote entertaining games for children and adults and drama, such as buz bazi ("goat play"), a musical puppet play in northern Afghanistan. Buzanaboz ("quail player") is the name of someone who enjoys competitions with quails , a qimorboz is a gambler. If the boy's solo dance style is to be named, one says raqs-e bazi or raqs-e chanegi , "room dance", to distinguish it from "dance in public space", raqs-e maidan (for example the well-known atan ). Bacha as the social male sex of the child also occurs in the word bacha posh ("dressed as a boy") - in reverse to the effeminate boys . This is the name given to girls who are dressed as boys by their parents so that they can move around alone in public, attend school or work.

The practice of the dance boys was not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan and in the neighboring countries of Central Asia to the north. Because women were not allowed to perform in public, dance and music performances were men's business. In the 19th century, the explorer and diplomat Eugene Schuyler (1840–1890) reported on the Bachas, who were therefore highly valued in all of Central Asia, especially in Bukhara , Samarqand and Khujand, because of their singing and dancing skills. In Kokand Khanate , public bachas dances were banned a few years before Schulyer's stay in 1873. A cholera outbreak in 1872 gave the mullahs of Tashkent the opportunity to criticize the dance performances, which always attracted large crowds, as a violation of the Koran, whereupon the Russian administration banned them. The population could not be dissuaded from organizing Bacha dances again from the following year. In the big cities it was good form for every man above a certain social position to have a bacha as a servant. Private men's companies always let themselves be served by a bacha. Dancing boys performing in public were less numerous, they moved around on behalf of an agent who dressed them for their performances and also looked after them in other ways. When at the age of around 20 the growth of the beard could no longer be concealed, the previously regulated and externally determined life of the Bachas was over and they were left to their own devices. Many began to squander their money haphazardly, others ran a tea house or a similar small business. According to Schulyer, only a few Bachas were able to successfully start a new life.

Official notes and ethnographic reports by Russian immigrants have come down to us from the 1870s and 1880s, most of which are characterized by a general condemnation of homosexual activities. An author of an article in a magazine published in 1874 emphasizes the high crime rate and cites a statistic according to which between 1869 and 1871 in Ujesd Khujand ten murders and 14 robberies in 123 crimes were assigned to the milieu Bacha bazi. The author relates Bacha bazi to the religious practice of Islam and the Islamic clergy. In his opinion, this tradition runs counter to the social liberation that must be achieved by Russian colonial rule. A neutral newspaper article from 1874 about a bacha-bazi event near Tashkent describes how a bacha offers several adult admirers a hookah and tea. The men perceive the serving of tea as a favor, while the bacha temporarily withholds tea from a man who is embarrassed by this "withdrawal of love" in front of the other participants. The boy is presented as a bacha from Samarqand ; the boys from this city were evidently particularly talented and sought-after. Healthcare articles at the beginning of the 20th century blamed the joint smoking of hookahs, Russian prostitutes, and boy play for the spread of syphilis in Central Asia. The economic and social backwardness is associated with tradition, especially the regional characteristics of Islam and the practice of boy play.

Abdulla Qodiriy (1894–1938), who is probably the most influential Uzbek writer at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote not only Juvonboz (“The Boy Lover ”, 1915) but also other stories in which he described the backwardness of his countrymen and the social grievances of his time criticized. In Juvonboz , a young man spends a lot of money on a bacha in order to gain respect among his own kind. When he finally squandered his father's fortune and murdered a few rivals, he disappears to Siberia. Among the grievances, the author, who was oriented towards the Russian reform ideas, counted, besides love for boys, elaborate weddings and rough sports (such as Buzkaschi ).

Alim Khan (1880–1944), the last ruler of the Emirate of Bukhara in Uzbekistan, reportedly owned two harems , one with over 100 women and a second with beautiful dancing boys. The pride of the boys was so great that he had specially minted gold coins issued to the parents who made their male offspring available to him. When the Soviet troops conquered the capital Bukhara in 1920 and forced the emir to flee to Afghanistan, he left the women's harem behind, but took at least some of the boys with him. After the First World War, the Russian authorities banned the dance boys from the public in large cities such as Bukhara because of Western morality.

If boy play was mentioned at all in literary texts in the 1920s, it was only because - as adopted by the journalistic articles from the end of the 19th century - the bacha baz together with the traditional Islamic clergy as the hindrance to progress against the state Demonstrate development measures. The criticism culminated at the end of the 1920s in the fact that the bacha baz was portrayed in one person as a feudal lord and Islamic clergyman who undermined the Soviet legal system and women's emancipation. From 1930 the topic completely disappeared from reporting and literature.

Bacha bazi in Afghanistan

Ensemble with two long-necked lutes dotar , a spiked fiddle ghichak , a cone oboe surna , a frame drum with a bell ring ( daf or dāira ), a large kettle drum, another frame drum without a bell ring and rattling or cymbals . A boy in women's clothes is dancing in front of it. Samarqand, around 1905 to 1915. Photography by Sergei Prokudin-Gorski (1863–1944)

Social role

The rules for social coexistence that must be observed in everyday life, the understanding of the roles of men and women, is determined by Pashtun customary law, Pashtunwali , which is more or less strictly followed by the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan. What men do must correspond to the concept of izzat ( Pashtun "honor", "dignity", also in Urdu and Hindi in Pakistan and northern India). The fact that women do not appear in male societies is due to the family honor namus , which demands segregation of women.

The tradition of the dance boys partially disappeared under the influence of the colonial powers after the Second World War . The ethnomusicologist John Baily examined the music scene in Herat in western Afghanistan between 1973 and 1977 and described bachas there who performed at private parties. Mark Slobin came across boy dances when he was researching the music of the Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan between 1967 and 1972. Ingeborg Baldauf found bachas in the Uzbek population of Afghanistan during two research stays between 1975 and 1978 and published a study on this in 1988.

Bachas should be twelve to 16 years old, this age is considered hadd (otherwise the fully ripe fruit or similar is referred to). To appoint boys as bachas before puberty is considered a sin ( guna ); boys over 18 with a beard appear ugly. Intercourse between men and bachas is strictly differentiated from homosexuality among adult men, which is condemned as just as much a misstep as extramarital heterosexual intercourse.

In many cases the father recommends his son as a dance boy in the men's society, in which he frequently socializes, or the father gives consent to an adult admirer who woos his son. The father thus acts as a pimp who is concerned with the source of income and secures the external framework for his son's activity so that he does not get caught up in jealousy arguments between men. The bacha usually continues to live with his parents and from there goes to the men's meetings ( madschlis ). Another - involuntary - possibility, observed in the 1970s, of how the boy can get into the milieu of the bacha bazi, is related to the indebtedness of landless peasants, as occurred in the Afghan feudal society. Some families were so impoverished that they had to mortgage their boy with a believer. If the believer himself was a bacha baz, he took the boy for himself as a bacha, otherwise he referred him to a pimp who exploited him far from his family under poor living conditions. Such inhumane commercial practices of boy prostitution have been morally condemned by Afghan society and are believed to represent only a small marginal area within the entire phenomenon.

According to Ingeborg Baldauf, the task of the bacha is to accompany the lover as often as possible to his sociable group of men, where he should dance, sing and serve the lover: “When it comes to physical favors, the bačaboz definitely expects kisses and small caresses. Passive participation in anal-genital or intercrural intercourse , on the other hand, should only be required in exceptional cases and seems to represent the end point of a relationship beyond which the relationship between bača and bačaboz is no longer maintained. ”The phenomenon was therefore in the 1970s across all strata of the population in about a third of the male population, "but subject to a certain language taboo".

“In addition to the sexual deficits resulting from financial deficits, the boys' game is also intended to compensate for deficits of a psychological nature. In dealing with boys, the bačaboz seeks and finds a substitute for personal ties that marriage and family life cannot offer him. "

- Ingeborg Baldauf : The love of boys in Central Asia: Bačabozlik.

In addition, the boys' game offers “the bačaboz the opportunity to squander large sums of money and thereby gain prestige within his peer group.” Unmarried lovers who “primarily have to compensate for sexual deficits” change their boys more often than older married men, who "mostly strive for a permanent relationship in which the emotional component is clearly superior to the sexual".

As adults, some bachas are married to a woman who is no longer a virgin, and occasionally they are resigned to a small house. A bacha said that he would soon be married to a daughter of his lover. Most of them are on their own in adulthood. If you have a special talent, you can start a professional life as a singer or musician after your time as a dance boy and pleasure boy.

Form of dance performance

A bacha. Photograph by Alexandr L. Kun, 1865–1872. Published in 1872 in an ethnographic illustrated book about Turkestan.

The dance boys appear in Afghanistan in women's clothes that should make them look as feminine as possible. Her women's clothing has not changed for centuries. In the 19th century, Alfred von Kremer gave a description of dancing boys based on experiences from his travels in the Middle East: “Such boys were distinguished by their outward appearance, they affected effeminate manners, wore yellow, colorful flowery dresses (mowarradah).” He compared his observations with the verses of the Abbasid poet Abu Nuwas (757–815), who passed on the same from Baghdad about love for boys at the time. In fact, women's clothing largely corresponds to the clothing of girls and consists of wide-cut bloomers, over them a colorfully patterned, long-sleeved dress that reaches down to the calves and an embroidered cap on the head. A wide belt waisted the skirt. The boys are made up like girls and hung with jewelry.

The slow dances of the girls and women with small sequences of steps differ from the reaching, stamping movements of the dancing boys, who turn in circles with their arms outstretched sideways. Women's dances are rhythmically accompanied only by a frame drum ( daira ), the boys' dances in northern Afghanistan by the two-string fretless long-necked lute dambura ( dumbira , related to the dombra ) and by small pair cymbals ( tal , Persian zang , Uzbek tüsak ). In Herat in the 1970s, small ensembles played melodies on the long-necked lute dutār or the lute rubāb and the rhythm with the beaker drum zerbaghali or the Indian kettle drum pair tabla . The repertoire of dance melodies is called naghmehā-ye bāzi ( naghmeh , "song"). Sung songs alternate with instrumental pieces. Despite the women's clothing, it is easy to see from the dance movements that the boys are male dancers. The boys need not be a substitute for unavailable women for the viewer.

Mark Slobin recognized the differences between the Uzbek and Pashtun dance performances in northern Afghanistan. According to his observations, the Pashtun dance boys and accompanying ensembles came from the region around Kabul in the 1960s . The musicians performed for a fixed fee. Mainly a musical style common in the southern province of Lugar was played and the dancers imitated movements from Indian films. The Pashtuns performed publicly in the city center and demanded a fixed entrance fee. The admirers also slipped the dancing boys money and arranged to meet them in private. These events were always unmolested by the police. With the Uzbeks, however, the bachas danced without an entrance fee at private events, against which the police often took action. The Pashtun performances were considered less morally questionable or there were other reasons for the different treatment. The Uzbek songs accompanied by the dambura belonged to their own Uzbek musical style within the common northern Afghan musical culture.

Two song forms, which differ in terms of content and linguistic level, occur in the dance performances: the popular quschiq ( qušiq ), which underlines the dance of the boys in simple language, and the upscale mullosozi with melancholy texts, as they are from the Persian- Turkish love poetry are known. The boys sing quschiq stanzas with four lines and seven syllables on each line. The rhyme scheme is mostly[aaba]. This rhyme scheme belongs to the melancholy song genre falak ("heaven", in the figurative sense "fate"), which is common in northern Afghanistan and in Tajik music . The statement of the stanza is contained in the last two lines, lines one and two do not add anything to the content, but only complete the rhyme scheme. The occasionally crude lyrics, which the boys only sing when they are among themselves, create the impression that they want to emphasize their masculinity, even when they are in women's clothes. Stanzas performed for the Bacha baz often contain little discreet complaints that he is too stingy and should give his boys richer gifts. The bacha baz can in turn ask for tenderness in clear language in quschiq stanzas. The mullosozi stanzas are only performed during the dance breaks when the bachas are not present. The feelings expressed in quschig anger give way on the high linguistic level of the mullosozi to the expression of wistful resignation, which refers to the subject of “love affliction and love death” in classical poetry. Mullosozi is a two, rarely four-line stanza with 15 syllables each with the rhyme scheme[aa (bb)].

The vocabulary of the songs consists of an unusual combination of everyday language and sophisticated literary language. For the boys, for their work and for their admirers, there are numerous paraphrases that can be assigned to three main fields: They come from the religious sphere, describe the bacha as a woman (the bacha “marries” his admirer) or designate him as an executioner ( ghallot ). The numerically small names from the religious area refer to late medieval Sufism , for example when a self-name of the Bacha baz qalandar is. That was the name of an order of dervishes whose members enjoyed plenty of wine, were surrounded by boys and played games. One of the nicknames of Bacha is dūst , which means Allah to the sufi mystic . Part of the “hangman” metaphor is to attest the boy “hangman's eyes” ( ghallot kūzi ). The bacha baz proclaims at the events that he wants to die at the boy's hand (“slaughter me!” Or “shed my blood!”). This is a continuation of the love death associations contained in the mullosozi stanzas.

Assessment of those involved

The phenomenon of boy play is widespread in Afghanistan mainly in the Uzbek settlement areas in the northern provinces. The events have been illegal since the 1920s. The ban at that time by King Amanullah Khan followed the same ideas of reform, directed against the traditions, as in Central Asia, which was dominated by Russia. It was not observed in any way by the general population, landowners or civil servants.

The suitor addresses his boy with uka ("younger brother") and the boy calls his suitor with aka ("older brother"), as is only usual in a two-person relationship. Most of the Bachas interviewed by Ingeborg Baldauf at the end of the 1970s stated that their activity as a dancer was something normal for them. What is asked of them, the Bachas do more or less emotionlessly, reluctantly and only because of the money. For the bachas, affection for their admirer plays little or no role, but according to their statement, they do not mind performing in women's clothes and kissing men. Overall, the Bachas consider their relationship with a man to be a transition phase before adulthood. Normality is also seen in this way by the indirectly involved women, who speak openly about the songs their sons sing, but not the positive aspects, i.e. the considerable income that the boys earn through singing and dancing, and certainly not at all mention the sexual aspect. In the large number of women's songs, the topic of boy play is practically non-existent, which indicates that women are emotionally indifferent to this phenomenon.

The adult men do not see the boys' game as morally reprehensible as long as certain rules are observed. These rules include observance of the minimum age and disgusting care for the boy who is rewarded with money and gifts. In addition, the boy should be able to attend school, receive instruction from a mullah, or ideally both. In addition to the enjoyable entertainment ( tamoscho ), the focus for the bacha baz is that with a beautiful bacha you can gain more respect among like-minded people than with other, financially similar hobbies, such as owning a competition quail or a horse bred for the equestrian game Buzkaschi . Sexual deficits tend to be compensated for in the pimp milieu. People who are completely far removed from the boys' game and particularly educated Afghans who have adopted European standards express themselves with reserve, disapproval or negate the phenomenon.

Today's distribution

Under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, homosexuality, which had previously been relatively openly displayed, was strictly forbidden in Afghanistan, and charges of sodomy usually ended with the death penalty. One of the inhumane methods of punishment, like stoning, suffered three men in Kandahar in February 1998. They were placed against a high brick wall that a tank brought down. One man survived. The practice of the dance boys had disappeared from the public during this time and at most took place under special secrecy in private houses. The Taliban promulgated a series of 30 edicts, with which women in particular were deprived of all rights and generally criminalized any activity of the population that the so-called warriors of God did not like. Edict No. 19 forbade Taliban fighters to take beardless boys home with them. The need for this edict is an indication that the bacha bazi phenomenon was widespread among the Taliban themselves. Young Taliban fighters who had never had a friendship, love affair or any relationship with women and for whom the sight of an unveiled foreign woman seemed to be the greatest sin, abused boys without scruples. At the same time, in their fundamentalist religious zeal over homosexual men and women accused of having a premarital relationship, the Taliban were morally indignant and organized public executions for them. Edict No. 19 is likely to have had a frustrating effect on the fighters and, together with a vision of paradise that promises an abundance of sensual pleasures after death, made them even more ruthless fighters who are not afraid of their own death.

Immediately after the end of Taliban rule, men again appeared in public accompanied by Bachas. Mohammed Nasem Zafar, professor of medicine at Kandahar University , estimated in 2002 that half of all male residents in his city had sex with adult men or boys at least once in their lifetime. Under the Taliban it was no more than 10%. A mullah interviewed in 2002 put this figure at 20 to 50%. A quantifying scientific study specifically on the Bachas is not available.

A 2007 study of Afghan drug addicts who inject intoxicants found under the heading of risky behavior 76.2% of informants who have frequent paid sex with prostitutes and 28.3% who have sex with men or boys. Of 464 drug addicts in Kabul , 27% reported frequent sex with men or boys; in the cities of Herat , Mazar-e Sharif and Jalalabad this was 23.2% for 623 informants. The study by the ORA ( Orphans and Refugees Agency ) mentions cinemas, an area with cheap hotels for truck drivers and nearby bus stations and the central District 1, in which many musicians and dance boys live, as meeting places where paid sex with boys takes place in Kabul (traditionally in the Charabat district ), some of whom are prostituting themselves. ORA mentions that 57 cases of pederasty were officially registered in Afghanistan in 2002.

The claims of many men that their relationship with their bacha is not exploitative but based on mutual affection do not stand up to scrutiny. According to Shivananda Khan, they contradict the sexual activity of men, traditionally understood as an exercise of power, while the boys, who mostly come from poor backgrounds, have little room for decision-making. Some Bachas express the fear of being discovered, complain about a lack of private life and a lack of acceptance from outside their group. Some boys declare that they are satisfied with their role and that they enjoy performing as dancers in women's clothes. Boys and men who perceive themselves as feminized, who dress appropriately but do not want to undergo sex reassignment , mostly call themselves ezak in Kabul , in Mazar -e Sharif mostly khwaharak . These terms correspond to zenana in Pakistan and kohti in India.

DVDs of private Bacha-bazi evenings can be bought in the markets. Allegedly as staff for the police and the army, boys were hired after the turn of the millennium in order - as requested by Western states - to increase the number of security forces. In fact, the minors were supposed to serve as bachas in the state institutions. In the area around Kunduz and Mazār-i Sharif, which was controlled by German soldiers as part of the ISAF until the end of 2014, Bacha-bazi evenings were held with hundreds of men who everyone knew about. Such parties lasted until 2 a.m. Subsequently, according to a newspaper report, the boy was sexually assaulted.

Afghans appreciate singing boys who - if they have an exceptionally good voice - fill large halls at pop music concerts. There are successful child stars like Mirwais Najrabi (* 1992), who became one of the most famous Afghan singers. As a 13-year-old, his agent charged up to $ 1,000 to appear at a private wedding. Mirwais fulfills the cliché of the luxuriously dressed and beardless boy with gold hangings, who is in the service of a rich army chief, is driven around in an expensive car, and whom the boss's employees address with deference.

Others

In the novel Kite Runner , in the film of the same name and in the accompanying graphic novel, there is a Taliban functionary named Assef who abuses the young Suhrab as a bacha bazi. The short film The Sound of Bells by Chabname Zariab, released in 2016, puts a bacha at the center of the plot.

literature

  • Ingeborg Baldauf: Boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik (= ethnicity and society / Occasional Papers. No. 17). Das Arabische Buch, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-923446-29-2 (study on the "boy play" among the Uzbeks in Afghanistan)
  • Shivananda Khan: Everybody knows, but nobody knows. Desk review of current literature on HIV and male-male sexualities, behaviors and sexual exploitation in Afghanistan. NAZ Foundation International, September 2008 ( PDF file online ).
  • Adam Mez: The Renaissance of Islam . Jubilee Printing & Publishing House, Patna 1937, p. 365 ( at Internet Archive , translation by Salahuddin Khuda Bakhsh, DS Margoliouth; original edition: Die Renaissance des Islam. Heidelberg, 1922)
  • Anthony Shay: The Male Dancer in the Middle East and Central Asia. In: Dance Research Journal. Volume 38, No. 1/2, Summer-Winter 2006, ISSN  0149-7677 , pp. 137–162 ( full text )

Web links

Commons : Bacha bazi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adam Mez: The Renaissance of Islam. Patna 1937, p. 358.
  2. ↑ Hans Engel : The position of the musician in the Arab-Islamic area. Publishing house for systematic musicology, Bonn 1987, p. 280.
  3. ^ Everett K. Rowson: The Effeminates of Early Medina. In: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 111, No. 4, October-December 1991, pp. 671-693, here pp. 671, 689.
  4. ^ Adam Mez: The Renaissance of Islam. Patna 1937, p. 365.
  5. ^ Marshall GS Hodgson : The Venture of Islam. Volume Two: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1974, pp. 145 f. ( online ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / de.slideshare.net
  6. ^ Zia Us Salam: An emperor with foibles. The Hindu, February 15, 2014.
  7. ↑ Shivananda Khan: Everybody knows, but nobody knows. Desk review of current literature on HIV and male-male sexualities, behaviors and sexual exploitation in Afghanistan . NAZ Foundation International, September 2008, p. 11.
  8. ↑ See Tariq Rahman: Boy Love in the Urdu Ghazal. In: Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia, Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 1989, pp. 10-27.
  9. ↑ Köçek with a tambourine. On: gay-art-history.org (photo from the end of the 19th century), last accessed on August 25, 2014.
  10. ^ Danielle J. van Dobben, Dancing Modernity: Gender, Sexuality and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic. Dissertation (MA) University of Arizona 2008, p. 43 f. ( Full text as PDF file ).
  11. ↑ Thomas Bauer: Islam tolerated homosexuals for centuries. Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, November 16, 2011.
  12. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf : The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 65.
  13. ↑ Annemarie Schimmel : The signs of God. The religious world of Islam. CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 145.
  14. ↑ Annemarie Schimmel: Mystical Dimensions of Islam. The history of Sufism . Insel, Frankfurt 1995, pp. 110-112.
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  21. ^ Anthony Shay, 2006, pp. 141, 147.
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  23. ↑ Erich Bethe : The Doric boy love: your ethics and your idea. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, New Series, Volume 62, 1907, pp. 438–475.
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  25. ↑ Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg : Mannlichkeitsriten. On institutional pederasty among Papuans and Melanesians. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1980, p. 77.
  26. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 80-84.
  27. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 86-89.
  28. ↑ Bazi. In: Encyclopædia Iranica.
  29. ↑ Jenny Nordberg : Afghanistan's Hidden Daughters - When Girls Grow Up as Sons Hoffmann and Campe Hamburg 2015 ISBN 978-3-455-85145-8 , ( limited preview )
  30. ^ Osama , Film (2004) by Siddiq Barmak
  31. ↑ Eugene Schuyler, Vasili Grigorev Vasilewitsch: Turkistan: Notes of a Journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara and Kuldja. Volume I, Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York 1877, pp. 132-136 ( at Internet Archive ).
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  33. ↑ Aziz Merhan: Abdulla Qodiriy (1894-1938), the pioneer of Uzbek novel art and his works. . Selcuk Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu Dergisi, edition 17, 2007, pp. 403–411, here p. 408.
  34. ^ BB Hopkins: Race, Sex and Slavery: 'Forced Labor' in Central Asia and Afghanistan in the Early 19th Century. In: Modern Asian Studies , Vol. 42, No. 4, July 2008, pp. 629-671, here p. 657.
  35. ^ Anthony Shay, 2006, p. 140.
  36. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 106-109.
  37. ↑ Julie Billaud: Visible under the Veil: Dissimulation, performance and agency in an Islamic public space. In: Journal of International Women's Studies, Volume 11, November 1, 2009, pp. 120–135, here p. 122.
  38. ^ John Baily : Music of Afghanistan. Professional musicians in the City of Herat . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, pp. 140-145.
  39. ^ Mark Slobin: Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan. (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 54) The University of Arizona Press, Tucson (Arizona) 1976, pp. 116-121.
  40. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 12-14.
  41. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 15.
  42. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 88.
  43. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 23.
  44. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 27.
  45. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 28.
  46. ↑ Abused and Murdered - Child molester in Afghanistan . Film by Jamie Doran, (Original title: Dancing Boys of Afghanistan , 2010), German premiere: Phönix , 11 August 2011.
  47. ↑ Afghan boy dancers sexually abused by former warlords . Reuters, November 18, 2007.
  48. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 19.
  49. ^ Alfred von Kremer : Cultural history of the Orient under the caliphs . 2 volumes, Vienna 1875–1877, p. 131 (at Internet Archive ).
  50. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, p. 15 f.
  51. ^ John Baily: Music of Afghanistan, 1988, pp. 93, 140.
  52. ↑ Anthony Shay: Choreographing Masculinity: Hypermasculine Dance Styles as Invented Tradition in Egypt, Iran, and Uzbekistan. In: Jennifer Fisher, Anthony Shay (eds.): When men dance: choreographing masculinities across borders. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2009, p. 292, ISBN 978-0-19-538669-1 .
  53. ↑ Mark Slobin: Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan, 1976, pp. 118-120.
  54. ↑ See Rahim Takhari and Ensemble: Shirin Dahani. Sweet lips. Music of North Afghanistan. Ethnic Series. PAN 2089. CD recordings by Jan van Belle 1996. PAN Records, 2001.
  55. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 35 f., 50, 53.
  56. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 74, 90, 95.
  57. ^ Ingeborg Baldauf: The boy love in Central Asia: Bačabozlik. 1988, pp. 33, 39, 61.
  58. ↑ Ahmed Rashid : Taliban: Afghanistan's fighters for God and the new war in the Hindu Kush. CH Beck, Munich 2010, p. 183.
  59. ↑ Kandahar comes out of the closet . In: The Times, December 1, 2002.
  60. ↑ Jamie Glazov: Boys of the Taliban. ( Memento of the original from May 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: FrontPage Magazine, Jan. 1, 2007. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archive.frontpagemag.com
  61. ↑ Shivananda Khan, September 2008, p. 25.
  62. ↑ Kabul City Map District 1 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Map) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aims.org.af
  63. ↑ Shivananda Khan, September 2008, p. 14 f.
  64. ↑ Shivananda Khan, September 2008, pp. 20 f.
  65. ↑ Shivananda Khan: Rapid assessment of male vulnerabilities to HIV and sexual exploitation in Afghanistan. Final report . NAZ Foundation International, March 30, 2009, p. 21.
  66. ↑ Fight the boys' game. In: Der Spiegel, February 14, 2011.
  67. ↑ Florian Flade: Baccha Baazi - Afghanistan's child prostitutes: a form of child abuse that is hushed up in Afghanistan is practiced under the eyes of Western troops. In: Die Welt , August 27, 2010.
  68. ↑ Mirwais Nijrabi Wo Bekhuwra Yara. Youtube video
  69. ↑ Nick Meo: The boy singers of Kabul . In: The Independent, April 12, 2005.
  70. ↑ Antonia Rados: Sex Slaves in Afghanistan . In: Berliner Zeitung, April 1, 2010.