aste has a strong effect on our sense of well-being and our social identity. Food informs us who we are, how well we are, and even how far we are from home. Few things are more intimately linked, more closely implicated, and more sweetly (or bitterly) sensed in our life’s journey than food. Just how closely food resonates with other changes in a society is, therefore, an intriguing issue.
In northern Pakistan, in the high valley of Hunza, food practices have changed profoundly during the last 50 to 60 years. For decades, access to Hunza, in the heart of the Karakoram mountains (Western Himalayas), was quite difficult. But following its secession in 1947 from the maharajah’s government of Jammu and Kashmir, Hunza shifted from an indentured agricultural economy, anchored by local hereditary rule (mirdom), to a state-driven national and global market economy. A benchmark of these changes was the completion in 1978 of the international Karakoram Highway. Traversing the valley, the highway became a thoroughfare between Islamabad and Beijing, and it opened Hunza to a variety of extraordinary changes. The changes in food and foodways reflect much of what happened and bring to view a new awareness of what “traditional” means.
It is actually something of an irony to document this cooking as “traditional” because most Hunza households are still making the dishes reproduced here. The difference is that older people knew a time before the construction of the Karakoram Highway when rice, chutneys, curries, processed sweets and other delectables were rare. Now they are commonplace in local bazaars, and younger people accept the various national and global products as ordinary. Yet with the opening of Hunza to outside influences, local women saw Pakistani foods privileged over their local dishes. They saw the time-honored fare that they offered as young brides relegated to sideshow events at community celebrations. They recognized that, as the new and tasty foods from beyond the valley became popular, part of their own identities was being diminished and marginalized
Overlooked by the shining slopes of Rakaposhi, which rise nearly 6000 meters (19,200') from the valley floor, the apricot orchards and wheat fields of the Hunza Valley wind along the Hunza River. Top: Over less than a generation, Hunza foodways have adopted many imports that come via the Karakoram Highway that runs through the valley, connecting Islamabad to the south with China to the north.
MAP: MARIELLE PALEY
Left: A woman uses a wood-fueled stove inside her home in the town of Karimabad. Right: Rice does not grow at Hunza’s altitude, but wheat thrives, and it provides the staple grain of Hunza cuisine.
So it is that the “traditional” underlies life-shaping experiences. The Karimabad women thus added something of their life histories to the recipes we collected through their fierce labors of love, which have made generations of women and their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons and daughters happy and well-nourished. We, in collecting these recipes, and you, in recreating them, honor the cultural heritage of the unspoken heroes and heroines of Hunza.
—Julie Flowerday
