Lincoln Keiser, in Friend by Day, Enemy by Night: Organized Vengeance in a Kohistani Community, "explores blood feuding (mar dushmani, literally 'death enmity') and its ramifications in Thull, a Kohistani tribal community in the Hindu-Kush Mountains of Pakistan" (vii). The community depicted by Reiser is thoroughly affected in almost every category by the imperatives of the system of vengeance:
The study shows how mar dushmani has come to interpenetrate life in this isolated community of mountaineers. Beliefs in the nature of God, concepts of self, patterns of ecological adaptation, the structure of houses, the number and kinds of dogs men own, the kinship and political system--death enmity penetrates and twists all these and more (vii-viii).
The society thus interpentrated by the possibility and necessity of death at any turn is a thoughly frightening one, indeed, with the men amply armed with all sorts of weapons for carrying out revenge, including axes, clubs, automatic pistols, bolt-action rifles, and Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles. This system of vengeance calls for assassination not merely for major offenses, but even for trivial and imagined ones, such as staring at the wife or daughter of another man. As we read, the title of the book is "no idle phrase. Men may joke with each other during the day, and communicate with bullets at night" (viii).
The author finds that this venegeance obsession has developed in the last few decades. Revenge has been a part of the society under study for hundreds of years, but was limited to "descent groups" and "had not involved deadly weapons" (2).
The perspective taken by Keiser is that which focuses on "the forces effecting change in the tense interplay between communal harmony and intracommunity violence" (15). In other words, the community, to remain a community with some measure of harmony and not deteriorate into utter bedlam and chaos, must find a way to fit such violen...