Afghans

Afghans (Dari: افغان‌ها; Pashto: افغانان) are the citizens and nationals of Afghanistan, as well as their descendants in the Afghan diaspora. The ethnonym Afghan historically referred specifically to the Pashtuns, a nomadic, pastoral people primarily resident in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. Quotes For what care I, though all speak Sohrab’s fame?For would that I myself had such a son,And not that one slight helpless girl I have,A son so fam’d, so brave, to send to war,And I to tarry with the snow-hair’d Zal,My father, whom the robber Afghans vex,And clip his borders short, and drive his herds,And he has none to guard his weak old age. Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum (1853) Four Afghans sit in evening light,With features dusked by turbans white,But eyes like sun-glow I’ve seen smoulderOn a lonely desert boulder.In circle, cross-legged, they converse,With accents guttural and terse.Unknowable are nomad facesTill you haunt all desert places:The same pent dreams glint there unknownAs on the eve-lit boulder-stone.Earth brother, I must stranger beTo such fierce taciturnity. Rex Ingamells, "The Afghans", in The Jindyworobaks (1979), p. 4 External links Henry George Raverty, Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans (London: William and Norgate, 1862) Category:Afghanistan