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The road south from Peshawar is picturesque in a dusty sort of way. It meanders through a barren landscape of scattered villages, tribal areas beyond the legal authority of the government, abandoned checkpoints, and roadside stands crowded with old men slurping goat milk chai off of delicately balanced British-era tea saucers.

Arriving in Bannu, I was ushered into the family hujrah, a large walled courtyard. The family had erected an enormous white tent, overflowing with visitors: family friends, prominent politicians, and a small sea of old bearded tribal elders from Waziristan, sitting with their canes in one hand and their cups of chai in the other. Aside from the tent, it could have been a scene from a tribal gathering 500 years ago.

The chief minister sat at the center. When he saw me, he stood and smiled—amused, I think, at my scruffy beard, my white tunic, and my already-frayed Peshawari sandals. I greeted him as best I could, earnestly, with a hand over my heart and a phrase suggested by my Urdu teacher: Main ap ke gham men barabar ka sharik hun. "I am an equal partner in your sorrow." I added, simply, "We're doing prayer for your family."

Muslims in Pakistan speak of two forms of prayer. The obligatory prayer practiced five times a day is namaz, and since this prayer is often read in the mosque, the verb is to read namaz. (There is a physical shorthand, too: cupping one's hands behind the ears, the first gesture of obligatory prayer.) The other form of prayer is du'a, which is more situational, more freeform. To do du'a is to offer a prayer on someone's behalf, and when saying du'a the hands are raised, palms back, to about eye level and held there while the prayer is spoken, or while a moment of silence passes.

When honoring the dead, a silent du'a is said. And it is said communally, such that when I sat down next to the chief minister, raised my hands, and softly said du'a kare, "let us do prayer," the whole tent in an instant responded by raising their hands with me in a wave of joint supplication—the politicians, the family, the elders with their canes—and praying in absolute silence for the soul of the departed. The moment of silence lingered, all eyes on us, until, in the traditional style, I passed my hands over my face and closed with a quiet Ameen.

In so many ways, my worldview differed from that of the people in the tent. Yet a communal prayer for a lost family member is a profoundly human moment. The image of that moment has stuck with me, because it is a picture of two things I found to be true of northwest Pakistan.

First, the vast majority of people I met were gracious to a fault, hospitable, and quick to condemn violence in the name of religion. They were, at the same time, largely uninterested in trying to delineate the boundaries of religion in public life. "Islam," I was often told, "is about all of life." Coming from an American culture in which religion is often considered unwelcome in the public square, this was a real change. For better and for worse, religion in Pakistan is more than the language of private devotion; it is still the most potent language of public life as well.

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April 2007, Vol. 51, No. 4