Why So Many Birthdays on This Particular Day?
06:05 Share

This message comes from Carvana. Sell your car the convenient way. Enter your license plate or VIN, answer a few questions, and get a real offer in seconds. Go to Carvana.com today. Today on State of the World, why so many birthdays on this particular day? You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon.

We're posting this episode on January 1st. 1-1. For most of the Western world, today is New Year's Day, a holiday. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, it's a day of many, many birthdays. But they're rarely celebrated. Why? As NPR's Dia Hadid tells us, the answer lies in the different ways we see time.

Ask in any Pakistani or Afghan town when someone's birthday is, and it's not unusual to hear January 1st. Day 1-1-1993. We always just went by Jan 1-1939 for his birthday, for how old he was, everything. 1-1-1992.

First January, yeah. There's no readily available data, but anecdotally, one Western visa officer tells me it was so common in applications, he initially thought there was a glitch.

Wahid Rahman, an Afghan man living in Ireland, tells me that when he helped asylum seekers, officials soon learned to ask for just the year that Afghans were born. Those whose birthdays are on one one include Hamza Ghori.

He's from southern Pakistan. He says his parents picked Wanwan because it's easy to remember. The day was convenient, just a formality.

We don't celebrate birthdays. Ghauri's parents, like many in the region, didn't write down when he was born. They didn't remember it. They didn't even register his birth for years. Not until he had to go to school. The same happened to Adnan Khan.

He's a journalist from the rugged mountains that straddle Pakistan and Afghanistan. And when he was a kid, his uncle enrolled him in school. For that, Khan needed a birth date for the forms. Knowing our day of birth is so fundamental to who we are in the West.

But Khan says many conservative Muslims frown on adopting Western celebrations, like birthdays. They don't celebrate birthdays because they think this is not an Islamic thing to do. So if you don't celebrate a day, why would you remember it? And there's another context. Many folks whose birthdays are recorded as 1-1 belong to societies where many can't read or write.

Hello? Afrasiyab Khattak is a former lawmaker and expert on the culture of Pashtuns. They're an ethnic group who live in Pakistan and Afghanistan. You see, writing of age, date of birth is a recent phenomenon. It was not always recorded. We were an oral society for a long time. Khattak says to mark a birth, people would refer to a big event, like... When First World War was taking place, Second World War was taking place...

As for a man's age, well, traditionally, Pashtun men wear a cap and wrap a turban around it. So when a man died… When they would bury him, they would ask, how old was he? And the answer might be… He had consumed eight caps. One cap will normally exist for a decade. This is how they would measure their lifespan. A life measured out in worn-out caps instead of days and years.

Of course, the culture is changing unevenly.

In the cities, there's certainly people who celebrate birthdays. There's even a standard happy birthday song. And in remote areas, like where Adnan Khan is from. I got thinking about this story a while ago because my own father, Ali Hadid, never knew his own birthday.

He was born in a village in Lebanon. And if you asked him when he was born, he'd say, six days after the bull. That is, after the cow gave birth to a bull calf. He was from a family that raised cows. Having a bull was a big deal. Dad migrated to Australia and raised us there, where birthdays are a big deal.

but he could never quite remember our birthdays. When you're raised without one, it doesn't come naturally to remember random days of the year that happen to be when your kids are born. So we'd remind him, and his face would brighten. He'd do a little dance and sing this Lebanese classic. My dad passed away on December 31st, 2022.

And as evening fell, Australians began celebrating New Year's Eve. Dad died on a day that was a big event. On a day easy to remember. And a few hours later, many Pakistanis and Afghans marked the passing of another official year of their lives. On a day easy to remember. Diya Deed, NPR News.

That's the state of the world from NPR. Happy New Year and maybe happy birthday.

Every January, millions of people take the pledge to cut down on alcohol in the new year. If you're one of them, count on Life Kit, NPR's self-help podcast, for tips and tricks you can use to make the most out of your commitment. We'll help you draw up plans and have experts weigh in on how to stay motivated and kind to yourself throughout the month. Search Life Kit's Dry January wherever you get your podcasts for the tools you need to pull it off. From NPR.