Drawing primarily on oral sources from the author's own research carried out between 1993 and
1997 this book outlines the settlement history of Pashto speakers in Pakistan's Northern Areas
over the last 150 years concentrating on the decades following the opening of the Karakoram
Highway in 1978. Besides this it looks at how the migrants' language situation had developed
by the mid 1990s. It investigates how Pashto speakers communicated with each other and with
members of their respective Shina- Khowar- Balti- and Burushaski-speaking host communities
focussing in particular on cross-dialectal communication and language shift. The book also aims
to define how the trends related to Pashtun migration to the Northern Areas in the mid 1990s
could develop in the near future. Interwoven with this analysis are childhood memories and life
stories recounted by the Pashto speakers interviewed by the author. All interviewees were
ordinary people leading ordinary lives - traders cobblers tea boys farmers and porters.
Their stories provide a voice to the Pashto speaking migrants themselves and give the reader a
fascinating insight into their lives.
