Essential Pashto phrases

The Pashto greeting — literally 'may you not be tired'. The reply is 'khwar mashe'. Urdu's 'assalam-o-alaikum' works everywhere, but opening in Pashto in Peshawar changes the temperature of the conversation immediately.

Thank you, in Pashto. 'Shukriya' is understood but marks you as speaking Urdu at someone who is speaking Pashto. Manana costs nothing and is noticed every time.

How are you? The 'ts' is a single sound, closer to the 'ts' in 'cats' than to two letters. Expect the answer to run to several sentences — the Pashto greeting sequence is long and cutting it short is rude.

Hospitality as an obligation, not a courtesy — one of the pillars of Pashtunwali. A guest is owed food, shelter and protection regardless of who they are. It is why a first meeting will not let you leave unfed, and why refusing outright reads as an insult rather than politeness.

The men's guest house attached to a family or a village — part reception room, part community court, part hotel. Business, disputes and politics all happen there rather than in an office. Being invited to one is a significant thing.

Green tea with cardamom, and Peshawar's default drink where the rest of Pakistan reaches for milky chai. Served after every meal, endlessly, in small glass cups. Refusing the second cup is fine; refusing the first is not.

The flat, coarse-minced, pomegranate-seeded beef kebab that is Peshawar's contribution to Pakistani food and is not made properly anywhere else. Eaten with naan, at a roadside table, at any hour.

The salt market — and by extension the tikka and karahi street that runs through it. You buy the meat by weight at the front and it is cooked in front of you. This is the single most Peshawari thing you can do with an evening.

'Let's go' in Pashto, and the brand name of the city's bus rapid transit system. Peshawar has 244 buses, thirteen routes and thirty corridor stations, for a city of under two million. Nobody expects this.

The province, and the answer to why guidance written for 'Pakistan' keeps not applying. KP has its own revenue authority, its own tenancy-registration law, its own health scheme and its own licensing system, none of which match Punjab's.

No Objection Certificate. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this is not bureaucratic background noise — it is the document that decides whether a foreign national may travel to the merged districts and the frontier belt at all, and it takes weeks.

Police, Rescue 1122 and the fire brigade. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police also publish 115 for Edhi's ambulances, 1020 for Chhipa's, and 091-111-283-283 for the Counter Terrorism Department.