Living a whisker away from death

Pakistani businessman Malik Amir Mohammad Khan Afridi has been kidnapped, threatened with death, forcibly displaced and lives apart from his family - all because of his enormous moustache.

Afridi spends 30 minutes a day washing, combing, oiling and twirling his facial hair, impeccably trimmed to 76 centimetres, into two arches that reach to his forehead, defying gravity.

"People give me a lot of respect. It's my identity," said the 48-year-old grandfather in the northwestern city of Peshawar, when asked why he was prepared to risk everything for his whiskers. "I feel happy. When it's ordinary, no one gives me any attention. I got used to all the attention and I like it a lot."

For centuries, a luxuriant moustache has been a sign of virility and authority on the Indian subcontinent. But in Pakistan, Islamist militants try to enforce religious doctrine that a moustache must be trimmed, if not shaved off. So Afridi went from celebrity to prisoner of Lashkar-e-Islam, a group that was then a rival but is now an ally of the Taliban in the tribal district of Khyber on the Afghan border.

First the group demanded protection money of US$500 a month. When he refused, four gunmen turned up at his house in 2009.

They held him prisoner for a month in a cave and only released him when he agreed to cut it off. "I was scared they would kill me, so that's why I sacrificed my moustache," he said.