Return to Mazar

I left Kabul yesterday, and am back in Mazar now. We had a lovely journey from Kabul over the mountains – the highlight was stopping for breakfast at the top of the Salang pass. We sat in a square tent with one flank open to the wind and overlooking a roaring mountain stream far below us, and we were each served platefuls of fresh fried fish and miniature bright lemons, with rounds of warm bread.
There were four of us: myself and Ed, Habibullah the driver and K from Australia, who lives with us in Mazar, but with frequent travel to minister to far flung vulnerable villages. We had a cheerful and very tasty breakfast, much livened by K who is one of the sunniest people I know, and Ed surreptitiously filmed it all, while ostensibly ‘just checking the lighting’.

Further along the road we stopped at a waterhole to swim – in a beautiful spot with steep bare mountain flanks rising on all sides, and emerald water. However, on finding the rim of the water surrounded by youths of the silently squatting type, and that our garments were thin and inclining to transparency when wet, we girls decided not to swim. But we paddled, and very soothing it was too. In fact, Ed was the only swimmer, as, it later transpired, our driver had volunteered himself to stand sentry so that we girls could swim. It seems it would have been indelicate for him to swim while the ladies were cooling their ankles. I admire greatly the modesty of Afghan men, and applaud their consistency. Not like these couples one seen quite often in parts of the Muslim world, where the wife is muffled in a big black sack and the guy is wiggling his bottom in tight jeans, sporting a spray-on T-shirt and speaking incessantly into his mobile, which has a naked lady screensaver were one to look closely.

Story of an Afghan woman

This morning I paid a visit to a local NGO founded in 1999 to protect the rights of the women and children of Afghanistan. Naturally the task is a daunting one for a small, under funded charity, but the staff I met were upbeat and proud of their programmes: literacy centres in all the main cities of the north, a women’s centre for victims of domestic violence, and a women’s cultural centre scheduled to open next year. They were frank about their recruiting problems – a local NGO constantly bleeds qualified staff to international organisations with vastly larger budgets. IOM pays its drivers 600 USD a month – far more than any engineer or doctor working in the public sector could ever aspire to. I plan to volunteer for them, keeping in touch by email from Mazar and visiting them whenever I am in Kabul, and as most of their funds come from Italy and Spain I will be able to help them with liaising and donor relations. Finally my days of indolence are ending, and I can begin to feel useful once again!

While I was there, I met someone I am sure I will never forget.
I was introduced to her as someone who has had a tragic life, which is putting it mildly, even in the context of Afghanistan. I hope my face did not betray anything untoward as I was introduced to her, as her face is severely burnt on one side, pulling her eye out of shape and puckering up her mouth. As she spoke, in a low, almost inaudible whisper, I tried not to wince as she nervously twisted and pulled at the crinkled skin of her chin and neck, but occasionally a wide white smile would flash out and light up her face. At first, remembering the shelter for domestic violence, I assumed that she had been the victim of an acid attack, but I did nothing to lead the conversation in that direction. We talked instead of her studies: she has attended the courses in literacy, computer studies and English organised by the NGO, who is also subsiding the rent of her family home, and she will graduate in May from high school.

According to the agreement she has made with the NGO, she should start working with them once she graduates, as this is the smart system they have devised to address their recruiting problems. But recently she has decided that what she really wants to do is go to university and study law, so that she can really pull her weight in the fight for women’s rights. She told me that there are two faculties of law in Kabul – a Law faculty, and a Shariah Law faculty, and it is the latter’s graduates who end up working for the government. Our friend Brendon described his visit to the Kabul law faculty in his blog. When she explained how worried she is about the role accorded to Islamic Law in the new constitution drafted for Afghanistan in 2003, her intelligence shone through her shyness.

When that conversation dried up, we fell silent, but she continued to look at me expectantly, perhaps wistfully, so I ploughed on with more topics, spurred out of my shyness by embarrassment. Incidentally, I noticed that her clothes were rather strange, even admitting that she is poor and hardworking – she was wearing a shalwar kameez of a very plain pattern, in dark blue, thick fabric like worker’s overalls, a yellow and black check head covering done up in none of the usual styles, and no trace of feminine adornment anywhere.

I told her about my family, and discovered that she lives with her parents and three sisters, in a little house up the hill. Her hand is bandaged up because she recently fell off the bicycle she uses to cycle to school, and she rocked slightly back and forward in her chair as she spoke as if in pain. I told her she is very brave to cycle in a city like Kabul, and she said she thought that she was the only woman in the city to do so. “Women are not to drive cars, not to ride bicycle or motorcycle, only men”. Stumbling for words, I told her what an inspiration she should be to other women, with her courage and her sense of purpose.

In another silence, she told me she would like to hear about my country, as so I told her about the hills of Italy where I live, and the sea, the beautiful sea which she has never seen. She flashed one of her beautiful smiles, and said that she would love to visit the sea with me when – as one hand fluttered about her damaged face – her face is cured.

Then she explained that a rocket had hit her home during the fighting in Kabul, which had left her brother dead, and her severely wounded. She lifted a flap in her head covering to show me the burnt stump of her ear. She has no hair, either.

When her brother died, and the Taliban came to power, her family lost their only breadwinner, as women were forbidden from working and her father is mentally ill and unable to work. So, at great personal risk of course, she, the eldest daughter, dressed in her brother’s clothes, assumed his identity and went out to seek work.
That was when the Taliban were in power, and she has kept her family and her male identity ever since. She has worked in the fields and on construction sites, and goes in constant fear of being unmasked, but she is also afraid of revealing herself as a woman.

Perhaps she feels that she has burnt her boats by taking on her brother’s name and documents, but she feels that her only way out is to have reconstructive surgery, and only then to come clean as a woman. Even as I write, I can hardly believe that it is all true, and I met her only this morning. I can scarcely begin to imagine how her life must be. I must try to do something to help her.

The Bagh-i Babur mosque

A day of independence

Afghanistan celebrated a day of independence from the British on Friday – there were squares of fabric in the colours of the national flag tied to railings along the streets of Kabul, and a big celebration in the city stadium (formerly site of Taliban public executions). International organisations, meanwhile, suffered a tightening of security, and we were told to avoid ‘all unnecessary movement’ in the city. We contented ourselves with planning a trip out of town for the next two days, and booked a car to take a little group of us to Panjshir, birthplace of Ahmad Shah Massoud. That trip, however, was not to be, again due to vague reports of security concerns, whose source could not be ascertained - “sometimes we cannot disclose where our information comes from. We receive it on a need-to-know basis” we were told by an unusually nervy, conspiracy theorist staff member.

After downscaling our requests somewhat until we were asking where, other than the confines of the guesthouse, would it be acceptable for us to spend the day, we received permission to be driven to the Bagh-i Babur, or Babur’s Garden.

This, once the largest green public space in the city, was laid out as a palace and garden complex by the rulers of the Mughal dynasty, but suffered huge damage during the Soviet/ rival warlords/ Taliban eras. The garden found itself on the shifting front line between rival factions, and came under heavy mortar and rocket fire which gutted the buildings and levelled the perimeter wall. The irrigation system was destroyed, the plants withered, and the trees cut down for firewood by the desperately poor Kabulis massed in earth brick homes on the surrounding slopes.


Luckily, the Aga Khan trust for culture has been carrying out extensive research and reconstruction on the site since 2002, and the Bagh-i Babur is once again emerging as an oasis of calm and beauty in the midst of a densely populated, depressed urban area.
Entrance costs 5 afghani, or 10 US cents, for Afghans, and 20 times as much for foreigners, which seems reasonable – although we did try to persuade the guards to give the Tajik lady who was with us a discount, to no avail.

The garden is a hive of activity, as over 150 gardeners, builders and skilled craftsmen beaver away across the site to get everything finished in time for a grand opening scheduled for next spring, but it is also a very peaceful place.

Everything that day was suffused in a rosy haze of delight at having evaded our gaolers in the security department, and the grass of the Bagh-i Babur seemed to us incomparably greener than that of our lovingly tended guesthouse garden.

We had brought a carpet, two melons and three flaps of hot bread, and we spread ourselves out on a grassy terrace under a fruit tree. The garden is terraced, and the 700 newly planted trees are watered by little channels that bring water down from a large stone pool at the highest level. Soon, a series of fountains and pools built along the central axis of the garden will be completed – at the bottom, a visitors’ centre will be housed in a traditional earthen dome building going up on the site of an old caravanserai.

From our quiet, cool vantage point under the tree, we could see the teams working on the restoration of the haremserai complex, and watch gardeners sprinkling the lawns with the aid of a spade. Everyone we encountered was friendly, proud of their work and keen to show us round.

Soon after we had arrived, a little boy turned up wanting to sell us hard boiled eggs. We bought eight eggs from him in the course of the day, shared our melon with him and asked him questions. He was a pitiful sight, with light coloured eyes, broken teeth and a pockmarked, scared face, a child so damaged-looking it is hard to imagine him reaching adulthood, somehow.



His eyes avoided ours as he answered our questions, and told us he did go to school, and was 6th in his class of over 35. He lives with his mother and siblings, his father is somehow unable to work. He buys his boiled eggs for 3.5 Afg, and sells them for 5 Afg, so that in a good day he makes a dollar. He did not invite pity or even sympathy from us, wandering off in the midst of our questions, to return a little while later and sit under the shadow of a neighbouring tree.

Some drunken men in uniform came up and asked us for whisky, and retreated when we offered them water, scattering plastic cups and other rubbish about them. In a flash of anger I upbraided them for fouling such a beautiful place with their rubbish, and threw their rubbish after them. All of Kabul is awash with trash, and in general people demonstrate a cavalier disregard for cleanliness, order and the natural habitat outside their own homes. Surprisingly, in retrospect, the men in uniform reacted good-naturedly, apologised for being ‘a little crazy’, and ordered the little egg boy to collect all their rubbish.


The rest of the day passed peacefully – the high point was being shown round the haremserai, where some lovely carved tombstones have been discovered, and the greenhouse, where I met a flock of ladies, with their billowing blue burqas lifted up over their faces. I fell into conversation with one, and it made my heart skip to do so, as the women of Afghanistan have seemed so remote and unapproachable to me, forever inscrutable under their burqas or invisible behind the walls of their homes.
It turns out these women are from Mazar, and had come to Kabul only for a few days, for a family wedding, so I will be able to visit them again once we return north.

an old beggar outside the shrine of Ali 

in the main shrine precinct, Mazar-i-Sharif 

Swim

I finally managed to have a swim! Once again after work, we asked to be driven to the Hotel Khifoyat. This time, the pool enclosure was not locked, and there were a few guys milling around. We approached the man closest to the pool, a middle aged guy in tan coloured shalwar kameez, a muslim cap and a flowing, extremely neat rich brown beard. He was very polite to Ed, and said yes, he certainly could swim. And how about women? Ed asked tentatively. Oh no, not women, no – he replied, but a very young man approached and unexpectedly contradicted his elder, assuring Ed that women could swim.

Well, what is she going to wear, asked the portly gentleman with the flowing beard, gesturing with his chin at me and miming an obviously deeply unsuitable skimpy bathing item against his own body. Oh no, I assured him in shocked tones, as if we were discussing polo rather than swimming, I’m not going to take my clothes off.
So, we got permission, and we were shown to a little cubicle where I removed my headscarf (which felt very daring per se, in the open air) and ample silk skirt, but retained my long shift and leggings underneath. I showered in this get up before entering the pool, and what a delight it was! I couldn’t say whether the clothes slowed me down a good deal, or whether I am generally out of puff, but the pool seemed to be very big and deep and green once I had got in.

I got into my stride and set about doing laps as solemnly as I could, looking demurely straight ahead to avoid making eye contract with the small crowd of silent onlookers who gradually assembled along one side, sitting on their haunches. But it was splendid, that swim, I valued it all the more for the obstacles we had overcome along the way, as there is really nothing quite like it for cooling the blood, and clearing the mind.

Tajik Menu

Now, what follows has nothing at all to do with Afghanistan, but I am offering it to the world here because I did not have a blog when I lived in Tajikistan and first came across, and because Ed has just found the original transcription among his papers.

In downtown Dushanbe, on the main tree lined avenue, there is a grand teahouse and café, the Chaikhona Rohat, built in the monumental Soviet-Central Asian hybrid style. This means that, while it is built of no-nonsense reinforced concrete, as opposed to the more traditional wood and mud brick, and though it occupies an entire city block instead of being a modest bungalow, it is organised around a series of courtyards, and the ceilings are decorated with floral designs and abstract patterns in bright colours. Concrete pilasters clumsily echo the shapes of Central Asian wooden columns, which can be very beautiful.

On a visit, then, to the renowned Chaikhona Rohat (= Rohat Teahouse), we faithfully transcribed the menu (with a few omissions of less interesting dishes), which I reproduce here:

Choikhona “Rohat” Salads Meat allsorts Custom-made salad (under a furcoat) The cooked meat The first dishes Lag man (portion) Lagman (floor of a portion) The hen broth
The second dishes Cutlets on Kiev The forse meat shish kebab The furnase pies	Garnish Potato free Rise
Drinks and juices Drink from a dogrose Doug	Spirits drink Vodka “Orion” Ligueur “Merri Giyoh”

The food is actually rather good, for Dushanbe.

A wedding glimpsed

I caught a glimpse of an Afghan wedding the other evening. Ed and I had come to the Khifoyat hotel for the second time, hoping for a swim, but the pool area was closed off, and the young men on the other side of the fence would not explain why. So we sat on a rather crowded lawn, and I gazed balefully at the intensely unappealing ice-cream tub I had bought from the hotel café. The packaging was crumpled, and the creases dust filled, and when opened it proved to be half melted and bubble gum flavoured. Ed stoically ate his way through a saffron-flavoured and virulently coloured ice-cream on a stick, and we both looked around.

We watched dusk fall, and a spectacular array of lights draped all over the Khifoyat come to life and take the place of the sun. A row of artificial palm trees developed coils of green and brown neon snaking round them, and yellow coconuts glowing like embers, while neon strips in blues, reds, violets and oranges ran along the fences, up and down the façade of the hotel and flashed from the top of metallic constructions looking like abstractions of dandelion puffs. Ed and I argued idly as to whether these could more correctly be termed installations or sculptures, if they were in a Manhattan art gallery that is, until we were interrupted by some friendly chaps super-impressed as always by Ed’s Dari skills.

They told us that the crowds all around us (all men, but I had hardly noticed), had gathered in the grounds of the Khifoyat for a wedding. Soon, the women did begin to arrive, and in minutes the drive up to the building was completely clogged with cars, as each tried to get as close to the front door as possible before releasing their precious (dangerous?) cargo. The adult women were mostly in burqas as usual, but the little girls were most elegantly dressed, coiffed, and startlingly made up – with huge blackened eyes and sharply pencilled mauve and biscuit lips (more professionally rendered than the university students managed. But then again, the students’ makeup is inevitably smudged onto the inside of their burqas while in transit).

As we were leaving the Khifoyat hotel, on an impulse I followed a group of well dressed girlies and well muffled ladies up the steps to the ladies’ entrance (the men take part in a totally separate function in another side of the building). Of course I stuck out terribly, not only for being tall, pale and freckled but also very shabbily turned out in comparison. I was turned away by the old man on the door, but not before having caught a most tantalising glimpse of what lay beyond.

The brightly lit hall was fast filling up with gorgeous evening gowns in the brightest colours – all burqas having been dumped in the hall – and I guess at the end of the night they must all pick one randomly as they are indistinguishable. The scent of a hundred overlapping floral and fruity perfumes was heady, as was the excited chatter above the drone of the dozens of fans.
Everything was shining and sparkling: the lacquered hair in tendrils, curls and spikes, the dresses ruffled, ruched and laced with pearls, diamante and sequins, long nails like talons in scarlets and crimsons, gold lame stilettos, slingbacks, wedges – all polished and shimmering like mirrors.

All this finery the women don for each other’s eyes alone, I thought, but I was amazed to see an all male band tuning up on stage as well – the only men in Mazar ever to the treated to such a sight!

"The day my sister got married, I was so happy" - girl, aged 8 

Love marriages

Dear readers, these do exist, in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. I have it on the authority of my dear confidante in the office, who has been helping me with my Dari with great patience. Three times today, within the space of half an hour, she listened to my halting reading of the story of the clever fox and the foolish wolf.

My first Dari teacher was an Afghan refugee I met in Khujand, who had almost no teeth. It was he who first introduced me to “the claywer fowcks and the fawlish who-olf”. He was a dedicated and a gentle teacher, who took great pains to initiate me to the mysteries of Dari pronunciation, but despite all his efforts, such they remained, because coming from his mouth, all consonants were as one. Poor man, I wonder what has happened to him – the fate of the Afghan refugees who found themselves in Tajikistan is a sad one. His nephew, who was one of my English students and who introduced me to him, was a doctor who had never been able to practice, his training cut short by the Taliban.

But now that the Taliban are gone, love marriages are again taking place. They are as yet a small minority, and the definition is quite wide, as any boy and girl who have not met through the auspices of the parents, are committing a love marriage. There is quite an air of scandal surrounding such matches, even though they normally do take place with the consent of all available parents, and I usually get asked through modestly down turned eyes whether mine was a love marriage. Usually couples who marry for love meet in the university, which just goes to show that even candy coloured lip gloss and purple eye-shadow are much more beguiling than a blue cotton grille and a muffled murmur beneath it.

My friend who gave me this news has a mobile phone that beeps and trembles with received text messages very often while I sit with her, and these are never left unanswered for more than a minute, so, who knows but that there might be another love match on its way?

I am keen to find out more.

The children of Kabul

This morning I have been reading a report by Save the Children USA on the Children of Kabul, which is full of the most moving and piteous stories. The report is based on hundreds of interviews with children and their families, and is full of inspiration and bravery as well as sorrow. Here are a couple of extracts:

"Once my son went to the shop and asked for chaff because we didn’t have any flour or bread. The shopkeeper told him, ‘Don’t buy the chaff because it has medicine for killing the mouse. Maybe your family will eat it and they will die; instead of bread you will get death,’ and [so my son] didn’t bring the chaff. That is how hard our life is — faced with a choice between death by chaff or death by starvation." - Mother

"When I am afraid, my mother sleeps with me and takes me in her arms and says that we mustn’t be afraid because Almighty God will pity us." - Boy, aged 7

"We have seen so many wars, so we are not afraid of war anymore. During the bombardment I heard an interview with an Afghan man who was saying to the western countries, ‘These bombs are just like potatoes to us! War is nothing to us!’ He was right!’" - Girl, age 17

"I love going to school, and in the morning I just wait impatiently to go ... ." - Young girl

Wiruses

I hope my readers have not been alarmed by my absence from this page – which seemed long to me, if not to you, because I have been engaged in an unequal and enervating struggle against hordes of invading software viruses. Adware, malaware, spamware… these are the unwelcome hordes of visitors who have been plaguing and harrying my poor beleaguered laptop til he is a shadow of his former self, a sick old man blighted by alzheimer’s, asthma and tinnitus.
I have been able to glimpse email only through a hailstorm of popups and security warnings, and I am afraid to say I have still not found a satisfactory cure for my ailing friend.
The blight is in remission just at present, so I seize the chance to update you.

'you're very tall aren't you?' 

Balkh university library

After my time with the students, I repaired like a homing pigeon to the university library on the ground floor, to the right of the burqa removal station. Libraries never fail to soothe my jangled nerves, and invariably appear familiar and homey places to me, wherever they occur, due to the fact that my father is a librarian, and I always loved going to visit him in his library, where I have spent many happy hours.
In this case too, I was welcomed warmly by the lady behind the glass porthole through which the students put forth their requests, and she ushered me in beyond the locked door when I stammered something about being an English teacher, curious to see their collection.

There were many notices and stickers attesting to the generosity of foreign donors clustered about the door, their odor of sanctity and righteousness mingling with that of dust and mildew emanating from the books themselves.

The female librarian gestured over to where the books in English were, and so I soon discovered that the backbone of the library consists of multiple copies (often as many as 20 or 30) of expensive hard cover McGraw & Hill volumes on Molecular biology, Management Dynamics and the like, still in their plastic wrappings. These are, as was clear even before the librarian laboured the point, quite useless to the faculty of these departments (admitting even that such subjects are taught) and likewise to the faculty of English, for whom they are much too advanced. Of course, donations of textbooks in Dari would be rapturously received, but donor agencies in their wisdom have provided overviews of the culture of the Southern States (of the USA) and guides to public speaking (patently aimed at US politicians) instead.

It is particularly distressing to note that the textbooks on Obstetrics and Gynecology are also only available in English – while the maternal death rate remains shockingly high and one in four children in Afghanistan do not reach their 5th birthday.

All in all, I got more joy out of the library’s English language holdings than most perhaps, and spent the rest of the morning happily browsing and sneezing in the dust, plied with cups of tea by the librarian, with whom I commiserated on the cramped conditions and inappropriate nature of his stock. And I found a great essay by Margaret Atwood.

First brush with Balkh University students

I am back in Mazar.

This morning I had a rather unsatisfactory visit to Balkh University to meet the students of the English faculty, of whom my first, and doubtless over-hasty, impression was that they are a bunch of feckless ingrates. Maybe I am just pining for my dear, keen bright students in Khujand (northern Tajikistan), but this lot were even talking among themselves and on their mobiles while the Dean of their faculty was addressing them.

I had come as a result of an earlier meeting with the Dean, an elegantly dressed, mild mannered and courteous man, who was very encouraging when I suggested that I could offer the students extra English lessons. I wanted to offer group discussion classes, and perhaps also individual classes, as a way of making local friends and earning a bit of money. I roughly calculated how much I could charge to make it worthwhile for me but not too expensive for them – it seems that attending university is completely free, but it also seems likely that students do not come from the poorest families.

Of course, the memory of being treated like a celebrity and revered like a soothsayer while freelancing as an English teacher in Khujand was fresh in my mind.

When the Dean took me into one of the four classes, the students stood up initially to greet us, but then all slouched back in their seats (well, it is very hot), and resumed their interrupted conversations. Most of the girls had nasty candy coloured lipstick on, which clashes horribly with their skin colour. No burqas are worn in the university of course, but when the students take them off at the entrance, the mouth-shaped smears of fuchsia lipstick on the inside are revealed. The boys had quivering, oiled mustaches.

The girls greatly outnumbered the boys in the class I visited, and they were all very laidback and blasé. As they remained silent when I outlined my plan, I asked them for suggestions and advice on what might be needed. I received the following suggestions: buy a tape recorder, so we can practice; make sure we all have copies of the book you are using (from my own pocket? I could not help asking incredulously – there were at least 50 of them); you should use ‘Streamline’ for discussion classes; we want to learn the new expressions.

The assembled students are all in their last year of English, and their sole ambition is to become teachers of English in local schools, which perhaps explains why they are not particularly driven to improve their language skills beyond what is strictly necessary and locally available. By contrast in Northern Tajikistan, there is a strong feeling that English is the gateway to all the best and best paid jobs, which are all in foreign organizations. Young Tajiks are starved of contact with the outside world, and eager to escape to pastures new, while young Afghans perhaps feel that contact with the outside world is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be.

I now think that some of the disagreeable impression they made on me (and I daresay the feeling was mutual), was due to their having been summoned there to meet me on the last day of term, before finally breaking up for summer, and because my classes, I think, had not been presented as optional.
Not to be put off, we agreed to meet again in three weeks’ time.

our young waiter 

truck painted pakistani style 

a cow, a car... 

view from the Mazar-Kabul road 

mountain village 

Fruit and fair children

Today I learnt from one of the drivers that women who eat a lot of fruit during pregnancy give birth to fair children. I discovered this when Ed asked this driver to stop to buy me fruit.
He approved my wish, taking it for granted that a newly married couple should be desirous of children, and of fair (-skinned) children in particular. His first three children had all been fair, as he had fed his wife a lot of fruit. This is a sign of tender kindness, also, as women are known to have uniformly sweet teeth. Unfortunately, his next three children were all dark, as fruit had become scarce during the Taliban times. This also explains why there are so many dark children in Mazar now.

Visiting

I have made one home visit to an Afghan family, thanks to Ed and his cultural mission in Mazar. We called upon an elderly archaeologist one afternoon, after a 10 minute drive from the office. We had asked the driver to stop at a bakery on the way, as it is a shame to come as a guest to somebody’s house “dast-e kholi” (empty handed), but that didn’t work out. He stopped once outside a very ramshackle stall heaped with all manner of dust coated merchandise, including some ancient Soviet style biscuits in murky plastic bags, which we felt were not appropriate. Our driver was obviously in a hurry, as he then drove straight to our destination and tooted his horn, causing our host to poke his head out before we could explain that we wanted biscuits before our visit. He obviously doesn’t expect foreigns to observe the niceties of Afghan social ritual, but we felt a little chagrined as we followed our host’s welcoming arm gestures into his courtyard. He led us up a short flight of steps into a room on the first floor, bare except for carpets and cushions. I was removing my shoes when our host, a tall, tanned man in his sixties, asked me whether I was hot. When I replied that I was, he suggested I go down to visit his daughter in the basement, adding that Shahida spoke English. He pointed me down the stairs, so I climbed down, pushed a curtain aside, and found a middle aged woman sitting cross legged on the floor. She turned out to be the archaeologist’s wife, but Shahida appeared very soon, and they both made me feel very welcome.

We soon began a conversation about weddings: weddings, it seems are scandalously expensive in Mazar – up to thirty thousand dollars... The costs are so high because it is a shame not to invite several hundreds of people, and continue celebrating for over three days, for fear of the neighbours downturning their mouths and shaking their heads scornfully. This means that some men are quite old when they get married, after saving up for decades. The two ladies were greatly amused by my failure to guess their ages – having ascertained that the daughter was unmarried, I could not believe she could be a day older than me, if that – in fact, she is 36. Having digested that information, I was able to make a better guess at the mother’s age, although she really did look good for a 52 year old, who has had her share of sadness.

When I asked my hostess how many children she had, I accidentally stumbled on a tragic story, as it seems I so often do in these situations. She told me she had had five, but her eldest son had died in a car accident, two weeks before his wedding, a year and a half ago. The cheerful mood didn’t recover after that, as the mother shed silent slow tears for the remainder of my visit, whilst valiantly pressing melon on me, which I felt disinclined to eat… while the daughter went off to perform her absolutions and then their prayers at one end of the room.
I promised to visit them again, and as I left tried on my first burqa – and I don’t mind if it proves to be my last as they are insufferably hot. But don’t get me started on the subject of hijab today.

a beggar in her burqa outside the main mosque 

this gentleman sells very fine falafel