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!