After hours of speeches the flag is to be raised at last, Ali’s green flag, janda, which has not been raised for five years. The flagpole lies on the ground, the top facing the mosque. To the beating of drums and the rejoicing of the crowds Karzai raises the pole, and the religious flag is run up. It will fly for forty days. Shots are fired and the barriers opened. The ten thousand who have been waiting outside pile in, to the mosque, the tomb and the flag.
Mansur has had enough of crowds and celebrations and wants to shop. Ali will have to wait. He has been thinking about it for a long time. Every family member will get a present. If everyone gets a bite of the journey his father will be better disposed towards him in the future.
He buys prayer rugs, kerchiefs and prayer beads. Then he buys sugar crystals - big crystals which one bites pieces off and crunches in tea. He knows that his grandmother, Bibi Gul, will forgive every sin he has ever committed or is ever likely to commit if he returns home with the heavy sugar crystals that are made only in Mazar. In addition he buys dresses and jewellery for his aunts, and sunglasses for his uncles and brothers. He has never seen sunglasses for sale in Kabul. Loaded down with all this, in large, pink plastic bags advertising ‘Pleasure - Special Light Cigarettes’, he returns to Kalif Ali’s grave. The New Year presents must be blessed.
He carries them into the actual crypt, and goes over to the mullahs who are sitting by the gold-painted wall inside the tomb. He places the gifts in front of one of them, who reads from the Koran and breathes over the gifts. When the prayer has been said, Mansur packs the things back into the plastic bags and hastens on.
By the golden wall one can utter a wish. In keeping with the patriotic speeches he leans his forehead against the wall and prays: That he one day will be proud of being an Afghan. That he one day will be proud of himself and his country and that Afghanistan may become a country that will be respected in the world. Not even Hamid Karzai could have put it better.
Intoxicated by all the sights and sounds, Mansur has forgotten the prayer of purification and forgiveness, the reason for his coming to Mazar. He has forgotten the little beggar girl, her thin little body, the big pale-brown eyes, the matted hair.
He leaves the tomb and goes over to Ali’s flag. Here too are mullahs who accept Mansur’s plastic bags. But they do not have time to take the gifts out of the bags. The queue of people who want carpets, beads, food and kerchiefs blessed is enormous. The mullahs just grab Mansur’s plastic bags, brush them hastily up against the pole, mumble a prayer and give them back. Mansur tosses them some notes; the prayer carpets and sugar lumps have been blessed yet again.
He looks forward to giving them away, to his grandmother, to Sultan, to his aunts and uncles. Mansur walks around smiling. He is pure happiness. Away from the shop, away from his father’s grip. He walks down the pavement outside the mosque with Akbar and Said.
‘This is the best day of my life! The best day,’ he cries. Akbar and Said look at him in astonishment, rather embarrassed, but they are touched that he is so happy. ‘I love Mazar, I love Ali, I love freedom! I love you!’ he cries and jumps along the street. It is the first time he has travelled alone, the first day in his whole life that he has not seen a member of his family.
They decide to watch a buzkashi fight. The northern territories are famous for having the hardest, roughest, fastest buzkashis. From afar they see that the fight has already started. Clouds of dust lie over the plain, where two hundred mounted men fight over a headless calf’s carcass. The horses bite and kick, rear up and jump, while the horse-men, whip between their teeth, try to snatch the carcass on the ground. Possession of the calf changes so rapidly that it looks as if it is thrown from rider to rider. The aim is to move the calf from one end of the plain to the other and place it inside a circle on the ground. Some fights are so violent that the animal is torn to bits.
To an outsider new to the game it might look as though the horses are just racing after each other across the plain with the riders balancing in the saddle. The riders wear long embroidered coats, high-heeled, thigh-high, decorated leather boots and buzkashi hats, a small lambskin hat like a bowler edged in fur.
‘Karzai!’ cries Mansur when he spots the Afghan leader out on the plain, ‘and Dostum!’
The tribal chief and the warlord are fighting each other for possession of the calf. To emerge as a strong leader it is necessary to take part in buzkashi fights and not merely ride around in circles outside the chaos, but commit oneself to the heat of the battle. But everything has a price. Sometimes mighty men pay to win.
Karzai rides around on the outskirts of the battle and is not quite able to maintain the other riders’ lethal tempo. The tribal chief from the south never quite learnt the buzkashi’s brutal rules. This is a Plains battle. It is the great son of the Plains, General Dostum, who wins, or at least whom the buzkashi let win. That might be worth their while. Dostum sits like a commander on his horse and accepts the applause.
Sometimes two teams compete, at other times it is everyone for themselves. Buzkashi is one of the wildest games in the world, brought to Afghanistan by the Mongols, who devastated the country under Genghis Khan. It is also a game about money; powerful men amongst the public pay out millions of Afghani for each round. The more money the wilder the game. And it is a game with political significance. A local chief is either himself a good buzkashi fighter or keeps a stable with good horses and riders. Victory is synonymous with respect.
Ever since the fifties the Afghan authorities have tried to formalise the fights. The participants merely nod their heads; they know the rules would be impossible to uphold anyway. Even after the Soviet invasion the tournaments continued, in spite of chaos in the country; many participants could not turn up for fights, as they had to cross battlefields to get to the venue. The Communists, who tried to get rid of most of Afghanistan’s deep-rooted traditions, never dared touch the buzkashi fights. On the contrary, they tried to ingratiate themselves with the locals by arranging tournaments; one Communist dictator after another appeared on the stands, as one relieved another following bloody coups. Nevertheless, Communism tore down much of the foundations of buzkashi fights. When collectivisation started few could afford to keep a stable of well-trained horses. The buzkashi horses were scattered to the four winds and used as farm-horses. When the landowners disappeared so did the fighting horses and the riders.
The Taliban forbade the fights and classified them as un-Islamic. This one now is the first big buzkashi fight since the fall of the Taliban.
Mansur has found a place right at the front; sometimes he has to retreat fast to avoid being trampled on by rearing horses. He takes lots of pictures, of the horses’ bellies, which appear towering over him; of the whirling dust; the battered calf; of a tiny Karzai at a great distance; and a victorious Dostum. After the fight he takes a picture of himself beside one of the buzkashis.
The sun is setting and sends red rays over the dusty plain. The pilgrims too are covered in dust. Outside the arena they find a café. They sit on thin mats opposite each other and eat in silence. Soup, rice, mutton and raw onion. Mansur gobbles the food and orders another round. They silently greet some men who sit in a circle near them, arm-wrestling. When the tea is served, the talk can begin.
‘From Kabul?’ ask the men.
Mansur nods.
‘Pilgrimage?’
The men hesitate. ‘We’re actually travelling with quail,’ an old, toothless man answers. ‘From Herat. We’ve made a big circle, Kandahar, Kabul and then up here. This is where the best quail fights are.’
He carefully takes a small bag out of his pocket. Out of it trips a bird, a dishevelled little quail. ‘It has won all the fights we have entered it for,’ he says. ‘We have won pots of money. Now it’s worth several thousand dollars,’ he boasts. The old man feeds the quail with worn, crooked fingers, like eagle’s claws. The quail shakes its feathers and wakes up. It is so tiny that it fits into the man’s large, rough fist. They are labourer
s who have taken time off. After five years of secret quail-fighting, hidden from the Taliban, they can now live their passion, to watch two birds pecking each other to death. Or rather, shout with joy, when their own little quail pecks another to death.
‘Come tomorrow morning, early, at seven. That’s when we’ll start,’ the old man says. As they are leaving he presses a large piece of hashish on them. ‘The best in the world,’ he says. ‘From Herat.’
In the hotel they try out the hashish and roll one joint after another. Then they sleep like stones for twelve hours.
Mansur wakes up with a start at the mullah’s call to prayer. It is half-past twelve. Prayer starts in the mosque outside. Friday prayer. He suddenly feels he cannot live on without Friday prayer. He must go and he must be on time. He has forgotten his shalwar kameez in Kabul, the tunic and wide-legged trousers. He cannot go to Friday prayer in his western clothes. He is desperate. Where can he buy proper prayer clothes? All shops are closed. He rages and swears.
‘Allah won’t mind what you are wearing,’ grumbles Akbar sleepily, hoping to get rid of him.
‘I must wash, and the water has been turned off in the hotel,’ Mansur whimpers. But there is no Leila to blame and Akbar sends him packing when he starts moaning. But water. A Muslim cannot pray without washing his face, hands and feet. Mansur moans again, ‘I won’t make it.’
‘There’s water by the mosque,’ says Akbar and closes his eyes once more.
Mansur runs out in his dirty travel clothes. How could he forget his tunic on a pilgrimage? Or the prayer cap? He curses his forgetfulness and runs out to the blue mosque to make it on time. By the entrance is a beggar with a club foot. The stiff leg is swollen and discoloured and lies across the path, infected. Mansur tears the prayer cap off him.
‘You’ll get it back,’ he calls and runs off with the grey-white cap. It has a thick yellow-brown sweatband round the edge.
He leaves his shoes by the entrance and walks barefoot over the marble flagstones. They have been polished smooth by thousands of naked feet. He washes hands and feet, pushes the cap down on his head and walks over to the row of men who lie facing Mecca. He made it. In many tens of rows with at least one hundred to a row, pilgrims sit, head bowed, in the huge space. Mansur sits down at the back and follows the prayers; after a while he is right in the midst of the crowd - several rows have been added as more people arrive. He is the only one wearing western clothes, but he pays attention, forehead to the ground, bottom in the air, fifteen times. He recites the prayers he knows and listens to Rabbani’s Friday prayer, a repetition from the day before.
Prayers take place by a barrier round the mosque behind which the helplessly sick sit and wait for healings. They have been confined behind high fences so as not to infect the healthy. Pale, consumptive old men with sunken cheeks pray that Ali will give them strength. Amongst them are also the mentally retarded. A teenage boy claps his hands frantically, while an older brother tries to calm him down. But the majority of them gaze dully out through the bars. Mansur has never seen so many terminally ill people. The group smells of sickness and death. Only the most ill have been allowed the honour to sit here and ask Ali for healing. Up against the tomb’s walls they sit cheek by jowl; the closer to the blue mosaic wall, the closer to healing.
In two weeks they will all be dead, thinks Mansur. He catches the eye of a man with piercing black eyes and deep, red scars. The long bony arms are full of rashes and sores, which have been scratched until they bleed, as are the legs that poke out of his tunic. But he has beautiful, thin, pale pink lips. Lips like petals from spring’s apricot flowers.
Mansur shivers and turns away. His gaze sweeps the next compound. There are the sick women and children. Faded blue burkas cradling children. A mother has fallen asleep, while her mongoloid child tries to say something. But it is like talking to a statue under a blue covering. Maybe the mother has been walking for days, barefoot, to get to the mosque and Ali’s grave in time for New Year’s Eve. Maybe she carried the child in her arms - to heal it. No doctor can help her, maybe Ali can.
Another child hits its head rhythmically with its hands. Some women sit apathetically, others sleep, some are lame or blind. But the majority of them have come with their children. They are waiting for Ali’s miracles.
It gives Mansur the creeps. Gripped by the powerful atmosphere he decides to become a new person. He will become a good person and a pious Muslim. He will respect the hour of prayer, give alms, he will fast, go to the mosque, not look at girls before he is married, he will grow a beard, and go to Mecca.
The moment prayers are over and Mansur has made his promises, it starts to rain. The sun is shining and it is raining. The holy building and the slippery flagstones sparkle. The raindrops shine. It pours down. Mansur runs, finds his shoes and the beggar who owns the prayer cap. He throws him some notes and runs over the square in the cooling rain. ‘I am blessed,’ he cries. ‘I have been forgiven! I have been cleansed!’
The water said to the dirty one, ‘come here.’
The dirty one said, ‘I am too ashamed.’
The water replied, ‘How will your shame be washed away
without me?’
The Smell of Dust
Steam rises from damp bodies. Hands move in quick, rhythmic motions. The sun’s rays creep in through two peepholes in the roof, bathing bottoms, breasts and thighs in a picturesque light. Initially the bodies in the room can be seen only dimly through the steam, until one gets used to the magical light. The faces show concentration. This is not pleasure, but hard work.
In two large halls women scrub themselves, lying, sitting or standing. They scrub themselves, each other or their children. Some are Rubenesquely fat, others thin as rakes, with protruding ribs. With large homemade hemp gloves they scrub each other’s backs, arms, legs. Hard skin under the feet is scraped off with pumice. Mothers scrub their marriageable daughters whilst carefully scrutinising their bodies. There is not much time before young girls with birdlike chests become breast-feeding mothers. Thin teenage girls have broad stretch marks from births their bodies were not yet ready for. Nearly all the women’s bellies have cracked skin from giving birth too early and too frequently.
The children shout and squeal, from fear or joy. Those who are scrubbed and rinsed play with the washbowls. Others howl in pain and wriggle about like fish caught in a net. No one is given a rag to protect eyes from soap. Mothers scrub them with the hemp gloves until the dirty, dark-brown bodies are pink. Bathing and washing is a battle children are condemned to lose, in their mothers’ firm fists.
Leila rolls dirt and loose skin off her body. Black strips are rubbed off, into the hemp glove or down on to the floor. Several weeks have passed since Leila washed properly and many months since she visited the hammam. There is not often water at home and Leila does not see the need to wash too often - you only get dirty again anyway.
But today she has accompanied her mother and cousins to the hammam. As unmarried women she and her cousins are especially shy, and have kept their bras and pants on. The hemp glove avoids these places. But arms, thighs, legs, back and neck get rough treatment. Drops of perspiration and water blend on their faces, as they scrub, scrape and scour, the harder the cleaner.
Leila’s mother Bibi Gul, who must be nearing seventy, sits naked in a pool on the floor. Her long grey hair, which is normally hidden under a pale-blue shawl, flows down her back. She unties it only in the hammam. It is so long that the ends float around in the pool on the floor. She sits as in a trance, eyes closed, enjoying the heat. Now and again she makes a few lazy efforts at washing. She dips a facecloth in the bowl Leila has put out for her. But she soon gives up, she cannot reach round her tummy and her arms feel too heavy to lift. Her breasts rest heavily over her big stomach. She remains sitting in a trance, stock still, like a big, grey statue.
Leila looks over at her mother now and then to assure herself that she is OK, while she scrubs and prattles with her cousins. The nine
teen-year-old has a childlike body, in between girl and woman. The whole Khan family are on the plump side, certainly compared to Afghan standards. The fat and the cooking-oil they pour over their food are manifested on their bodies. Deep-fried pancakes, pieces of potato dripping in fat, mutton in seasoned cooking-oil gravy. Leila’s skin is pale and immaculate, soft as a baby’s bottom. The facial colour changes between white, yellow and pale grey. The life she leads is reflected in her childlike skin that never sees the sun, and her hands - rough and worn like an old woman’s. For a long time, Leila felt dizzy and weak - when she eventually went to see the doctor, he said she needed sun and vitamin D.
Paradoxically Kabul is one of the sunniest towns in the world. The sun shines nearly every day of the year, 1,800 metres above sea level. The sun makes cracks in the earth, dries up what were once moist gardens, burns the children’s skin. But Leila never sees it. It never reaches the first-floor flat in Mikrorayon, nor in behind her burka. Not one single curative ray gets past the grille. Only when she visits big sister Mariam, who has a backyard in her village house, does she allow the sun to warm her body. But she goes there only on rare occasions.
Leila is the first to get up in the morning and goes to bed last. She lights the stove in the living room with thin sticks, while the sleeping bodies of her family are still snoring. Next she lights the wood-burning stove in the bathroom and boils water for cooking, washing and washing up. Whilst it is still dark she fills bottles, pots and pans with water. There is never electricity at this time of the day and Leila has got used to groping around in the dark.
Sometimes she carries a small lamp. Then she makes tea. It must be ready by half-past six, when the men in the house wake, otherwise she is in trouble. As long as there is water she keeps on filling receptacles. You never know when the water might go off, sometimes after an hour, sometimes after two.