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Friday, Jan 9, 2009
Since the Taliban fell, weddings are a time to sing and drink and party. But some things haven't changed: Nadar didn't meet his bride until their wedding day.
Jan 23, 2002 | Here comes Lal Aga at a hundred miles an hour. It's cold out but he doesn't feel it. The men of Jalalabad are wearing their woolen shawls wrapped up to their chins, but he doesn't need one because he's too fast, he is 8 years old. The poor girl who is always begging alms at the bazaar pulls on his sleeve, but he's in a hurry to meet his father. The bazaar is his, he knows it, the motion as well as the labyrinth of sellers, the money changers and their neat piles of notes under glass, the hardware men with their hammers and anvils. Lal Aga runs through them one by one; they are blur, sound and smoke.
In Pashto, Lal Aga is a chagart, a bazaari's son. His job is to run errands for his father all day without stopping, taking messages, bringing tea, ferrying measurements to the tailors across the street, picking up finished clothes and collecting money. Lal Aga is a green-eyed telegraph wire.
When he gets to his father's store he is told to bring tea for the guests.
Hajji Mohammed Jan, Lal Aga's father, has worked in the bazaar on Dand a Gara Street for the last 10 years, selling cloth from China and Pakistan. Mostly silks, velvet and cotton. He doesn't sell finished articles, just the raw material. If someone wants a dress made, they have their measurements taken in the store; they buy the cloth from him, and then he sends Lal Aga to take it across the street for a few rupees. They usually have the work finished the next day. The tailors do business on the second floor of the market, open to the air, and he can tell which order they are working on without asking them, since their place is directly across from his.
Hajji Mohammed Jan's shop is a 10-foot by 20-foot box whose short side opens to the street. There aren't any windows because there are shops on each side. But his place is comfortable, has carpets, a pillow for relaxing and a wooden money box which he doesn't lock all the time. When he feels like it, he'll ask the customers to stay for tea and a chat. From the street, the store is a mosaic of colors because Hajji Mohammed has covered the walls with his samples.
Aman, my friend and translator, took me to Hajji Mohmamed's to get some new clothes for our friend Nadar's wedding. Nadar was the proud owner of the decrepit Land Cruiser we used for moving around the country. The next night there was a going to be a big celebration at Nadar's family's place on the edge of the city. Hajji Mohammed pulled bolts of cloth from the shelves, rolling them out on the floor for our inspection. We tested the fabric with our fingers, held it up to the light.
Salwars are loose pants, like pajama bottoms, tied with a cord, and the kameez is a long shirt that fits over them, with a flap in the front and rear. Afghan men also wear a waskat over the kameez, which looks exactly like a suit vest, but has been altered to have a large number of inside secret pockets for cash, or the odd contraband item. The final piece of the national dress, and the most easily recognizable, is a woolen shawl that is thrown over the left shoulder after wrapping around the chest.
Hajji Mohammed's older son took the measurements for the salwar and kameez, calculated the size and handed the slip to Aman.
"Five meters!"
"Is that big?" I wanted to know.
"It's a lot."
Everyone at Hajji Mohammad's thought it was remarkable. Lal Aga took off with the fabric, saying it would be ready at 9 the next morning.
In the early evening, we drove out to the wedding feast on the outskirts of Jalalabad, parked the car and walked down a dark alley into a cloud of hashish smoke. Nadar's place was at the end of the street. Afghan drivers are wicked stoners, and tonight Nadar's friends and relatives were having a final blow out before his wedding the next day. We spent the night in a guest room, leaning on pillows, drinking a bottle of single malt scotch I brought from London. Every so often, one of Nadar's family members would come into the room with a crafty look on his face, take a quick look at our glasses, and then ask for a snort. Most of them were baked out of their skulls on fragrant black hashish to begin with.
One of Nadar's relatives, when trying to take a souvenir photo, keeled over in mid-shot.
"What would the Taliban have done if they caught you drinking whiskey?" I asked Nadar. He drew a finger across his throat, meaning the drinker's contract would be permanently canceled. They laughed. Jalalabad had been under Taliban control for five years, and everyone at Nadar's wedding was so happy to be rid of them, they went off the deep end, making up for lost time. Celebrations like this had been taking place all over the city for two months. We talked with Tor Mohammed, Javid and Farhad, Nadar's brothers. Tor Mohammed is a motorcycle mechanic in his late 20s; Javid and Farhad are much younger.
During the joyless period of Taliban rule, they said, weddings had been reduced to solemn affairs presided over by the local mullah. Nadar's family had something different in mind to celebrate this marriage.
It wasn't all that late when Aman said to me, "Come on, it's time to go."
"Why?" I was happy to stay there for days.
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