Celebrating Nowruz in Mazar-i-Sharif

We chose to cel­e­brate the Per­sian New Year, Nowruz in Mazar-i-Sharif because it is the epi­cen­ter of cel­e­bra­tion in Afghanistan. Over 200,000 peo­ple con­gre­gate at the Rowze-e-Sharif Mosque which the Afghan Shia believe hous­es the tomb of Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Tal­ib whom they con­sid­er Islam’s first Imam. Nowruz is offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized as a nation­al hol­i­day and high rank­ing offi­cials attend the celebrations.

Although the fes­tiv­i­ties are cen­tered on the Mosque, Novruz is a pre-Islam­ic hol­i­day that is not men­tioned in the Koran. Because of this, accord­ing to some of the Sun­ni tra­di­tion, it is con­sid­ered bid’ah (a pro­hib­it­ed addi­tion to the reli­gion.) The Shia on the oth­er hand, con­sid­er it a cel­e­bra­tion of Hazrat Ali’s ascent to the Caliphate on this day in 656 AD.

Both the con­cen­tra­tion of peo­ple and the reli­gious ten­sions sur­round­ing the hol­i­day gave us good rea­son to stay espe­cial­ly alert. The Afghan Nation­al Army (ANA) was equal­ly con­cerned, essen­tial­ly apply­ing a thick secu­ri­ty blan­ket to the cen­ter of Mazar, pro­hibit­ing any civil­ian car traf­fic and screen­ing pedestrians.

Air­port

Civil­ian Air­ports in Afghanistan aren’t much more than an airstrip sur­round­ed by barbed wire. You land, walk onto the tar­mac, out the chain link fence and you’re done.

At 8AM on the morn­ing of Nowruz, we found our­selves in a desert, 8 miles out­side the city, car­ry­ing a heavy load, and with­out trans­porta­tion. Because of the mil­i­tary lock-down, trans­port vehi­cles were not able to reach the airport.

For at least a mile on the road lead­ing to the air­port, ANA sol­diers were spaced every fifty feet. They shift­ed their weight from foot to foot, smoked cig­a­rettes and stared out across a vast flat plane.

There wasn’t much for us to do oth­er than walk, and so we did.

A con­voy blazed past us towards the air­port. It was com­prised of fifty fan­cy SUVs, (Mer­cedes, Audi, and Toy­ota Land­cruis­ers) fol­lowed by fifty police and mil­i­tary trucks, most­ly 4x4 Toy­ota HiLux pick­ups (a favorite of the Tal­iban) with four seats in the truck beds for sol­diers with guns. Many had machine guns mount­ed on the roof of the cab.

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly we land­ed at the same time as Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai and Gov­er­nor Atta Muham­mad Nur and these boys were here to escort them into town for a pub­lic appear­ance at the mosque.

After a few miles of walk­ing, we found a taxi which we shared with a fel­low pedes­tri­an, a UNDP employ­ee. As the city was cor­doned off, the taxi dropped us on the perimeter.

Hotel Barat

Hotel book­ings were at a pre­mi­um for the dura­tion of Nowruz, hard to find and with goug­ing prices. We relied on our friend Mai­wand (the cap­tain of Mazar’s bas­ket­ball team) to secure us a room at a pre­mi­um loca­tion. But in order to hon­or our reser­va­tion, the hotel insist­ed that we pay for sev­er­al extra nights in advance. As this was the best option (and frankly there wasn’t anoth­er) we had to give in.

Work­ing through a maze of secu­ri­ty check­points, we even­tu­al­ly got to our hotel. On the way we learned that the mosque grounds were only open to women in the morn­ing (at least until after Karzai’s appearance.)

Recep­tion strug­gled to find us a room, say­ing that they assumed we weren’t com­ing since we hadn’t showed up two days ago. They had to con­cede all sleep­ing spaces to the sol­diers who were every­where, even on the roof of the hotel, and had cots there too!

We respond­ed that we paid for the two nights before our arrival only because it was their con­di­tion for reserv­ing the room. Even­tu­al­ly, they kicked out the sol­diers and gave us a room on the top floor.

From our win­dow, you could sur­vey the entire grounds and gar­dens of the mosque. They con­sti­tute a siz­able city park, a square per­haps a quar­ter mile to a side.

It was a dis­play of pri­ma­ry col­ors. The blue tiled mosque was gleam­ing in the cen­ter. The gar­dens were fes­tive­ly dec­o­rat­ed with gar­lands and stream­ers, but pre­dom­i­nant­ly ver­dant green.

Thou­sands of white doves pro­vid­ed an are­al blan­ket, while heli­copters made sur­veil­lance laps above them, drop­ping con­fet­ti and toys on lit­tle red parachutes.

All the TVs were stream­ing live from the main court­yard of the mosque. Karzai was about to speak. We were so close that we heard the loud­speak­ers first and then the TV screen with a slight delay.

Giv­en that we missed a night of sleep, Lou and I actu­al­ly tried to get some rest. An hour lat­er we were jarred awake by the sounds of artillery fire. Along with oth­er hotel patrons, we ran up to the roof to inves­ti­gate. When you hear gun fire and music in Afghanistan, you’re taught to inter­pret that as a wed­ding par­ty. This is also the rea­son why many wed­ding par­ties had been bombed until the mil­i­tary learned to review their intel­li­gence better.

It turned out to be a cel­e­bra­to­ry salute to Karzai.

The Fun­faire at the Blue Mosque

Fail­ing at sleep, we explored the cen­ter of Mazar, its fresh juice stands and shawar­ma joints. When the restric­tion on males was lift­ed, we entered the grounds of the mosque.

The atmosh­pere resem­bled a car­ni­val with ven­dors of col­or­ful bal­loons and toys, blan­ket spreads of semi­precious rocks, jew­el­ry, fes­tive dec­o­ra­tions, hen­na, sur­ma, women’s panties and silk robes.

(Night also revealed thought­ful­ly illu­mi­nat­ed sculp­tures and bill­boards arrayed with LEDs.)

Every­one, but espe­cial­ly the youth, were fes­tooned to the Nowruz max. Girls and boys were active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the gaze econ­o­my, the cau­tious give and take, yet not too much of either; cast­ing furtive glances, and if caught, walk­ing straight away.

The boys put on their shini­est shirts and fan­ci­est brimmed hats.

I even saw some girls faces, some­thing entire­ly unimag­in­able in Jalal­abad. But even under the blue burqa clad major­i­ty you could spy the glam­or of the out­fits beneath and guess at the delib­er­a­tion expend­ed to com­pose them. Lit­tle accents on their ankles and toes com­mu­ni­cat­ed vol­umes with the small can­vas that mod­esty afforded.

Were you a bach­e­lor in this cli­mate and only focused on the can­di­dates whose face you could see, you’d be dis­crim­i­nat­ing against the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion. I must admit, there is a cer­tain intrigue in not know­ing what is behind the cur­tain. We saw a boy, tail­ing two glam­orous girls in burqas, tempt­ing them in a very uni­ver­sal way, “I have a car.”

This gave new mean­ing to the term “blind date”.

It all felt very for­eign from the Afghanistan I came to know and rely on while liv­ing in con­ser­v­a­tive Jalal­abad. While even in Jalal­abad it was impos­si­ble not to read into the per­son­al frus­tra­tions of every­one you got to know indi­vid­u­al­ly, it was nev­er on pub­lic dis­play, like this, by everyone.

 

Jahen­da Bala

In the inner court­yard, a group of Shia hud­dled close and were work­ing them­selves into a trance by chant­i­ng. They were present for the Jahen­da Bala, a flag rais­ing cer­e­mo­ny, com­mem­o­rat­ing the col­ors of the ban­ner that Hazrat Ali raised in bat­tle for Islam.

This reli­gious prac­tice was pro­hib­it­ed dur­ing the time of the Tal­iban and to the con­di­tioned eye of a Sun­ni Pash­tun, it still seemed like the work of heretics.

Even Najib revealed his prej­u­dice. His face became flush and he said, “Let’s go. I’ll tell you about this later.”

Afghan Nation­al Army’s most heav­i­ly armed man

We spent a cou­ple hours wait­ing for Najib’s friend Sheikh in the com­pa­ny of the ANA’s most heav­i­ly armed man. He had a quiver with four RPGs and car­ried anoth­er loaded one in his hand.

Najib guid­ed us next to him and remarked that we were in the safest place in town, but I did not agree with his assess­ment. There wasn’t a place for miles in over­crowd­ed Mazar where such a weapon could be used effec­tive­ly with­out sub­stan­tial col­lat­er­al dam­age. In fact, being next to such a war machine made me feel like more of a target.

Besides, the RPG slinger said he had only ever fired four rounds, all for prac­tice. It’s an expen­sive plea­sure. He claimed each round cost $10,000 but I doubt he knew what he was talk­ing about.

There were a few kids hang­ing out with the sol­diers. Fre­quent­ly, they’d ask to play with the guns or just tugged at the bar­rels with­out ask­ing. And sol­diers, who were Afghan kids them­selves and could relate, oblig­ed, non­cha­lant­ly pass­ing the guns around with­out so much as a word of cau­tion to not point them at people.

Sheikh and Nasir

We were wait­ing for “Sheikh”. He’s a busi­ness asso­ciate of Najib’s rel­a­tive Nasir. Nasir had recent­ly run up a huge debt with Najib and then dis­ap­peared. Such a thing strains but does­n’t nul­li­fy friend­ships. Najib lament­ed, “if only we were still on good terms with Nasir, we could ride across the entire north of Afghanistan and have peo­ple slaugh­ter goats in our hon­or and show us a good time. Sheikh was our stand in for Nasir and though I don’t know what it would have been like with Nasir, Sheikh was an excel­lent host.

Sheikh car­ried him­self with the air of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man on the verge of secur­ing a large con­struc­tion con­tract with the Amer­i­cans which would make him even more successful.

His first ges­ture was to give a crisp 100$ bill to his nephew (who dou­bled as his min­ion and dri­ver) to get us “something”. He then flagged down a Pash­tun police com­man­der and got us an escort to the governor’s pri­vate­ly owned amuse­ment park on the south­ern reach­es of the city.

Once inside, we were sur­round­ed by blinky lights, LEDs, glowy orbs and illu­mi­nat­ed sculp­tures. It was strange­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Burn­ing Man. Frankly, much of this adven­ture felt that way. Najib got ride tokens.

Ali

In line for one of the carousel rides, we met a Russ­ian speak­ing boy, Ali. He over­heard me talk­ing to Najib and came to make friends. We talked about his time in Rus­sia, his fas­ci­na­tion with Hip Hop. On his shoul­der he car­ried a large boom box. He wore huge sun­glass­es. His skater hat was at an angle. His shoe laces were neon green and pink. We were yelling in Russ­ian, Eng­lish and Pash­to, all of Sheikh, Ali, Lou, Najib and me; all scream­ing over each oth­er, mer­ry mak­ing. One of the guards approached us and tried to get Lou to leave the men’s line (where we all were and hadn’t even real­ized there was a sep­a­rate one.) Najib and Ali start­ed berat­ing him loud­ly, even­tu­al­ly shoo­ing him away. We were whipped around on teth­ered swings and even got pudgy Sheikh to strap in for the flight with us.

Oth­er People’s Women

We toured the amuse­ments and spot­ted a large group of girls sit­ting around a pic­nic blan­ket. Najib cau­tioned us about walk­ing too close. He said that they are oth­er people’s women and if we approached too close, we may have to resolve the mat­ter with their men.

Chars

Sheikh’s dri­ver reap­peared with “chars” (the Afghan word for hash). Sheikh’s chars han­dling skills were mas­ter­full, like a true char­si (chars user). We sat on train tracks in the process. Through Najib’s trans­la­tion Sheikh inquired about the logis­tics of com­ing to the US and specif­i­cal­ly how much mon­ey he’d need to save up in order to have a week’s worth of good times. “Will $20,000 be enough?” I asked his inten­tions. He replied defen­sive­ly, “no casi­no, no bars, no girls… just nor­mal things.” I said that a few thou­sand should be plen­ty. “And what if … what if, we did some casi­no, some bar and some girls?”

 

Jama Khan

The next day Sheik showed up with a new side kick, 19 year old Jama Khan. Jama is the son of war­lord Coman­dan Haji Akhtar دمحم رتخا ېجاح Coman­dan Haji Akhtar is on the Balkh Provin­cial Coun­cil and has a pret­ty awe­some ride (4x4 SUV).

Accord­ing to Jama and Sheikh, Jama’s old­est broth­er Wali Muham­mad Ibrahim Khil was killed by Amer­i­cans after the gov­er­nor Atta Muham­mad Nur told them he was work­ing with the Tal­iban. Whether he was or was­n’t, it used to be that say­ing some­thing like this to the Amer­i­cans was a rather good way to elim­i­nate a pow­er­ful competitor.

Sheikh was ten­ta­tive with our plans. “Where you want to go? How about you come to my village?”

Ah, that elu­sive Afghan vil­lage(!), idyl­lic, pas­toral, won­der­ful, and … every­thing, except it’s infest­ed by Tal­iban.  (Najib tells us that this is espe­cial­ly true of Sheikh’s village.)

Sheikh insist­ed, “I’ll make sure you are safe.”

Najib said “Thank you, but NO” on our behalf and instead we aimed the SUV for the neigh­bor­ing city of Balkh.

Pic­nic in Balkh

Balkh is a frail old­er broth­er to Mazar. It is an ancient city (4,000 years old) and a his­tor­i­cal cen­ter of Zoroas­tri­an­ism. Due to a Malar­ia out­break in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, the region­al cap­i­tal shift­ed to Mazar-i-Sharif (but the province is still called Balkh.)

In con­trast to Mazar’s square grid around the Blue Mosque, Balk is arranged in a radi­al grid around a cir­cu­lar park con­tain­ing the Green Mosque.

While his min­ion picked up a bag full of meat in town, Sheikh gave us a guid­ed tour of the park. We then dropped the meat at a near­by relative’s house which we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly raid­ed for pic­nic sup­plies: a large ther­mos of tea, a whole ser­vice of tea cups, vinyl table cloths and woven rugs.

From there we climbed the ancient city walls of Balkh to get good views and to select the per­fect (read “isolated”) pic­nic spot. Sheikh decid­ed on a fur­rowed field next to a shady grove where he unfurled the car­pets in such a way that the fur­rows became recessed rows of seats around an ele­vat­ed table.

A few more rel­a­tives appeared with the meat, already pre­pared, in a pot.

Hun­gry, we ate the lamb, the Afghans teach­ing us to suck out the mar­row, and got our hands greasy and then han­dled cups of tea and Pep­si bot­tles, spread­ing the grease; and then made futile attempts to wipe our hands clean with tis­sue papers, which are the nap­kins of choice in Afghanistan.

What if “men with gun­s” appear?

The con­ver­sa­tion turned to the sub­ject of safe­ty and how nice it is that we are sit­ting here with a war­lords son (Jama Khan) which would be use­ful if men with guns appeared.

To which, Jama respond­ed by say­ing that we’re safe not because of him, but because Sheikh is here.

To which Sheikh said, that if guns appear there won’t be a Sheikh here, because guns are guns and bul­lets don’t discriminate.

To which, every­body laughed and con­sid­ered the sit­u­a­tion resolved to the extent possible.

Kid­s’ Table

Not twen­ty feet off, behind the grove of trees, a few kids were pick­ing at the mud and glanc­ing at us with mis­chie­vous faces. Sheikh first shooed them away, but when they didn’t budge, he invit­ed them to eat with us, and when they proved too shy to respond, he round­ed up a bunch of meat on a plate and half of a Pep­si bot­tle and gave it to them. And so our pic­nic picked up a children’s table.

Girls can drive?

Back in Mazar, Sheikh itched to go back to the carousels. Jama Khan want­ed to dri­ve his jeep into the moun­tains. We com­pro­mised by dri­ving out of the city past the car­ni­val grounds where Jama could show us a bit of reck­less dri­ving. Then he turned to Lou and said, that if he could see a girl dri­ve a Jeep offroad that would real­ly make his day. And Lou took him up. In all our time in Afghanistan, we saw a female the behind the wheel just once, (and it was the Shari-Naw neigh­bor­hood of Kabul.)

Ran­som for a Good Time

We ini­tial­ly met up with Sheikh in order to pay him back the 100$ deposit he had sub­mit­ted on our behalf to Hotel Barat. And while I had giv­en the mon­eys to Najib, he hadn’t com­plet­ed the trans­fer to Sheikh. When I asked him about it, he said “Wait, I’ll give it to him at the end. This way he still has a rea­son to hang out with us and show us a good time!”

Our final day in Mazar we got some shop­ping done, and before long Jama Khan was call­ing ask­ing to hang out. He showed up with a body guard who he proud­ly announced was on the min­istry of interior’s pay­roll. To prove the point he made the boy pull out his ID card and show us. Sur­pris­ing­ly the ID card was also his salary card. It does­n’t real­ly mat­ter who you are until you show up in front of the cashier at the bank. When you col­lect YOUR salary is when it is impor­tant to know who YOU are.

Today Jama want­ed to go show us the moun­tains he didn’t get to the day before, and so we drove south, past the gar­gan­tu­an Sovi­et bread fac­to­ry, past the car­ni­val grounds, past emp­ty streets of sub­di­vid­ed lots with retain­ing walls and some con­struc­tion, and then streets with lots with­out con­struc­tion, just retain­ing walls, and then lots, but no retain­ing walls, but just grav­elled roads in a grid, and out­door sewage ditch­es mark­ing their bound­aries antic­i­pat­ing the city’s expan­sion. There were only shep­herds there to graze their sheep, though there wasn’t much (left) to graze. The sheep tried to escape the heat by hid­ing in sewage ditches.

But Jama drove onward.

Juma Khan drove with­out regard for streets. He re-land­scaped the hills.

All of these plots, I learned lat­er, were from a planned expan­sion of the city orches­trat­ed by the gov­er­nor. We’ll be big­ger soon! The state can make mon­ey sell­ing plots of land!

After dri­ving for a while we seemed no clos­er to the moun­tains in the dis­tance. We were in the steppe and occa­sion­al­ly you could spot anoth­er group that voy­aged to these hills.  This is where they came to escape the bus­tle of the city (and the Tal­iban of the vil­lage.) This is where they came to be alone with their fam­i­lies. These were the “mountains” that Jama want­ed to take us to, as this is where he would come with his friends, rip donuts in his 4x4 and toke the chars.

Buzkashi

(Click here for a more in-depth descrip­tion of the game. )

Novruz is also the cul­mi­na­tion of a Buzkashi sea­son and so we asked Jama to takes us to the match. It became clear after some prod­ding that he didn’t feel com­fort­able going.

It turns out that just like Amer­i­can oil tycoons buy foot­ball teams, Afghan war­lords main­tain sta­bles of buzkashi hors­es and teams of star rid­ers under their care.

The buzkashi field there­fore is not real­ly a safe place. It’s proxy war. But real war occa­sion­al­ly breaks out in the stands also. It’s the one pub­lic event where per­son­al scores are set­tled by assassination.

In the end, Jama agreed to take us, but “only for a lit­tle bit”.

These buzkashi grounds were very dif­fer­ent from the mud­dy snowy pit we vis­it­ed in the Pan­jshir Val­ley. It was a large hot dusty field lord­ed over by a gar­gan­tu­an Sovi­et bread fac­to­ry. On one side were the stands, seat­ing sev­er­al thou­sand peo­ple. A water truck was zig zag­ging through the field dur­ing the game, spray­ing the ground, try­ing to keep the dust down.

Jama dis­ap­peared and left us with his body guard. When he returned, it was on a horse. The buzkashi hors­es aren’t too tall, as then it would be too hard to reach down and grab the dead goat from the sad­dle, but they are hard work­ers. All of the hors­es were drenched in sweat yet they per­sist­ed in run­ning full gal­lop at the min­i­mal urging.

In fact, a buzkashi horse is hard to keep still. If you don’t do any­thing, it takes off. It’s like hav­ing a car with­out the gas ped­al. It always assumes the ped­al is floored. You have to active­ly say stop.

The hors­es are also remark­ably easy to rear. Both Lou and I gave the hors­es a try and suc­cess­ful­ly got them on their back legs, kick­ing in the air, over and over again.

With Jama by our side, we were a part of the action rather than pas­sive observers.

Our sched­ule was tight. From the horse track, we went to the bas­ket­ball court.

Bas­ket­ball Practice

My pipe dream for Mazar was that Najib and I get to join the Mazar bas­ket­ball team for a prac­tice ses­sion. I tried get­ting in touch with Mur­ta­zo, but for a cou­ple days all his text mes­sages report­ed that his father for­bid him to go out­side because it was dangerous.

Our con­nec­tion was Mai­wand, the cap­tain, the same guy who helped us out with the hotel. When we met Mai­wand, Najib grabbed him lov­ing­ly and they walked hand in hand all the way to the bas­ket­ball court.

Nei­ther Najib nor I were pre­pared to play, but they took care of us, giv­ing us sneak­ers and shorts and uni­forms and we went through the whole stretch­ing, warmup and exer­cise rou­tine. They split us up into teams and we played a few prac­tice matches.

At one point, there was a loud BOOM and a pil­lar of smoke rose just behind the wall of the court. Some of us ducked to the groud, but then Mur­ta­zo laughed, “it’s just a truck tire blow out!” and we went back to playing.

Half way through prac­tice, there was a tea break.

Many of the boys spoke to me in Russ­ian on the court. They were com­mon­ly Uzbeks or Tajiks edu­cat­ed across the bor­der. The coach had also stud­ied in Russia.

Najib tried some fan­ci­ful spin move and end­ed up twist­ing his ankle. Just as he sat on the bench, Sheikh arrived. He came bear­ing gifts, some per­fume for me and face cream for Louisa. At that point Najib asked him for Nasir’s where­abouts and gave him the 100$ bill.

Farewell Afghanistan, farewell Najib …

The next morn­ing we were out of Mazar and the next day we were in Delhi.

Nai­jb was on the verge of tears when we part­ed. “It will be bor­ing with­out you. Thank you. You’ve changed my life. I will nev­er for­get you.” I owe him at least a blog post, and prob­a­bly a lot more, so that you will under­stand why.

I’ll just add, since it’s a feel­ing that I’d rather not for­get, but when we board­ed the Air India air­plane in Kab­ul and I saw the female flight atten­dant walk by in a pair of tight fit­ting pants, I felt abashed­ly tit­il­lat­ed. There was a sight I had been deprived for the past three and a half months. Absurd, I know, sorry.