Sylvia's Journal

Our provincial health advisor from Jawzjan province had arranged for a dinner outside Mazar in a place we should have seen by daylight. It was the country house of the father-in-law of a friend of his; a large piece of walled land with a simple mud brick building with a veranda as wide as the house on one side.

Surrounding the house were bird cages with parrots, small colored birds and at least 20 kawks all feathered down for the night. Kawks are the fighting partridge-like birds that you see everywhere in small rattan cages, frantically circling their small space till the next fight.

There was also a wolf, people said, and we walked around the grounds in the dark to find it. It turned out to be a German Sheppard tethered with a frayed rope to a tree. An adorable fluffy puppy was kept in a crate. The puppy will grow into a huge fighting dog. The owner of the house supposedly likes animals but I think he also likes to fight.

Following our host with a flashlight we stumbled over small dikes, through rose gardens, past an empty swimming pool, under the almond trees, a grape arbor with four magnificent peacocks resting on top, and back to the house where the rest of our party had already installed themselves on the flat pillows around the beginnings of a meal.

At the head of the ‘table’ sat an elderly gentleman next to a slighter younger man with a pockmarked face. They were the musicians summoned to enhance our pleasure. As it turned out they are famous in Afghanistan, Hadji Bahawaladin, the tambour nawaz and his table side kick. They are more often seen on stages inside and outside the country playing to large crowds. Our host knew them and has asked them to play in this very intimate setting, just for us.

The older of the two played the tambour, which I always thought were drums; but here a tambour is a kind of zither with a very long neck; the younger man played two full-bellied drums (table) that had a remarkable range of tones. He tuned his drums using a hammer to push small wooden blocks all around the drums up and down under the tense straps that held them in place.

But first we ate: qabuli pilaw, yoghurt, fried fish, kafta kebabs, salad followed by apples and oranges – a fairly standard menu. There was little talk; eating is serious business here. Then, after our walk around the grounds and after the dinner remains were cleared we sat down for an extraordinary and intimate concert. Only at the very end was there some dancing by a few of the resident staff and finally by our own guys, including one of the provincial health advisors who turns out to have a talent for singing.

And with this our trip to Mazar has come to an end. We headed home in a small twin engine over the snow capped mountains again and in less than 45 minutes were back on the ground in Kabul. Alain and I met Axel at the Flower Street Café in Qala Fatoula for a lovely lunch outside.

We drove back to Karte Seh behind a Police truck that was filled with roses – that’s what this place is all about: guns and roses.

It was too late to go to the office after that; we spent the rest of the afternoon and the beginning of the evening playing backgammon and scrabble outside until it was too chilly. It’s nice to be home again.