Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

The musjids in Kabul are mostly small ones, and are usually constructed so that three sides are enclosed and the fourth side left open, and they are built in such position that the direction of their length points to Mecca, in which is the tomb of the Prophet, for it is in the direction of Mecca that all Mussulmans face while saying their prayers. One very large musjid, called the Jumah Musjid, was built by the late Amir, who issued a proclamation that all those who were good Mussulmans must bring at least one stone from the mountains to be used in its construction as their share of the work. A large quantity of stone was collected in this way, but the size of the building necessitated the use of carts and coolies to complete the quantity of materials required. It is in this mosque that the people congregate for prayers on festivals, and twenty to thirty thousand are present at times, so that the musjid, and the grounds surrounding it, are filled with men standing, kneeling, and genuflecting all together in long rows, one behind the other. Here, too, they congregate for prayer when cholera or other calamity visits Kabul and makes a long stay, hoping that their united supplication will have the effect of averting the calamity.

The month of Ramazan, or fast, entails fasting on all people from sunrise to sunset for thirty days. Nothing whatever must pass the lips during this time, and no one may take snuff or smoke. Very young children, and those who are seriously ill, are exempt, but in the latter case it often happens that a sick person who is unable to bear the ordeal will insist upon fasting, and so dies from exhaustion. The sick person, however, who does not observe the fast must provide a substitute to do so, and pay the substitute for such service, and he must also feed a number of the poor according to his means, and a moullah must certify that the person’s condition is such that he is, by religious law, exempt from fasting. After sunset until the sun rises again the people may eat anything they desire, and they are not limited to quantity. It is usual for a big gun to be fired at sunset as a signal to the people that the day’s fast is over, and many of them have food or their pipes ready to hand, awaiting the signal which allows them to break their fast or take a pull at the pipe, for which the day’s abstinence has created so keen a desire. An hour or so before sunrise another gun is fired to warn those people who have to work the following day that they must wake and eat while there is yet time to fit themselves to bear the next day’s fast. The common practice for those who are able to do it is to turn night into day and sleep during the daytime, and eat and work at night. In the Government offices and factories the working hours are shortened, and men commence work late in the day and finish early. During the first part of the month the men seem to bear their fasting cheerfully, but afterwards the effect of long abstinence during the day, followed by a surfeit of food begins to tell in the way of indigestion and dyspepsia, and tempers get short and quarrels become frequent. Many people get very ill, and not a few die, for more is eaten during the month of fast than any other month, and the people save up all they can against the time, when, after being deprived for hours of all they desire, they can at last eat, drink, and smoke to satiety, and a heavy meal on a stomach which has long been empty is not conducive to good digestion. Those who are heavy smokers, or in the habit of taking snuff, are those who feel the abstinence most, and to them the time seems to pass more slowly than it does to others. Many men have confessed to me how weary are the hours until the gun announces sunset, and I think all smokers will sympathize with them. The mirzas (clerks) are among those who miss their pipe and snuff most, for they are, almost without exception, inveterate smokers. The Mussulman year is reckoned according to the lunar months, and the month of fasting, therefore, comes at an earlier date each year; and when it comes in the summer-time, when the days are long and the weather hot, thirst has to be added to the other discomforts, and, as almost all people in Kabul are in the habit of drinking water frequently during the day, the desire to relieve their thirst becomes almost unbearable, and they say it is the worst suffering of all during the fast.

Six weeks following the Eid of Ramazan, the day of festival which concludes the month of fast, is the great Eid-i-Kurban, or Feast of Sacrifices, and on this day all men, no matter how poor, see that they have new clothes to put on; and should a man be so poor that he cannot do so, he spends the day alone in his house, unable to face his friends, shamed and miserable. It is rare, however, that a man is so situated, for it is the custom to make provision against this day, and, at the worst, old clothes can be mended and cleaned, and made to look good enough to pass muster, for it is not all who can afford to buy clothes first-hand. On this festival, after the prayers in the great musjid which the Amir and princes, together with their officials and the officers of the army attend, a review of troops is held on the large plain facing the mosque. The arrival of the Amir with his suite on the review-ground is greeted with a salvo of forty guns, and the review proceeds; but as it simply consists of the Amir riding past all the regiments drawn up there, and making them a short speech, it is soon ended, and then the regiments are marched back to their barracks, while the roads en route are crowded with people to watch the tamasha, not the least of which is the passing by of the Amir with his retinue and bodyguard, and preceded by the State elephants decked with gaudy trappings. The people afterwards spend the day in visiting their friends and wishing the compliments of the season to each other; and as it is customary for those visited to offer their guests tea and refreshments on such occasions, the cost of doing so is a heavy tax on most of them; but it must be done if a man wishes to retain his respect among his fellows, even though he gets into debt thereby.

On Shab-i-barat, a festival similar to our All Souls, fireworks in the evening are the order of the day, and men invite their friends to have food with them, and afterwards witness the firework display, and this is followed in the wealthier houses by music and dancing-girls, when the entertainment is kept up until a late hour at night. When a man invites another to dinner in the evening, it is understood that the guest shall stop the night, and, as it is only on special occasions that guests are invited, the proceedings are always kept up until late. On the night of Shab-i-barat it is believed by the people that the souls in purgatory are visited by angels in order that their papers may be examined to see how much longer they are to stop there, and to release those whose time is up and take them to Paradise.

Pilgrimages to Mecca, or the Haj, as it is called, are undertaken by those who are religiously inclined, and can afford the time and expense incurred. To the Afghan the Haj is a great undertaking, and the chances of return from so perilous a journey are looked upon as very small, so those who undertake the pilgrimage do so more or less convinced that they will never return, and therefore make their wills and settle up their affairs in the same manner as they would do so on the approach of death; for foreign countries inhabited by enemies of their religion and therefore of themselves have to be traversed, and should they get through this ordeal safely, there is still the sea with its storms and other perils to be faced. They have many queer legends of the sea and its inhabitants, some of which will swallow up a ship when they come across it; and a man needs to be thoroughly infatuated with the desire to undertake the holy pilgrimage before he would dare face all the terrors and dangers which have to be encountered. When, however, after safely passing through the perils of the journey, the pilgrim finally returns, entitled to the distinction of being called “Hadjee” for the rest of his days, his friends and relations make much fuss and rejoicing over his return, and for many months after he does little else but relate his travels and adventures, and the sights he has seen, to an eager crowd of listeners, who never seem to weary of hearing all that there is to be told them. I have heard some of them relate their experiences, and I must say their stories do not lose in the telling.

The Afghans are not great travellers, for their rulers do not offer facilities for them to visit other lands, nor do they encourage strangers in the country. They prefer instead to keep the people isolated, and out of touch with the rest of the world, and are fearful that knowledge and enlightenment would lessen their hold on their subjects, who would be less easily swayed in the direction they wished when invoked in the name of their religion were they conversant with the laws and customs of the people of other countries, and could thereby draw comparisons for themselves.

In Western Australia, however, is a small community of Afghans who had been many years in the colony, and do a trade in camel transport across the sandy desert tracts there. One of these returned to Afghanistan a few years ago, bringing with him his English, or rather Australian, wife who had embraced his own religion. She was uneducated, and could not read or write, and from what she said about the visions she had, and voices she heard exhorting her to persevere in the practice of her new religion, one would imagine that her mind was rather unhinged. The man had returned to his own country, wishing to see it again after thirty years’ absence and to be buried in the land of his fathers, and he brought back a small fortune with him; but his relations in Kandahar had borrowed so much and so frequently that he had but little left, and for this reason he had to leave his own place and come to Kabul to see what the Amir would do for him. He lived in a very small house with but one servant, and his wife was allowed a small sum yearly from the Government, and that was all they had to live on. He was very grateful to me for the pipe and occasional presents of tobacco I gave him, and often lamented his want of sense in leaving Australia, where he had all that made life pleasant, but to which he was unable to return. He spoke English like an Australian, and his language was interlarded with oaths which sounded queerly from the lips of a typical Afghan. He died some two years after his return from heart disease; and the cholera, which broke out a few weeks later, carried off his wife amongst other victims, and before she died, one of his nephews was doing all he could to get her to marry him that he might share in her pension.

The Afghan colony in Australia wrote a letter of congratulation to the late Amir on the occasion of his receiving the title of “Light of faith and religion,” and sent him at the same time a copy of the Australian Government’s order forbidding the immigration of Orientals into the country unless each one paid a rather heavy poll-tax, and they asked his help and influence with the Indian Government to have Afghans made exempt from this tax. The Amir, who always had an eye to business and knew that the colonists were wealthy, replied asking three or four of their headmen to visit him in order to discuss the matter; but the headmen were loth to enter the lion’s den, fearing, probably, that they might not get out of it again, and they therefore let the matter drop.

Among the Afghans birds and animals are broadly divided into two classes, “halal” and “haram,” i.e. those which may be eaten and which may not, and, generally speaking, the bird or beast which lives on meat or carrion is unlawful to eat. Those which are intended for food are killed by having the throat cut, and while this is being done the name of God must be repeated, for otherwise the flesh is haram and sinful to eat. If a bird is shot, the Mussulman who fires the gun repeats the name of God as he shoots—so that if it is shot dead it may be made lawful eating. When I was out shooting myself, the men with me would cut the throats of any bird dropped, repeating meanwhile the prescribed formula, provided it had the faintest spark of life left in it, and so make it “halal,” but if the bird was dead when picked up no one would eat it. If a dog or other “haram” beast touches any food with its mouth, the food is defiled and cannot be eaten, but if it is seen that the animal touches only one part of it, that portion may be cut away and the remainder eaten. Although dogs are looked upon as unclean beasts, they may be handled without defilement, provided the dog’s mouth is not touched, or does not touch the person who is handling it; but should the hands or clothes come in contact with its mouth, the part defiled must be washed.

Some of the soldiers and poor people, however, who keep dogs and make great pets of them do not seem to fear defilement, and in some cases the pet dog sleeps on the same bed as its master, and is treated with every kindness. These men are fond of teaching their dogs to do tricks, and one pet, which was the property of a sepoy, would feign death, and beg, and walk on its hind legs, and take a handkerchief with a copper in it to the tobacco shop in the bazar and bring back the tobacco, and do various other tricks. This dog was also trained to carry in its mouth a short stick, from the ends of which two small lanterns were suspended, and run at night to light the way in front of its master.