At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

There is a copper bazaar. Though copper is found in Afghanistan, most of that used comes from India. This bazaar is in the street running east through the middle of the city. Here, there is shop after shop of men hammering out copper into the different shaped utensils: the long necked vase for the chillim, or hubble-bubble pipe: bowls and pots for cooking kettles: water vases with long neck and handle and tapering curved spout. The shapes are all those made by their fathers and forefathers; there is no new design invented. The pots used for cooking are tinned over inside and out. Supposing the tin has worn off your cooking pots, you send to the bazaar for one of these men. It is interesting to watch how he sets to work.

He brings a pair of hand-bellows with him and a stick of tin. Settling himself on the ground in the garden he digs a shallow hole six or seven inches across. This is to be his furnace. From it he leads a little trench about six inches long, which he covers over with clay, placing his finger in the trench as he moulds each piece of clay over it. Thus he has a pipe leading to his furnace. The nozzle of his bellows is fitted into the distal end of the pipe. He begs a little lighted charcoal from the cook with which to start his “furnace,” piles it over with black charcoal, blows his bellows, and soon has what fire he wants. A small boy with him having cleaned the pots with mud and sand, he places the first one, supported on three stones, over his furnace. When it is at the proper heat he rubs it round with a rag smeared with wood ashes, touches it with the stick of tin, then rubs it round again with his wood ashes, and the pot is tinned. If you are watching him he may make it extra superfine with another touch of tin and another rub with the wood ashes, and so he goes on till he has finished them all.

Supposing the pot to be tinned is a large one, the small boy, having thrown in the mud and sand, stands inside the pot, and jerking it round and round with his hands, cleans it with his bare feet. Describing the way that the “furnace” is made reminds me that I have seen men prepare an impromptu tobacco pipe the same way. The principle is exactly the same, only instead of blowing air through the pipe they suck the smoke from the tobacco which they have lit with a match. To lie on your face on the ground in order to get a smoke seems rather excessive, but if a man has tobacco, a match, and cannot get a pipe, this is one way out of the difficulty. I have also seen a soldier use his bayonet for a pipe. He filled the cylindrical part that fits on the muzzle of the rifle with tobacco, and having put a lighted match on the top, he fitted his two hands round the lower end and sucked the smoke between them. Most Afghans are inveterate smokers. The tobacco they smoke is not the American tobacco that we have. It grows in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, and many parts of Afghanistan, but the best comes from Persia. The leaf is paler, apparently uncured and is not pressed, nor cut, but simply broken up. I have smoked it, but it is very hot in a short pipe. It smokes best in the chillim.

Tobacco Smoking by the Royal Family.

There is the cotton and silk bazaar in the street leading from the gorge to the Bala Hissar. The shops here are mostly kept by Hindus. Every Hindu in Kabul, and there is quite a colony of them, has to pay a poll tax, and is not allowed to wear a blue turban. It must be either yellow or red—generally they wear red.

Besides the rolls of silk from India and Bokhara, and the plain and printed cotton goods which come from India, there are many English undergarments to be seen: for English clothing of every kind is very fashionable among the upper classes in Kabul. There are cotton and merino vests, socks, and handkerchiefs hanging on strings across the little shops. The Hindu shopman in Kabul strikes one as oppressively civil, he “salaams” so low with the hand on the forehead. The Afghan trader does not. You can buy or not as you please. If he has a piece with a yard or two more than you want, often he will not cut it for you. You can take the lot or leave it, he is not particular. But Afghan and Hindu alike ask you a much higher price than they will afterwards take.

If you want to buy anything, you send for a shopkeeper to your house and ask his price. He tells you. You smile derisively, and offer him just a third. He is pained, he is indignant, the thing is absurd, he gave a great deal more than that himself. You say, “Good morning.” Then he says—Well, he will do what he can, for you are a friend to the poor, but it will be a dead loss to him; and he knocks a little off his price. You say, “No,” but add a little on to yours, and so it goes on for a variable time, derision and sarcasm on your side—a pained indignation on his. Finally, he takes less than half of what he asked originally, and is well paid then; but when he goes away you feel rather as if you had swindled the poor man.

Though shopkeepers in Kabul selling similar goods tend to congregate in the same bazaar, they do not do so to the same degree as in some of the towns of India. You find boot shops in other streets than the chief boot bazaar; and so with other goods for sale.

In the tea-drinking shops you see a large samovar, about three feet high, in one corner, where water is kept boiling hot by the glowing charcoal in the centre pipe. Men drop in and seat themselves, cross-legged, for a chat and a cup of tea. The shops will hold some three or four. The Afghans like their tea very hot, weak, very sweet, and flavoured with cardamoms, which are put unpowdered into the teapot. They pay a pice, that is a little less than a farthing, for a cup of tea. If a man has some tea with him, and he often has, he can always send to one of these shops for a teapot and hot water. He pays a pice for it. There is also a preparation they call “kaimagh-chai,” but this is comparatively expensive, and is drunk only at festivals or times of rejoicing. It is a mixture of tea, sugar, cream, soda, and cardamoms. It is thick, curdy, pink, and very sweet—not at all bad to taste, but very “rich.” The teapots, cups, and saucers in use are generally from Russia. Some of the richer men have them from China or Japan.