At the Court of the Amîr: A Narrative

by John Alfred Gray

The Kabul Restaurant.

Besides the tea-drinking shops there are the eating-houses. These have no marble-topped tables or velvet-covered chairs. The shop is the same as any other shop, except that it looks rather dirtier, probably from the amount of fat or oil used in the cooking. The customer carries his lunch away with him, or stands outside to eat it. The space inside the shop is taken up by the cook and the cooking pots. They sell kabobs—little cubes of meat skewered on a long stick and grilled over charcoal. A stick of kabobs, with some bread, is uncommonly good if you are hungry; you tear the meat off the stick with your fingers. They have also meat, finely minced and mixed with fat, which they squeeze in their hand round a thin stick and cook over charcoal. It looks rather like sausage, I don’t know what it is called. They use any kind of meat for this—mutton—or, failing that, the flesh of the camel or horse that age or infirmity has rendered unfit for further service. There are many kinds of pilau too. Rice, boiled skilfully till every grain is soft without being soppy, is piled over the meat, stewed to such tenderness that you can easily tear a piece off with the fingers. There are chicken pilau, mutton pilau, sweet pilau with raisins in it, and so on. Kourma is another dish—meat stewed in small pieces and eaten with stewed fruit.

For his pudding the Afghan goes to another shop, the confectioner’s. Here there are sweets of many kinds: sugared almonds, “cocoa-nut ice,” sweets made in the shape of rings, sticks, animals, or men; gingerbread, soft puddings made of Indian corn, much sweetened. In the summer different kinds of iced sherbet, lemon, orange, or rose are sold in the street.

In the bread shop, the baker squatting on the floor kneads out the dough into large flat cakes and claps it in his oven. The oven is a large clay jar about three feet across and three feet deep, with the neck a foot in diameter. This is buried beneath the shop, the mouth being level with the floor, and is packed round with earth. It is heated by making a fire inside. When the heat is sufficient, and the fire has burnt out, the baker puts his hand in the mouth and flaps the flat doughy cake against the wall of the oven, where it sticks. When baked, it generally brings away some grains of charcoal or grit with it. You pay two pice (a little less than a halfpenny) for a cake of bread a foot and a-half long, a foot wide, and an inch thick.

Flour is ground in a water mill. A hut is built by the side of some stream which has a sufficient fall. The water pours down a slanting trough over the water wheel, and turns two circular flat stones which are arranged horizontally in the hut. The miller, squatting down, throws the grain into an aperture in the upper wheel and scoops up the flour as it is ground away from between the stones on to the floor. The bread made from the flour varies very much in grittiness, some is hardly at all gritty. The Afghans are very particular about eating their bread hot, they don’t care to eat it cold unless they are on a journey. One of their proverbs is, “Hot bread and cold water are the bounteous gifts of God,” “Nan i gurrum wa ab i khunuk Niamati Illahist.”

The Butcher’s Shop.

Butchers’ shops are not very common; meat is an expensive luxury. Mutton is the usual meat eaten. By very poor people other meats are sometimes eaten, especially in the form of mince. In the latter case it is impossible to say what the meat is, so the impecunious Afghan assumes it to be mutton. If there is any meat in the mince that is unclean—on the shopkeeper’s head be it for selling anything “nujis” to a True Believer.

There is very little meat to be seen hanging in the shops, for the climate being a hot one and flies numerous, the meat will not keep more than a few hours. What the joints are it is impossible to say, for they cut the sheep up quite differently from an English butcher. At one time I used to try and puzzle out when the joint came to the table what it was: I gave up the attempt afterwards as futile. The mutton is excellent in quality and very cheap. I wished to give a dinner one day to a dozen Afghans—the Amîr’s palanquin bearers. I bought a sheep for 4s. 6d., some rice, butter, bread, and firewood, and the whole cost less than 6s.

Kabul is famous all over Central Asia for the manufacture of the postîn or sheepskin pelisse. While riding along the bazaar running from the wooden bridge south, I used to wonder at one place what the faint disagreeable smell was due to. I found on enquiry that there was a manufactory of postîns there. I have not seen the whole process of tanning. The skin of the sheep or lamb with the wool on it is cleaned and scraped, then soaked in the river and pegged out in the sun to dry; afterwards it is tanned yellow with pomegranate rind. The leather is beautifully soft, and it is usually embroidered artistically with yellow silk. The wool is, of course, worn inside. The better ones are trimmed at the collar and cuffs with astrakhan. There are several different kinds of sheepskin postîns. The long one reaching from shoulder to ankle, with ample folds that you wrap yourself up in on a winter night: there is nothing more cosy and warm to sleep in. The sleeves are very long and are more for ornament than use. These are but little embroidered, they cost from fifteen to thirty rupees. There is a short one with sleeves, which is elaborately embroidered. This is worn in the winter by the soldiers—cavalrymen, for instance, if they can afford the necessary ten or fifteen rupees. Similar but cheaper ones with less beautiful wool and no embroidery, can be bought for four or five rupees. There is the waistcoat postîn of lamb’s wool, which is made without sleeves, this costs two rupees six annas Kabuli, or half-a-crown English. These waistcoat postîns and the long sleeping postîns are used by all classes, rich and poor. The others are used only by the poorer classes, the peasants and the soldiers. A gentleman or a man of position would no more think of putting one on, were it ever so beautiful and elaborate in its embroidery, than would a resident of the west of London think of appearing in the “pearlies” and velvet embroidered coat of the coster. The rich men wear, in the winter, coats of cashmere, velvet or cloth, lined with beautiful furs from Bokhara and other parts of Asiatic Russia.

Furs: Their Cost.