shopping

Hello one and all,

I am assuming you are both still there, although I have had no comments for nearly a month, so maybe I am talking to myself, which, frankly, is not really anything new.

I went carpet shopping on Friday so I thought I would give you a slice of Kabul life. Me and two other housemates went to a carpet seller that is well known to us as a good chap and all round reasonably priced carpet seller.

In the centre of Kabul is a street called Flower Street, which is by a street called Butchers Street, which is by a street called Chicken Street (I think you get the idea). Well, as it would happen, halfway down Chicken Street is an entrance to a courtyard which is surrounded on all sides by a block of flats. In effect, the courtyard (what we called at school, a Quad). The flats on the first floor are all shops, some of which are carpet shops, so we trotted off to see our favoured carpet seller.

The shop was like an Aladdin's cave, carpets on the floor, carpets on the walls and piles all around of neatly folded carpets.

We explained what sort of carpets we are looking for (there are an amazing array of different styles from different places) and he proceeded to go through the piles and would select ones that matched our description and would pull this out and lay on the floor in front of us. Of course, by this time we had also been given our obligatory cup of tea, whilst we sat on a sofa to look at the wares. As the pile in front of us grew, if you particularly liked a carpet it was put to one side. After about 45 minutes we had a pile more than knee deep in front of us of carpets laid one on top of the other. Each carpet you would say, "what type of carpet is this" and the answer would be, "oh this is a Kunduz/Hazara/Persian/Iranian/Herat and so on, carpet. All the carpets are hand made and beautiful, particularly the silk carpets from Iran which shimmer in the light and change colour depending on where you are looking at it from.

Anyway, I did buy a carpet, a rather fine Hazara carpet. The word Hazar is Dari for One Thousand. The word Hazara is the name given to the people who live in Central Afghanistan in an area of Baglan that is pretty difficult to get to. They are the direct descendants of a 1000 man garrison left there by Genghis Khan (so I am told) and I have one of their carpets. Thank goodness I paid!

Till the next time.