Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe My mother's most memorable advice was an admonition never to marry a man I might fall in love with on the polo field, for they were never as dashing once off the horse. It was the story of her own life in India, I did not doubt that it was sound, but it was sometimes hard to be mindful of her words. There is something about the man/horse combination which sets in process ancient atavistic urges, and Afghanistan's buzkashi is a wilder, older and more savage game than polo has become on the manicured green turf of the west. Advertisement These sports were devised as military exercises, and the warrior is rarely absent in any Afghan, whether he is on a horse, bicycle, tank, or on foot. They are a fiercely proud people, whichever tribe they come from, shabby dust colored garments, and reluctance to march in step should not deceive the onlooker into thinking otherwise. Advertisement The first time I arrived in Afghanistan was overland in the late sixties, driving from Persia. For the traveler coming from the West, Afghanistan seemed to begin at Khorassan, then, from the vast grey expanse of the Iranian plateau, Herat suddenly emerged like a jewel, a wide fertile valley watered by the Hari Rud. In the midst of fields and orchards crisscrossed by irrigation canals stood towers of beaten earth pierced with large holes designed to catch pigeon droppings. From Herat to Kandahar it was three hundred and sixty miles and climbing. Kandahar, according to a legend, is a corruption of Alexander, or Iskander as he is known in the East. From Kandahar to Kabul, a further three hundred and eight miles uphill, through the country of the nomadic Kuchis, whose unveiled women wore black cotton dresses embroidered with shells, beads, coins, buttons, even the metal teeth of broken zips were brought into imaginative service. The skirts flare out with a hundred gores, the weight of the garment is distributed from the shoulders, demanding an almost military posture, and their wealth is in their anklets and coin ornaments. Better not to camp near the nomads' black goat-hair tents though, and camping out anywhere, it was advisable not to spend more than one night in any single place. Advertisement An apparently empty landscape should not be taken at face value. Initially I was simply traveling, en route to India. I remember the Afghans as proud, courteous, generous, shrewd, humorous, kind, prepared to cheat you at the filling station unless you held on to your money until the correct change was proffered, and checked the quantity and quality of whatever was refilling the tank of your vehicle. They liked to see whether you were alert, on your toes, and if not, well really, you should not be traveling abroad. Caught out, there was denial (I was, after all, a foreigner, and a woman to boot), then good humored laughter. As a foreign female, I was treated like a youth, allowed to sit and eat with men, but clearly not man enough to be their equal. I never encountered anything but respect and courtesy. To my infinite regret I never drove over the Khyber Pass, there was always some reason to linger, always some demand which obliged me to turn back, promising myself that next time I would drive the whole way. My last visit was in 1971, and I arrived by plane from India, flying with Afghanistan's Ariana Airways, whose pilots skillfully landed small, shuddering planes on a landing strip which from the air looked no larger than a tribal rug encircled by sheer jagged fangs of the mountains. Advertisement My mission was to buy carpets and textiles. Nawruz, the main carpet dealer in Kabul, was from a family who had for generations traded the old caravan route between Bokhara and India, mules and camel carrying bales of carpets and a variety of other goods over rugged terrain to the south. By the late 1960s and 70s, four-legged caravans had been largely superceded by extravagantly decorated trucks, painted, draped with bright fabrics and beaded good luck charms. The artistry of these trucks was so striking that in the 1970s an enterprising ex-hippie turned publisher produced a best-selling illustrated book about them. Orchards and wheat fields were interspersed with poppy fields, and the main drug smugglers then were from the Baluch tribes, who claim descent from a Syrian army which conquered Sind in the seventh century AD. Beggars in Kabul were discreet, and called on merchants in the late afternoon, after trade had had a chance to flourish. It was a dignified exchange without groveling, for in the giving and accepting of alms, virtue, worth more than silver or gold, was accrued in the individuals' Heavenly account. Buying carpets is always thirsty work, demanding many cups of tea, hours of story swapping, and long discussions. Advertisement Central Asian carpets are patterned with tribal heraldry, each antique rug has a story to tell, and the telling of it is part of the price. Buying carpets in Kabul also involved picnics, and as the richest and most important carpet dealer in town, Nawruz kept a country house in the valley above the city. Here new rugs were spread beneath trees, melons cooled bobbing in water, and eventually a vast mountain of rice, studded with peeled pistachios, almond splinters, slivers of blanched carrot and orange peel, sprayed with rosewater and surrounded by succulent joints of chicken, was brought out on a huge platter for the feast, and set on a pristine cotton cloth on top of the rugs. Around this were dishes of fresh peeled cucumber and quartered tomato, bunches of fresh herbs, dishes of yogurt. Later, fresh fruit, and, always, tea, sometimes green, sometimes black, delicately spiked with cardamom. At weekends, it was customary to walk with friends in the local beauty spot where women sauntered in groups. Young men loitered there, also in groups, and looks were exchanged -- modest giggles hidden behind a hand or scarf -- but propriety always observed. Soldiers sauntered with roses thrust in the muzzles of their rifles, and it was a common sight to see a man with a rose between his teeth, or held delicately to his nose, enjoying its perfume. A love of flowers seemed almost to be a welcome religious observance. Advertisement Like Persia, areas of Afghanistan are irrigated by the qanat system of man-made underground water channels with wells at intervals, and these allowed an abundance of orchards. The origins of these go back thousands of years, and the ravages wrought by bombing will probably never be repaired. The best grapes in the world grew in Afghanistan, seventeen varieties, of which `the bride's little finger' elongated and palely transparent like jadeite, was the finest. Before the king was deposed, an enterprising Italian had obtained permission to import wine-making machinery, and extremely delicious wines were available, for tourists only, in the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel. Mulberry trees, whose dried fruit -- white or black -- was made into an easily transportable paste, `fruit leather', also sustained a local silk industry in the north of the country, where silk was still woven in the traditional manner. Every year, at winter's end, a representative of the Karadja Turkmen tribe traveled to the city of Baghlan in northeastern Afghanistan to buy the eggs of silkworms imported from Japan. These came in boxes each containing four thimbles, any one of which should produce about fifteen pounds of silk. Three hundred of the boxes were brought back to the village. The Turkmen women carried the eggs in a cloth tied around their necks, for the human body is the ideal temperature for hatching these, and once the wrigglings announce the next stage of the process, the tiny caterpillars were carefully spilled on to large trays and fed fresh mulberry leaves, replenished several times a day. Advertisement Until recently, mention of 'Afghanistan' or 'Kabul' (emphasis on the second syllable), caused an unconscious nostalgic smile to slide across my face, remembering men with the eyes of fierce birds of prey and turbans every shade of the rainbow, women sheltering their complexions from the dust and sun as they scurried between houses, sometimes, but not always, clutching a hastily wrapped chador. I remember the dealers in Chicken Street, their new rugs laid out on the pavement so that the feet of passers by would rub the fluff from the wool's surface, and nearby the little kebab houses, where bitter orange juice was the condiment of choice with tender meat. Abdul Redja Ghafour, Minister in charge of what was then Afghanistan's main export, even more important than carpets -- karakul, or Persian lamb, always the hat material of choice for any man of style and status throughout the eastern world -- explained to me the various qualities and fineness of the skins and invited me to his home. His beautiful green-eyed daughter had just finished university and was starting work as a teacher. I remember a beautiful, proud, spirited and fiercely independent country, like, and yet totally unlike, any of its neighbors. Advertisement And so now, whenever I dodge my way through the crowds on London's Portobello or the Marche aux Puces in Paris, my eyes are on duty, alert for a certain flash of painted flowers announcing a piece of Gardiner china, which, like a magic carpet, will transport me back to dusty caravanserais in what seems now to be another lifetime. The Gardiner factory was established in Russia for the Empress Catherine by two Scotsmen, father and son, and until 1917 produced its wares for the Russian and eastern markets. These were always the prized tea pots in homes and teahouses across the width and breadth of Central Asia and the Silk Routes. Their design of white oval medallions bursting with fat roses and other blooms against a background of deep crimson, blue, or very rarely, green was copied endlessly in cheaper versions -- even enameled tin -- their prized scarcity augmented by Chinese pots, and, ultimately, undistinguished metal. The mark on a genuine pot or bowl is in red with the Russian Imperial eagles above St. George, with 'Gardiner' inscribed in Arabic. One day I will find one, and from then, and forever, my morning tea, black or green with overtones of cardamom, will always, I know, taste infinitely better. Advertisement -- (Philippa Scott is the author of "The Book of Silk." Her next book, "The Elephant and the Silkworm," is due to be published in 2002.)
