Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
bird had caused such a sensation at the tile factory. Zilgai's day job, as it happened, was
selling fighting cocks.
Along the way I had a grand experience: my pocket was picked and then exquisitely un-
picked. I was squeezing between two hawkers' carts when I felt my progress impeded by a
dark, bedraggled figure at my side, also trying to get through the narrow gap. “After you,” I
said, and the man walked on. There had been a slight pressure on my waist, so I put my hand
into my jacket pocket. My mobile phone was gone.
So was the man, who was now running through the crowds. I made mad chase, shoving
people out of the way and eventually grabbing his collar and stopping him dead. “Give me
back my mobile!” I shouted, guessing that a Persian-speaking Westerner upbraiding a thief
would draw sympathetic interest; he stared with addled eyes while I raved and a small crowd
gathered.Thethiefpointedatmypocketandsaid,“Havealook.”AgainIputmyhandinmy
pocket, this time drawing out my mobile phone. It took me a few moments to realize what
had happened, but by that time the dark magician was gone and the crowd had turned away
in disinterest.
As we walked on, I saw Zilgai from a distance, crouching in his black leather jacket while
two cocks sparred furiously,their lethal spurs clad in leather muffs, forthe benefit ofa dozen
observers. Both combatants were red
aseels
, the celebrated Indian breed known for its small
wattles and indomitable courage that is prevalent in Afghanistan, but one of the two rose
higherandstruckwithgreateraccuracyathisadversary'sheadandneck,anditwasclearthat
Zilgai had deliberately mismatched them in the hope of attracting buyers.
He separated the birds before they exhausted themselves, the observers drifted away, and
there was no sale. “I keep the best specimens at home,” Zilgai told us, grinning and cradling
underhisjacketoneofthecombatants,whocluckedexcitedly.“That'swheretheseriousbuy-
ers come.”
Karim and I moved on from Zilgai, passing hundreds of chickens and turkeys for sale at
thesideoftheroad,andentered StrawSellers' Alley.Thenameisamisnomer—straw hasn't
been traded here for years—and the first few storefronts, where knife sharpeners sit at their
wheels and an old man promises a cure for rheumatism, offer no hint of what lies ahead.
Then this corridor of a street narrows further, and the sounds of the city are drowned out
by the warbling and chirruping of thousands of birds inside wooden cages that have been
hung up in the storefronts or laid out on the ground. The bigger cages are spliced with twigs
jammed between the bars—perches for quails, starlings, and mynahs. Pinstriped partridges
sit with their mates, while barrel-chested homing pigeons, the color of café au lait, squabble
and chafe.
Straw Sellers' Alley doesn't cater only to the refined senses— our enjoyment of the my-
nah's mimicry, our poetic identification with a flock of pigeons performing above our heads.
Theshopkeepersheredealmostlyinpartridgesandquails,andthesearesoldinordertofight.
