Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Infrontroomsandbackyardsthelengthandbreadthofthecity,combatisarranged,betslaid,
and birds maimed and killed. So the economy of Straw Sellers' Alley, too, is a war economy.
Tothe aficionado ofthe fighting cock, these others are inferior warriors. AsHafiz told me,
“Idon'tlikequailsorpartridges.Theyfightforafewminutesandthenoneofthemgivesup.
Even fighting dogs will fight for no more than five or ten minutes before one of them gives
up. But a fighting cock, that's a different matter! They fight over three days, four. They fight
until they can no longer fight. God created these birds to fight.”
IspentmoretimewithHafizthanwithanyothercocker.Ivisitedhishome,accompaniedhim
toaprovincialfight,andpartookofthecigarettes, lacedwith
charas
,alocalformofhashish,
that he smoked when he was not tending his birds. “I am addicted,” he declared without re-
gret. He was referring to the cockfighting, not the hash. “Everything I earn, I lose!”
Hafiz stands about five feet seven and often smiles through his gray beard while his eyes
twinkleroguishly.Apartfromthe
dastmal
,hismainpropisaringsetwithamilk-whiteagate,
which he rubs against his eyes, and to whose mysterious properties he attributes his excel-
lent eyesight. As a cocker and a
charsi
, Hafiz stands on the margin of respectable society,
and this is how he likes it. He is a bucolic rejection of all the handwringing that abounds in
Afghanistan—all those predictions of doom and gloom. I once asked him how he viewed the
country's future, and he gave a shout of laughter and replied, “I don't think about my own
future. Why should I think about the future of the country?”
Hafizearnsgoodmoneywhenheworksasaconstructionforeman,butthebuildingseason
in Afghanistan ends at the start of winter, when he becomes unemployed. This frees him to
spendmuchofhisearningsoncockfighting;hehaslostalotofmoneyovertheyearsandhas
hadtosellfamilylandinordertoputhischildrenthroughschool.Hafizisfarfrombeingone
of the richest members of Kabul's cockfighting fraternity. He is the only cocker I have seen
who comes by bike to the old tile factory.
As a Shia Muslim and a member of the Hazara ethnic minority, Hafiz is distinguished
twiceoverfromtheSunni,mostlyTajikelitethatdominatesthenewsecurityforces.Thesum
of his military experience was a spell as a reluctant conscript in the Soviet-run army of the
early1980s.Hedescribedthecivilwarthatfollowed,whenthedifferentmujahideenfactions
fought one another, as a “wretched” time. Hafiz spent the Taliban period in exile in Pakistan,
weaving carpets in Peshawar, returning home only after Karzai came to power in 2002.
Sitting in the house he inherited from his father, in a modest but respectable Kabul neigh-
borhood, he showed me the bird he intended to take to the tile factory that coming Friday.
The cock was a lustrous red creature with a large comb and a white-tipped saddle, and Hafiz
withdrew him from his cage in a corner of the warm sitting room so that I could admire his
sheen and the tautness of his breast and thighs. Even when his cage was covered, Hafiz told
