Well then. A few nights ago I was getting ready for bed but there was this music. It came and went – reedy and lots of drumming. Amplified. Canned? I thought not, though there was little or no crowd noise. It was music that didn’t quite make sense at first – to begin with the drummer seemed to be on a different rhythm from whoever had the tune and then they talked back and forth and came into synch and it got faster and faster and then stopped and went off in another direction.
I don’t know from world music. I pretty much love all live music east of the Bosphorus but I couldn’t tell you who is what style. And I certainly know nothing of Afghan music because when I was here last it was banned by the Taliban unless it was a doleful nasal wailing on texts from the Koran. But whatever was going on sounded different from anything else I’d heard – perhaps distinctively Afghan then. Anyway, an opportunity for something new.
So I went out of the compound where I’m living (every house worth the name in Afghanistan is in a compound, surrounded by high eyeless walls) and saw that the gate of the house on the other side of the road was open. Inside there were fruit trees and in the middle a grassy area surrounded by a low railing and on one side by trellis covered in vines. There were men sitting all the way round this big space thirty feet across, some on chairs, some on cushions.
As soon as they saw me some chaps came and beckoned me in, accepting my display of diffidence, I think, as the polite formality I meant it to be. Someone gave me a chair, pulled forward from the crowd – over the next half hour I shuffled back out of the limelight, not wanting to be conspicuous but not wanting to decline the courtesy. Then there was dancing.
Again, I’m not sure what the system was. I really am a total outsider here, with scarcely a word of Dari beyond “how are you?” and “thankyou”. So my observations may be flawed. However, I try to tell you just what I saw, and where I speculate about meaning, I advertise this as speculation. Sometimes one man would get up and dance, sometimes two or three together, sometimes a whole group. The dancing seemed half way between fun and performance. Everyone sitting round was chatting but also watching the dances with interest, perhaps critical interest.
Every now and then someone got up and walked onto the dance floor holding a banknote in his hand; he would wave it at one or more of the dancers, or touch it lightly to the dancer’s forehead, and then continue on to where the band were sitting, and drop it at their feet or perhaps into some bowl. My guess is that this was a way of showing approval of the dancing, and also rewarding the band for getting the dancers going. I like that –that the band gets a tip if the dancers dance well. It acknowledges something important about music and dancing.
Also the capitalist in me likes it that the incentives are arranged so well. The band really did play for people to dance. Quite often the dancers would dance to the band for a while, and there seemed to be some exchange of rhythm or mood, in which the band tried to power up the dancer. Once or twice in the larger dances a gang of men would stop dancing and have a heated conflab with the drummer, who seemed to be the band’s kingpin. I wish I could have understood those conversations. One thing I liked was that there seemed to be a shared understanding of what the music was for and how it worked, with give and take on both sides. Probably this is a feature of the better nightclubs in Europe too.
Someone told me it was a wedding party. I gathered the impression that the bridegroom was the man who was most of the time walking about with a video camera, filming the sitting guests or the more impressive dancers. He certainly treated me as though I was his guest, and everyone seemed pleased to see him. If so I wonder why he would choose to spend his wedding night like this. I have two ideas: one, he wants to be sure of storing the whole festivity for ever; two, as in the western world, events perhaps seem tainted with glamour when viewed through a video monitor. I don’t know.
Of course, to the foreigner what was really odd about this party was that there were no girls. In fact when I tactfully looked up to the balcony of the house I did see a woman watching from the shadows. Her dress sometimes sparkled discretely. Perhaps she was the bride. Again, to me this seems an odd way to spend your wedding night. But I can imagine, in a very different life from my own, deriving enjoyment from the respect paid to my new husband and the happiness of his guests.
And even though the idea of a dance without girls seems to miss the fun, I must say it was a great party. Of course we modern western Europeans and norteamericanos are among the few cultures that have ever done mixed dancing in history. We’re the weirdoes. Perhaps there’s a good reason for this. Certainly the dancing in Kabul was about dancing not about sex. It was maybe a less anxious and more collegial gathering than it would have been in Kidderminster. There’s nothing to beat dancing with a pretty girl, say I, foreigner that I am: but this was a blast too.
When I first got there the dancing was a bit diffident, one or two chaps getting up and moving about half walking and half dancing. But shortly a lot of men got up, pulling their pals onto the floor. They got in a circle and the band started playing quite slowly and they went round and round, pausing at every step, leaning in, leaning out, sometimes clapping, one palm on the back of the other hand, making flowing arm gestures. They weren’t all doing the same steps, but they were all doing the same dance. After a while of this some of the chaps in the circle beckoned me to join them and I did my best to follow what they were doing and we went round and round and the music sped up a bit and the circle thinned out. Then at one point my hosts lead me back to my chair.
The dance group was now down to single figures – a hard core of good dancers. Then the music kicked up a gear, with some singing, and the men went round faster and faster, doing quick pirouettes with one leg kicked right up behind, lots of dust flying, much more in synch with each other. Some young men, some in the prime of middle age, each with his own little stylistic tricks, but all doing the dance together, and more and more men standing up and waving banknotes around the circle and tipping the band. It was a real spectacle. And then after a while it stopped, without reaching any obvious conclusion – just everyone seemed to have enough. Or maybe I missed something.
Then there was a bit of a floor show. One chubby man in a long beard and a generous turban did some comedy dancing. A neighbour told me he was a Hindu – but a Kabul resident. He seemed well liked. But to be a Hindu in Afghanistan may be, or feel at times, perilous or at least edgy. (Then again maybe not so much. At one time the Taliban had an order that Sikhs and Hindus should wear a distinctive badge. Everyone in Europe thought, oh no it’s just like Hitler making the Jews wear the Star of David. But in fact it was so that they wouldn’t get hassled at beard checkpoints, or harangued for not praying at the right time of day. Afghanistan adheres vigorously to its Muslim faith but I have seldom met with a universalising attitude. The differences of foreigners seem to be frankly accepted.) It struck me that the comedy dancing might be a bit like the fat speccy boy making jokes so he doesn’t get bullied. Or maybe he was just a joker. Anyhow, he had a lot of bonhomie and often embraced wallflowers and wrestled them onto the dance floor, and he danced with the kids – I liked his style.
Then there was a very cool young fellow in a dark brown shalwar chameez, who did some really funky dancing that would not have looked out of place in the Ministry of Sound – except it might have been too skilful. Lots of undulating shoulder and wriggling feet and striking of attitudes, and lots of to and fro with the band. And two young boys danced, doing very precise steps that had an air of tradition about them. Certainly some of the older and more conservatively dressed men who had been in the round dance had done steps like that. A sort of drag-hop movement and a lot of flicking one leg up behind, and some flowing gestures with the hands contrasting with the angular movement of the legs. You had to be there really. Then there was a man who picked up a pair of tea mugs in each hand (tea in thermos flasks kept coming round – no drink of course) and used them like castanets. He did a mobile swooping kind of dance, moving out to different parts of the crowd, clicking his mugs together in a complex rhythm and bowing with a manic stare. And often just a bunch of friends would get up and dance together, not so much performing, more for the hell of it. At one point I was encouraged to have a go. I confess I didn’t need much urging, as I love to have a go at whatever. I did some moves I remembered from Scottish dancing at school which people liked or at least found funny. I was honoured with a few tips to the band, and in the end one young joker sprayed a shower of Afghanis (one Af = 2p) over me. I didn’t see anyone else accorded this honour, which suggests to me that it wasn’t so much a recognised honour as a way of joining in the fun of the crazy foreigner dancing. But it was fun to join in on whatever terms.
Then the round dance got going again. Even more so. Boy was it exciting to watch. It started off with a little tune on the harmonium. Perhaps I ought to describe the band a bit. Again, it was all a little more nebulous than I’d expect in Europe – or perhaps my powers of observation lack. I think there were five men and four instruments. Two of them seemed to take turns playing the Tambor which ought to be a percussion instrument but is in fact a plucked string instrument like a sitar. I said “like a sitar” to one of the blokes at the office and he said “it is larger” – a typically Afghan response, though no less to be believed for that. Then there was a man on the harmonium, a very small harmonium the size of a large beer crate. And one man on the Robob, which is maybe like a mandolin on steroids. And a man playing drums, two or three of different sizes, sometimes with a stick, mostly by hand. It was a band that wouldn’t have looked out of place in India, to a foreigner like me at any rate. But the harmonium gave it a more western sound – slightly Jewish or Balkan or Gypsy. I’ll come back to this point in a moment.
Anyway, there was this tune on the harmonium – a bit like a jingle or a novelty air horn tune, but slightly not a joke too. When the man played it there was not exactly applause, but a bit of a hum. Then the round dance started up again, with the jingle fading into a more diffuse kind of tune, slow to start with. At one point the dancers stopped to argue with the band; I got the impression they wanted a better or a faster rhythm. Then they got into it, band and dancers working together and away they went. Really super to watch and hear and sort of, very peripherally, be part of. And I don’t want to say it was great just because it was foreign and I didn’t understand it. I don’t think that someone as foreign to England as I am to Afghanistan would find either Morris dancing or the Hokey Cokey or even a really happening nightclub quite as much of a thrill. I think the difference is to do with a continuity of history handed down from father to son, and a deeply shared, which is to say rather closed culture. Our admirable cosmopolitan open minded culture gives up something for what it gains I think.
Well it was great to watch whatever. And I’ll tell you a funny thing, Afghanistan really is in the middle of the world. As I say, I possess little formal knowledge of folk culture, but I have a developed sense of idiom which often does not lead me far wrong. So the odd thing about watching the dancing, and the round dance in particular, was they seemed to be both sides of the Levant at once. It was like that picture of a duck that’s also a picture of a rabbit, or the old crone who’s also a dashing young beauty. By focussing and refocussing, first I saw men in shalwar kameez under a scented moon dancing languid flowing steps to the sitar and tabla… and then they were men in beards and waistcoats and baggy pantaloons, in the warmth of the Adriatic midnight, arms linked at the shoulders, reeds and guitars. Dress varies in Kabul. But I’d say the most typical is shalwar kameez (pale natural colours, very long shirt maybe to the knees, loose trousers with a draw string) and on top a darker coloured waistcoat (American readers will say “vest”) to provide pockets and dignity. Beards mostly, certainly moustaches. Sometimes hats – round felt hats with a tubular brim and a flat top – or skull caps. And if you averaged out how someone dresses in Varanasi with how someone dresses or used to dress in Thessaloniki, well you’d be about right. I guess that’s Afghanistan’s trouble – in the middle of the world, not necessarily valued for what it can do, or for its beauty and the nobility of its people, but for its strategic position. If you live at an intersection, you’ll more often get knocked down crossing the road.
After the round dance, even stronger and wilder than the first, came to an end, I embraced my host and one or two others I’d danced with, and went off. Work tomorrow. They went on late and late though – but as I was going to sleep it was a comforting sound, not the sound of noisy neighbours. And the next day some small boys from the house said “you are dancing very well” which even though not true was nice because they remembered me and so at least I’d had a go.