Word: kabul
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...Stewart lives in Kabul and is the author of The Places in Between and Prince of the Marshes. He was recently appointed the Ryan Professor and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University
...after 11 months as a regional administrator in southern Iraq, I returned to Afghanistan to set up an NGO called the Turquoise Mountain to restore part of the old bazaar of Kabul and support traditional crafts. The garbage was then 7 ft. (2 m) deep in the streets, 200 yd. (180 m) from the presidential palace; there was no drainage, sewerage or water supply. Once famous traditional buildings were collapsing, and the craft-masters of ceramics, woodwork and jewelry were dying without passing on their skills. Most of the children in the area were not in school, most people were...
...Mirwais is not the only Afghan pretender to the Colonel Sanders mantle in Kabul. Another is Jamshed, who uses only one name, and runs one of three rival KFCs. Jamshed's recipe for success includes more than just a secret combination of herbs and spices. Young men are drawn like flies to the music videos blasting out of his store's open doors; the slack-jawed patrons watching Shakira, onscreen, writhing while covered alternately in mud, men, and nothing are sampling a bite-size package of Western decadence...
...sets in Kabul and the wail of the muezzin issuing from loudspeakers mounted on minarets calls the faithful to evening prayer, the fryer at KFC is being fired up for the evening rush. But Kabul Fried Chicken has little in common with the U.S. chain whose initials it copied: The chairs are a little too high for the tables, and the delights depicted in photographs mounted on the walls - big milkshakes, braised ribs, lattes - are conspicuously absent from the menu. The fare on offer is more egalitarian. Kebabs, pizza and, of course, fried chicken...
...Kabul Fried Chicken is, if he is to be believed, the brainchild of Mirwais Abuldrahizmi, who long ago observed that the young people of the Muslim world like to express their cosmopolitan yearnings through their consumption habits. And returnee Afghans, like himself, bring with them visions from exile of girls without headscarves, shopping malls as social hubs, and the rituals of fast food. Many of today's young Kabulis are as nomadic as those who traveled the silk road hundreds of years ago, as the return of thousands forced into exile by successive wars enables an uneven cosmopolitanism to take...