Afghans were good at waiting, Sofia thought. The English were good at queueing; the Brazilians good at partying; the French good at eating; the Afghans good at waiting. They were also good at accepting, which was probably what made them good at waiting. Insha’Allah, thought Sofia. If God wills, it will happen. She wondered what Australians were good at and decided it was fun. Australians were good at having fun.
The doors of the mosque swung open and men began pouring out. Collecting their shoes, they called out greetings before disappearing back around the corners of the square to their homes or places of work to make ready for the day ahead.
Iqbal, the old cobbler, with his dishevelled clothes and misshapen leg, headed back to the warmth of his bed for just one more hour of sleep, while Omar, the local apothecary, in his immaculate perahan tunban and jacket to guard against the morning cold, was crossing the square to his shop until he veered off course to disappear behind the high gate that separated the courtyard from the square. When he reappeared a few seconds later he was stuffing something into the pocket of his vest. As Sofia was registering this oddity she was distracted by her landlady, Behnaz, who appeared in the courtyard below her window. After hanging the canary cage she was carrying on one of the low branches of the pomegranate tree, she removed the cover, blew the husks off the seed bowl, checked the water and then headed out the gate with her broom to clean the square of the previous day’s dirt and disorder.
On the opposite side of the square, Hadi, who owned the shop next to Ahmad that sold various dried goods in hessian sacks and canned goods that lacked use-by dates, raised a hand to Ahmad.
‘As-salaam alaikum,’ he said, the greeting carrying all the way up to Sofia’s window in the stillness of the dawn.
‘Wa alaikum as-salaam,’ Ahmad replied.
As Hadi began the ritual of opening his shop, Ahmad was finishing, carrying his green stool outside to position it in exactly the right place to afford him the best view of the comings and goings of the square. Hadi, when he finished, would also set a stool out front, close enough to Ahmad so the two friends might pass the time of day but far enough away to define which business belonged to which man. On particularly slow summer days the two friends might pull their stools together, lay out an exquisite bone and inlaid mother of pearl backgammon board they had borrowed from Babur many years before and had forgotten to return, and begin a new game.
Babur was folding back the shutters of his chaikhana, the tea house that had been in his family for more than three hundred years, before firing up the coals of the grill that in summer radiated a scorching heat onto the square and in the depths of winter became a gathering point for the men. With the tea house also producing meals these days more elaborate than the usual street food, the tantalising aromas of onion, garlic and fragrant, sizzling goat would soon be filling the square, causing those who had just finished breakfast to begin dreaming of lunch.
‘Babur makes the best palau in all of Afghanistan,’ Jabril would often say to Sofia, swearing her to secrecy because his wife, Zahra, who was Sofia’s best friend, had put him on what he liked to call ‘Allah’s Eternal Diet’.
Considering everyone in the square – and probably half of Kabul – knew that on most weekdays between the hours of one and two, or thereabouts, Dr Jabril and Imam Mustafa could be found outside Babur’s chaikhana tucking into large plates of rice topped with skewers of succulent chargrilled goat and braised eggplant drenched in fresh yoghurt that Babur made especially for them, Sofia suspected this couldn’t have been much of a secret from his frighteningly perceptive wife.
After calling morning greetings to Ahmad and Hadi, Babur placed the table – his only concession (other than food) to pretensions of a restaurant – out the front of his café for his two favourite customers. From there Dr Jabril and Imam Mustafa would be able to enjoy their food while greeting old friends, discussing the affairs of the day, and lamenting with Babur on the passage of time and old age that none of them could believe had arrived so promptly. In winter Mustafa and Dr Jabril ate inside with Babur’s other customers, perched on a raised wooden platform against the wall, but on fine Kabul days, between the hours of one and two, or thereabouts, the table outside the famous chaikhana belonged to them.
Sofia suspected that Jabril would have preferred to sit inside, for the tiny café chairs balanced on the ancient cobblestones were far too precarious for his ample girth, but he believed that his friend preferred the table outside, and so that was where they sat. On the other hand, Mustafa’s painfully thin and wiry body, hidden under his black robes, probably felt the cold even when there was none, making the table in the square far too draughty for his tastes. The imam would have much preferred to eat in the warmth inside, but knew that his old friend liked to keep an eye on the comings and goings
