Stories of old
Visiting the Pir
We lived in Paghman for three months in the summer of 1973. Paghman is or I should say it was a beautiful village 25 kilometers west of Kabul. It was the summer residence of the royal family and of the upper class of Kabul . Many foreign diplomats had a house there too, because in summer when the highlands of Kabul turned into a smoldering oven, it was cool and quiet. Going up the road to Paghman, leaving the rocky plains around the capital, you would see wheat fields and small streams with fresh water and you would have the feeling of being in Tuscany or in the south of France. The village had a beautiful tree lined avenue, with some really gorgeous villas and gardens full of flowers on both sides. In the small streets around you could find other nice houses and everywhere big trees provided shade and coolness. There were a few small grocery shops , some artifacts shops and chai shops, where one could sip tea with sweets from a big samovar under a tree and even smoke a little pipe of good hash.
We rented our first house on the left side of the road just at the beginning of the village. The house had a small yard with a well and wooden stairs that led to the upper floor where we had three rooms connected by a wide wooden ledge overlooking the yard . The main room had walls covered with small mirrors and decorations. This was the leisure room and, believe me, at night with candles lit, the effect was extraordinary ! Afterwards we moved to another house near the centre. It only had two rooms but a huge garden with a well, a lawn and leafy trees . There was a big table under two tall trees where we had breakfast and the other meals. We always had a lot of friends visiting and bringing excellent goodies to party. I remember one night when we had a visit by Mr. Natural in the guise of Tom that made us all happy and high !
One day someone was talking about this holy man that the people of the village called the Pir that lived in a farm-house not far from the village. He was the spiritual authority of the community, not a mullah, but from what I gathered he was a man of experience and high moral reputation. So we decided to go and pay a visit. We left home after dinner. We walked through the village and the fields while a huge full moon was shining overhead flooding the surrounding country with its light. We were a group of five or six guys walking in line on the low edges bordering the fields and we were taking a gift for the man.
We arrived at the door of the farm and knocked. It was the typical afghani farm- house, high dirt walls all around and a big wooden gate with a smaller door set in on the side. A man in a salwar kamize and wide afghani pants opened the door and let us in.
As soon as we entered we realized that the place had a strong spiritual vibe. There were many men sitting on a low ledge around a big lawn with small fruit trees. I don’t remember seeing any women there but they could have been inside the house. The men were talking in a very low voice and we could see the Pir sitting in the middle of them. He was old, with a short grey beard and in good shape, you could tell there was something special about him. He wore the afghani pants and a shirt and on his shoulders he had a grey western style suit jacket. We told the man who let us in that we had brought a piece of top quality hash as a gift and that we would have liked to smoke it with them. He smiled and left . After a while he was back carrying a big hookah . He took the piece of hash and broke it in small pieces in the bowl of the pipe, then he put live coals on top and looked at us to see who was going to light it. We smiled back and said with gestures : please, you go first . Who could have lighted that bowl anyway without coughing his heart out ? So he started puffing away and we could see flames coming out of the bowl. That’s how you light a hookah ! His eyes watered but he didn’t cough at all. Then it was our turn. We tried our best but it was hard even though we were well practiced. Afterwards we sat down like the others and we were offered tea and sweets. The night was quiet and balmy and we were so stoned we could hardly talk. Later on we said goodbye and left. We wandered back home in a trance. The moonlight was making everything around us very undefined , all was silent but for the barking of faraway dogs. We had the feeling of walking on another planet. Back home the girls looked at us and laughed .
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