Music Returns to Afghanistan

Feb. 19 -- At the Barg-e Sabz restaurant, a band belts out folk and pop tunes from Iran, Afghanistan, and India, as Afghan men take turns dancing.

Chest thrust out, a 6-foot tall Hazara on tiptoe struts across the floor, his arms stretched out like wings and forefingers pointed skyward. His expression is pure bliss.

That such an act can be committed — dancing on the three-day Islamic festival of Eid-ul Adha — speaks volumes about how much Afghanistan has changed over the past 14 months since the hard-line Islamist Taliban government fell from power. Strict rules, which the Taliban claimed were rooted in the Koran, forbade all music that wasn't strictly religious because it tended to distract one's thoughts from God.

Nothing in the Koran specifically encourages lavish feasts or dancing during Eid, a festival that marks the height of the hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. And in his personal life, the prophet Muhammad seemed to frown on music and dance.

Yet across the country, all the old banned traditions are returning. In Mazar-e Sharif this week, thousands of Afghans filled the streets for celebrations of Nauroz, which marks the first day of spring and the Afghan new year.

Prayers and Charms

Traveling mystics of the Sufi sect have made a triumphal return to the streets, offering prayers, charms, and esoteric wisdom. Musicians who fled to Pakistan during Taliban times are playing at lavish wedding ceremonies, and dancers — male and female — are booked solid for private parties.

Some Eid traditions are timeless — and reminiscent of the Christian Easter in the theme of renewal and in sartorial show. Children walk along the streets, the girls in brand-new velvet dresses lined with gold lace, the boys in flashy suits or baggy tunics and trousers. Adults, too, wear newly tailored clothes, although most women in Kabul still hide themselves under sky-blue veils covering them from head to toe.

Eid is a holiday for soldiers too, sometimes with worrying consequences.