[One late October afternoon, the outlines of the old Buddhas, still visible in their frames, looked hollow, the small puffs of dust traveling in front of them seeming to fill their stomachs. Narrow paths crisscrossed the fields in front of them, where men and women picked potatoes, or tended to cauliflower and cabbage. Flocks of sheep grazed. Little water channels fade into the distance in the fields, as if created with the gentle tip of a paintbrush.]
By Mujib Mashal
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Afghan
boys playing at the grotto of one of Bamian’s giant Buddha statues, in 2014.
The
statue was destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Credit Shefayee/Agence
France-Presse
— Getty Images
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BAMIAN,
Afghanistan — The two hotels
are separated by a 400-yard stretch of asphalt road, but they seem worlds
apart. What unites them are the remains of a pair of giant Buddha statues, one
behind each, and the history of Afghanistan’s Bamian Valley — its fortune
fluctuating with that of the Buddhas.
The Gholghola Hotel is a $5 million property
with luxury suites and 99 items on the menu, including Ukrainian salad and
spaghetti Bolognese.
Down the road is a two-room adobe hut, rented
for $50 a month on a yearly contract — or until the municipality of this
central Afghan province comes to raze it. It’s called the Fairness Hotel (for
men and women), based on the sign to the right side of the property, or the
Mohammed Hussain Hotel, according to the sign on the face of the property.
“We have beans, and we have soup,” Mr.
Hussain declares as soon as a new guest walks in.
The Fairness Hotel is not really a hotel.
It’s more a side-of-the-road joint, with a back room that a friend from Mr.
Hussain’s village uses as overnight storage for the cabbage and squash he sells
in the bazaar.
More than a dozen wasps are buzzing inside.
When Mr. Hussain’s fifth-grade son and apprentice, Paiwand Ali, picks up the
broom to sweep the bread crumbs, he pulls his hoody over in case one of the
wasps attacks his head.
“They won’t touch you, as long as you don’t
touch them,” Mr. Hussain assures his son — and every new customer who see the
wasps first thing when walking in.
Across the way, Gholghola is a pet project of
a construction mogul, Hajji Nabi Khalili, the brother of Afghanistan’s former
vice president, Karim Khalili. Mr. Khalili, the hotel owner, personally
selected the chandeliers and the wallpaper with subdued motifs reminiscent of
old New York hotels.
With a staff of 38, the establishment
maintains a high standard, but can barely meet costs. Even at peak tourist
season, only half of the 45 rooms are rented. But for the Khalili family, with
Bamian long the stronghold of their politics, profit was never the priority.
“There was a need for a good space — for
tourists, for officials, for visitors,” said Azghar Yusufi, the hotel manager.
“In terms of quality and standard, this is the highest place we have in
Bamian.”
Before Karim Khalili became the soft-spoken
vice president of Afghanistan, with his brother profiting in his shadow, his
unruly faction controlled Bamian during the 1990s civil war among warlords. Now
his men are clean-cut for a new democracy, but in those days they inspired
fear.
One barber in the bazaar remembers when one
of Mr. Khalili’s commanders came for a haircut. He had long disheveled hair,
and hanging from each side were several grenades.
Another time, the barber said, another of Mr.
Khalili’s fighters walked into the shop in a hurry. In his hand he had a tiny
plastic bag containing four head lice. He handed the bag of lice to the barber
and, with a smirk on his face, said: “I am going to the front lines, and you
take care of these. If they get skinny or fat by the time I come back, you know
what will happen.”
The Gholghola Hotel has a portrait of the
former vice president woven into a small carpet in the lobby. It also has many
paintings of the giant, cliff-side Buddha statues that made this region famous
around the world before their destruction at the hands of the Taliban in 2001.
“The Buddhas were the identity of Bamian,”
said Ustad Abdullah, 63, a biology teacher cutting greens for his cows in the
fields nearby. “I am confident they will rebuild the Buddhas. But maybe they
should leave them like that — to show what the Taliban did?”
Mr. Abdullah recalled the week in the spring
of 2001, when the Taliban first shelled them with tank artillery. Then they
detonated a huge amount of explosives — about 11 truckfuls, according to the
researcher Abas Arefi — placed in the statues, leaving only the frames standing
In local oral traditions, the Buddhas used to
have jewels in their headgear, even diamonds in their eyes. When the residents
woke to see the morning sun reflected off the statues, they would feel as if
the giants were protecting them.
From the balcony of the suites ($130 a night)
at the hotel, life in the valley unfolds like a painting.
One late October afternoon, the outlines of
the old Buddhas, still visible in their frames, looked hollow, the small puffs
of dust traveling in front of them seeming to fill their stomachs. Narrow paths
crisscrossed the fields in front of them, where men and women picked potatoes,
or tended to cauliflower and cabbage. Flocks of sheep grazed. Little water
channels fade into the distance in the fields, as if created with the gentle
tip of a paintbrush.
Most of the houses at the Buddhas’ feet are
made of mud resembling the sandstone the statues were carved from some 1,500
ago. But there are washes of color — in the foliage of the poplar trees, and in
the neon orange-and-turquoise sweaters of the children herding two wobbly sheep.
At Mohammed Hussain’s place, a pot of tea, a
loaf of bread and cabbage salad is included in an .80-cent lunch of beans, or
$1.20 lunch of beef soup.
If you ask nicely, you will even get a fresh
pepper.
Mr. Hussain and his son leave home at dawn.
They fire up the samovar. For breakfast, they serve tea and eggs.
For lunch, Mr. Hussain cooks about nine
pounds of beef and four pounds of beans. Paiwand Ali brings fresh bread from
the bakery around the corner.
Mr. Hussain knows how many of his customers
like their food.
An old man, hunched over his bowl of soup,
felt with his fingers two pieces of meat served on the side in a tiny metal
saucer.
“This one is good,” the old man said, feeling
one piece. “This other one is too tough.”
The tough meat was replaced. “For you, of
course,” Mr. Hussain said.
A man in a green cap, and the worn-out suit
of a clerk who has only one, walked in. He bellowed a big hello, and then said,
“I will have half an order of soup.”
“I can’t do half an order,” Mr. Hussain said.
“I will take a full order,” the man replied.
“Make it greasy!”
After eating, the men pour cup after cup of
tea from their individual teapots, hug their knees and stare into the commotion
of the bazaar through the window.
“A girl lost her purse in the bazaar, and
would not stop crying,” one customer said. His young son, sitting next to him,
stared at the wasps buzzing overhead, going in and out of a hole in the
ceiling.
“Maybe her phone was in the purse, and her
boyfriend’s number in the phone,” said Mr. Hussain, taking a break to sip tea
in the red plastic chair next to the samovar. “These school types — they all
have boyfriends.”
Fatima Faizi contributed reporting from
Kabul.
