There was a time," says Ustad Hamahang, his brown eyes misty with memories, "when every twist and turn of this road was alive with music. During the day, you could hear the strains of a rubab or the rhythmic beats of the tabla from behind every door, as diligent students worked at their riyaz [practice]. At night, the street would be ablaze with lights and laughter, a place for creativity." For Ustad Hamahang, who is nearly 70, and virtually every other Kabuli musician of his generation, Kucha-e-Kharabat (Kharabat Street) was the fountainhead of music in Afghanistan and the centre of their lives.
Today Kabul's famous musicians' quarter has been reduced to tatters by three decades of war. Yet for most Kabulis of a certain age, it is illuminated by memories of an era of peace, when music and culture were part of their everyday lives. "Every singer and artiste of note that the country has produced can be traced back to this very street," says Ustad Hamahang, who was one of more famous singers on the Kabul scene in his youth. His roots too stretch deep into the soil of Kharabat. "I was born and brought up in the neighbourhood, like my father and grandfather. The war forced us to leave our home but after 20 years of exile, our family has returned to our native soil."
The day I visit Ustad Hamahang at his ancestral home, the Sun has appeared after a spell of spring showers in Kabul, giving the dust-ridden city a freshly washed, dappled look. Our car negotiates its way up the narrow, sloping road that winds through Kharabat, stopping at the top. From here, Kabul lies below us like a map, its brown shades interspersed with bursts of green, and Kharabat seems to be where the ancient city begins. The historical quarter is nestled quite literally in the shadow of the magnificent Bala Hissar (High Fort), on the crest of the Koh-e-Sher Darwaza (literally, Mountain of the Lion's Gate) to the south of the present city.
With its vast walls and towering height, the fortress is an imposing sight despite its now-ruined state. The many rulers it has accommodated include a young Zahir Al Deen Babur, who entered the city with a ragtag band of soldiers and went on to establish Mogul rule in India.
It was here, according to Nancy Hatch Dupree's seminal work An Historical Guide to Kabul, that he was married to a princess who had fallen in love with him in Herat and where his son, Humayun, was born. An admirer of Kabul, Babur described the citadel as being of "surprising height and enjoy[ing] an excellent climate, overlooking the large lake and three meadows which present a very beautiful prospect when the plains are green". His court riddler composed this couplet in tribute to the view: "Drink wine in the citadel of Kabul, send round the cup without stopping; For it is at once a mountain, a sea, a town and a desert."
Golden days
Centuries later, in the 1860s, another ruler, Amir Sher Khan, established Kharabat when he brought Indian musicians to his court, presumably after his two-year exile in India. Many of these families came from Kashmir and the Punjab and mingled with the Afghan musicians in Kharabat. According to local accounts, the proximity of the musicians' quarter to the fort was designed to allow the king to stroll down at night and enjoy the music and revelries before returning to the palace without being seen. The nature of these celebrations is also said to be the reason behind the name of the area, derived from one of the meanings of "kharab" as a place where bad or naughty people live. It also refers to someone who spends too much money in having a great time with friends; "have a kharabat" roughly translates as "let's go have fun".
However, residents favour a different reading of the name, linking it to the Sufi traditions many of the Indian ustads brought with them from their homes in the Punjab and Kashmir. "The earlier ustads were fakirs [religious mendicant], with dirty clothes but pure souls. Their gatherings were called kharabat, or temples of ruin, since Sufis believe it is essential to destroy the material shell to gain spiritual enlightenment," Ustad Hamahang says. For many Kabuli families, Kharabat was considered hallowed ground and visitors would remove their shoes before entering the kucha, on their way to the shrine of Jaber-i-Ansari, one of the holiest ziyarats (pilgrimages) in the city.
Ustad Hamahang recalls his father regularly performing at Sufi shrines across the city as part of the enduring bond between mysticism and music. At the time, many musicians were paid government salaries, being employed by the court or different departments. "Each ministry had its own team of artistes," he recalls, "and each Thursday evening, musicians would be summoned to perform at the court and for ministers and their families across the city." For the ustad, the period of Zahir Shah was the Gilded Age for musicians, with its stability and support for the arts in general and Kharabati musicians in particular.
Ustad Hamahang himself gained considerable fame as a singer during the 1960s and 1970s, and was once mobbed by a large crowd of women after a concert at the Bagh-e-Zenana (Women's Garden). "I had taken two visiting Pakistani friends with me and I remember their panic when they felt the car being lifted off the ground by the crush of people," he chuckles. He finally made his exit through a back gate with his white Russian-made Volga laden with flowers flung at him by the women.
At the time, the main threat to the bacha-e-Kharabats came from "modern" singers such as Ahmad Zahir, son of a former prime minister who took the country by storm with his Persian ballads, trendy sideburns and flared bell-bottoms. With the start of the long civil war, such rivalries were lost in the blur of refugees heading out of the country. In one of the many ironies of war, the neighbourhood of musicians and fakirs suffered near-constant violence due to its strategic location.
"During one spell of rocket attacks, I was trapped with my family in our cellar for 15 days, living only on potatoes. When our supply ran out, I ventured out to look for food. When I stepped out on the street, I realised it was deserted. Everyone else had left," Ustad Hamahang recalls.
Eventually, his family was helped to safety across the treacherous and constantly shifting battle lines by their Hindu and Sikh neighbours, many of whom had been the ustad's students. "Even with their help, it took us days to sneak through back lanes and people's homes and cross different enemy territories to get to Jaade Maiwand [the wide avenue that runs close to Kharabat]." From there, the family made its way to Pakistan.
They returned three years ago to a very different landscape. Squeezed out by high rents and a shortage of space, most musicians with roots in Kharabat have set up shop in the nearby Shor Bazaar, one of the old city's most famous streets. The crowded marketplace is as raucous and noisy as its name indicates. Traffic of every variety — mechanised, human and animal — jostles for space with carts laden with fruit. Along the road are tiny shops selling kites of every shape, size and colour. The area was once a hub of the city's Hindu and Sikh trading communities and the small spice stalls that line the street are a throwback to those times of trade and prosperity. A large number of hand-painted signs showing luridly coloured rubabs and tablas point the way to the musicians' offices and workshops where instruments are made.
Playing for money
Walking into one shop, we are told that many of the ustads have taken up government jobs and will come to the "offices" only in the afternoon. In the shop next door, however, we find Timur Shah Qasimi and his group relaxing over tea and kebabs, taking a break from rehearsing for a performance later that night. "Most of our work comes from weddings and engagement parties," says Qasimi, a Kharabati who sings mostly folk songs for "traditional Afghan people". When the wedding season is in full swing, business is brisk and Qasimi's group of six musicians sometimes have to turn away three or four clients every day. Qasimi also sells instruments that he both manufactures and imports. "The harmoniums are mostly brought from India and the tablas from Pakistan. But the rubab is made here," he says, showing off an old instrument carved from mulberry wood, beautifully decorated with inlay work. A good Afghan rubab can cost between $1,000 and $2,000 (Dh3,670 and Dh7,340) and are mostly sold to musicians living abroad. "Musicians in Afghanistan are so poor they don't own the instruments they play, but our music has done well abroad," Qasimi says. His brother is a "famous singer" based in Canada "and the internet is full of clips of Kharabati musicians performing in cities across the world", he says proudly.
Most of these musicians were trained by the ustads at their homes in Kharabat. The present generation, however, is being trained in one-room schools housed in the once-graceful buildings of Shor Bazaar. Walking up the narrow stairs that lead into one such building, the chaos and the colours of the street fade away and we enter a twilight world softened by different strains of music.
One of the tiny schools is run by Ustad Khalid, who has recently returned to Kabul from Peshawar. His students sit next to him on the floor, cross-legged, leaning against bolster pillows scattered on the Afghan carpets. By the light of a single lantern, we see the middle-aged Mohammad Sharif Hassani, who sits holding a rubab carefully on his lap. Another young boy dozes in a corner, so sunk in slumber we have to walk around him to greet the ustad.
"It was the duty of our fathers to teach us and now it is our responsibility to train our children," Ustad Khalid says. "That is the tradition of Kharabat." His students include his 9-year-old grandson, who is learning the tabla. Ustad Khalid started his own musical career at the age of 10. "The women of Kharabat had no links with music [in our time], so young boys were sent to sing in women's gatherings and weddings," he recalls. "Before we were sent in, the men of the family would touch our legs and faces to make sure we were young enough to enter the zenana. And while playing, we were strictly told to keep our eyes on the ground and not look up." The late nights took their toll and though he was sent to school, he didn't do well, since he would spend most of the time dozing in class. "Even today children have the same problem," he says, looking at his sleeping student.
Ustad Khalid's family also traces its ancestry to India and he proudly points to a photo hanging on the wall that was taken 40 years ago, of his father with Ustad Zakir Hussain. "In India, even little children have better facilities than us," says Gul Ahmad, Ustad Khalid's neighbour and a tabla player. "Earlier, our families would travel regularly to India for training. My father trained with Ustad Allah Rakha Khan but for young musicians today, it has become difficult to get good teachers." Tragically, a tabla player who was visiting Kabul as part of an Indian cultural delegation was one of those killed in a terror attack on the city in February this year.
Ustad Khalid's ties with Kharabat have determined the direction of his life and that of his family. Yet he is uneasy about the prospects they face in Afghanistan. "We decided to return from Peshawar since things were getting bad there as well," he says. "But sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing." With the end of state support and with the young generation acquiring different tastes in music, traditional Kharabati musicians are having to learn new tunes or be left out in the cold.
"If we are invited to play at a wedding, we'll be paid less than a modern song company," Ahmad says. "We have not abandoned the old style of music but our country has abandoned us."
Before we leave, Hassani asks if we would like to hear him play the rubab. We say yes. He dusts his fingers with talcum powder and breaks into a melody that seems to sweep away the angst and troubles from the air. "Raga Madhuvanti," says Ustad Khalid softly, breaking the pleasant silence that stretches around us. "Everything has changed, but our music is still the same."
- Taran N. Khan is a journalist based in Mumbai.
