The Afghan soldier sporting a weighty handlebar mustache danced in bare feet, clicking his heels and twirling in the air as a band playing native instruments entertained scores of teens Saturday for the joyous Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
“I never dreamed in my life I would ever be able to be so free,” said Gul Mohammad, 25, who fought in the war against the Taliban and was jailed and beaten for four months last year for creating musical sounds in the street in violation of Taliban edicts. “No longer will we have a silent Eid.”
After two decades of civil war, foreign occupation and fundamentalist rule, Afghans spent the festival of sacrifice holiday weekend indulging in pastimes that had been outlawed by despots or curtailed by conflict.
In shops and restaurants, men openly played cards. In the rubble of battle, boys flew rainbow-colored kites. In markets, teens knocked hard-boiled eggs in a traditional game to see which one cracks first. In the streets, giggling children set off crackling fireworks.
In schools and courtyards, musicians came from exile in Pakistan to play songs about love and country. Revelers snapped photos of dancers. Girls, their nails glimmering with rosy polish, dressed in holiday costumes and paraded regally in dusty playgrounds.
A few months ago, before the U.S. bombing drove the Taliban from power, these activities would have brought punishment and jail sentences from the regime that considered Western and modern influences among the worst of evils.
“I can’t tell you what a joy it is to hear songs and to see something as simple as a child flying a kite,” said Bashir Ahmad, 25, who spent the last Eid al-Adha in a stifling prison cell because he had returned from Pakistan with a trimmed beard in violation of Taliban codes.
Now it is the Taliban leadership, and the Arab terrorists it harbored, who are having an unpleasant holiday, Ahmad said. Some are half a world away in Cuba, in U.S. confinement.
Before the Taliban fled this cradle of its movement, they ran up a bill of several thousand dollars at Ahmad’s mechanic shop and never paid.
“It’s all worth it to lose that and see them in jail and know some of them are dead this Eid,” he said. “I still remember hearing their laughter last Eid from the jail. Now we are the ones having fun.”
Eid al-Adha is a sacred Muslim holiday, celebrated worldwide by more than 1.2 billion people. It marks patriarchal figure Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s behest. The three-day celebration began Friday with prayers and the slaughter of sheep for the traditional meal.
On Saturday, Afghans took a respite from pounding poverty, the tribal feuding of recent weeks and the presence of U.S. forces hunting terrorists and Taliban fighters. They attended picnics, concerts and festivals.
But significant parts of society kept away from the public display of celebration. Many women, still living under a strict Islamic thumb, stayed shuttered in their homes.
One by one, hundreds of Taliban loyalists traveled to a rocky graveyard in a desolate creek bed of garbage and sewage to pray at the tombs of Taliban and Al Qaeda members buried there. They kept visitors away with hard stares and an entourage of rock-throwing children.
In a sign of continuing Taliban influence in the Kandahar area, the regional governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, told worshipers that in an effort to restore stability he is working to persuade the Americans to release a former Taliban foreign minister.
For many Kandaharis, however, Saturday was a time to revel in survival and freedom from the Taliban hand. Accompanied by drums, bells, tambourines and native string instruments, Mohammed Osman sang about overcoming hardship. Behind him onstage was the new Afghan flag.
For half his 20 years, Osman was in exile in Pakistan waiting for this day.
“To see my countrymen smiling, even if just for a little while, this makes me sing even more,” he said.
