I have been taking a basic Dari class twice a week for the last three weeks. We had a graduation luncheon today. It was the best meal I've had in six weeks. It consisted of spinach, lamb kebabs, a ground meat dumpling, steamed rice, a 12-inch slab of nan bread, persimmons, and tea. We ate sitting on the floor. Normally the meal is eaten using the nan bread to scoop up the food. In a paen to us Americans, the gave us plastic silverware. I think I could have done the hand and bread scooping, but it was good to have utensils.
We were tasked with memorizing three Dari proverbs. The key was to pick short proverbs. My three were:
Ham hurma ham sawaab--Dates and rewards;
Au az balaa khet ast--The water is dirty from the top;
Del ba del raad doraad--There is a way heart to heart. At the end of class last week the instructors all told me
layaq shageerd--You are an intelligent student. I guess I'm not doing too bad for an old guy. There was a young French officer who was really good at Dari but he had to go down to Kandahar and a middle-aged Dane was pretty good, but he missed several classes also. Thus, I was probably third best in the class.
They are starting an intermediate class on the 28th. Oh, boy!
Bisaryh khub!
Carpet experts can tell where a rug is from by the design and workmanship. The best Afghan carpets come from Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. The Turkmen are outstanding weavers and moved into Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded Turkmenistan in the 1920s. I read a study that said a drought killed the Qaraqul sheep in Afghanistan in the 1970s and thus, the older carpets are better than the new. It takes a woman about nine months to do a three square meter carpet by herself. The study said that she would earn about $80-90 for the carpet.
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