A brief respite in Jalalabad

Mahbouba could hear me moping in Kabul all the way from Jalalabad and she called me to invite me down or rather she said "Pack up and get your butt down here." It took me all of 20 minutes to arrange it and we were off. Jalalabad is east down through the mountains and the weather was gorgeous. It was a lift to get out of cold and snowy Kabul.



We were invited to stay at Mahbouba's husband, Hassan Gailani's family house in Jalalabad and to spend a couple of days there was an unusually close glimpse of Afghanistan's history. Hassan's uncle is the head of a sufi religious sect that originated in Iraq and migrated here. The family were also major resistance fighters during the war with Russia. The house was on a beautiful plantation, rebuilt and staffed by "followers". Jalalabad has flowers, orange trees is full fruit, and was mild and fragrant. In the days before the war most of the influential Afghan families had homes in Jalalabad for winter. I found the following excerpt that described the Gailani's.

"Hazrat Naqib Sahib, father of Sayyid Ahmad Gailani Effendi, the present pir of the Qadiriya, established the family seat in Afghanistan on the outskirts of Jalalabad during the 1920s. Pir Ahmad Gailani is the leader of the mujahidin Mahaz-i Melli Islami party. The leadership of both the Naqshbandiya and Qadiriya orders derive from heredity rather than religious scholarship.

Afghanistan is unique in that there is little hostility between the ulama and the Sufi orders. Numbers of Sufi leaders are considered as ulama, and many ulama closely associate with Sufi brotherhoods. The general populace accords Sufis respect for their learning and for possessing karamat, the psychic spiritual power conferred upon them by God that enables pirs to perform acts of generosity and bestow blessings (barakat). Sufism therefore is an effective popular force.
In addition, since Sufi leaders distance themselves from the mundane, they are at times turned to as more disinterested mediators in tribal disputes in preference to mullahs who are reputed to escalate minor secular issues into volatile confrontations couched in Islamic rhetoric."

We visited a remarkable "Kallo" a fortress like adobe fort that Hassan's family wintered in that was unoccupied during the war but is remarkably preserved for this kind of construct. This is a very, very old type of building that we see all over the country but this one was very handsome in its day.































































































































































































































A sweet moment when the "Malem, Saihib" who took care of us and arranged armed escort, brought a young boy to Hassan for his prayers and blessings. An ancient moment.

Hassan is the heir to the current "Pir" and he has two brothers and a cousin elected to parliament. I look forward to watching this family as they participate in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.