The Kandahar Wedding Crashers

Article by: Rodney Cocks, May 2006

"Kandaharis celebrate weddings like no other Afghans; the biggest and best wedding parties are here. They are also the safest places to be these days as everyone brings their AK or pistol along to fire into the air," Naqibullah, the cousin of the groom, and my host, cheerfully assures me.

Since the regime change in southern Afghanistan's former Taliban heartland and Al Qaeda stronghold of Kandahar, there has been a sharp increase in flamboyant wedding ceremonies. Before the events of September 2001, when the Taliban were in power, a mullah consecrated marriages in the absence of the couple - abrupt, no further celebrations. The regime outlawed music, dancing and women venturing outside their homes. Now it's a different story. Despite being a country where most earn a few dollars a day and an insurgency and drug war plagues large areas, thousands of dollars are spent on weddings and hundreds of people are invited to this new breed of celebration.

If you are travelling to Kandahar when a wedding is on, it's more than likely you will be invited - even if, like I did, you just bump into someone attending. My advice is accept the invitation - it would be disrespectful not to. You may feel like you are crashing the wedding, but you will be warmly welcomed and it may well turn out to be a highlight of your time in the 'Ghan.

While 'love' marriages do occur in Kandahar, they are still uncommon amongst the traditional southern Pashtun tribes, with arranged marriages being the norm. These unions are orchestrated by the parents and extended family of the young bride and groom, and generally arranged on tribal and business lines. Some, however, are conceived as a way of settling disputes between local warlords and drug barons.

Preparations commence long before the big day. The groom's mother and any sisters broker the engagement with the mother of the bride over many cups of green tea and possibly a substantial dowry to be paid to the bride's father; a dowry which can consist of thousands of dollars, livestock and ex-Soviet Army trucks. A mullah is then asked to lead a prayer for the engagement. Once everything is agreed and exchanged, goats and sheep will be slaughtered and the families will celebrate, often for days at a time.

Naqib tells me to arrive in the mid-afternoon for the wedding party. Formalities have already started with the groom collecting the bride and the families - although the couple travel separately to avoid seeing each other, as they have never actually met. The ubiquitous Toyota Corolla or Taliban Taxi (as they are innocently referred to by many Kandaharis) is the horse and carriage of choice. A gaudy rainbow of ribbons, plastic flowers and streamers adorn the vehicles, painstakingly affixed with miles of sticky tape by the numerous wedding shops that have sprung up in the downtown area. Accidents regularly occur with wedding cars as they are so heavily decorated the drivers can barely see out of the windscreen.

"Thursday is our busiest day; we have decorated six cars today. I even cut my hand as we have to work so fast," says Mujeeb, a former Mujahideen fighter turned Kandahar wedding shop owner, nursing his tape dispenser war wound.

Arriving at the wedding hall, it is packed with bearded, turban clad Afghan men. One thing is clear to me - the women celebrate separately. There is one area for the groom and the men; another for the bride and the women. Tonight is a grand affair - the groom is from a relatively wealthy Kandahar family and the bride from neighbouring Hilmand Province, best known for its opium poppies. The guests hail from everywhere; tribesmen, family and friends come from all over southern Afghanistan and the Pashtun Belt of Pakistan.

I regret eating lunch as soon as I notice the groaning platters of goat and sheep meat, pulao(an Afghan dish of rice and raisins), flat bread and fruit lining the tables, peppered by scores of Pepsi cans. The groom's family kept piling food onto my plate and made sure I was eating it. I was so full I could barely walk - let alone join in the Afghan dancing. This was not an issue for the father of the groom, who ensured I sat next to him on the largest table. He pushed me onto the dance floor with the groom. With a crash course in traditional Afghan dancing, I spun clumsily around the floor, much to the delight of the Afghan men, while my stomach begged for mercy. As I sat down for a rest, even more food was put in front of me.

Celebratory dancing, singing, eating and drumming continue for hours. During the celebrations a mullah and the groom's father recite a verse from the Koran and ornate cloth gifted from the bride's family is tied around his waist. Religiously and tribally, the couple is now married - the ceremony is simple with only the spoken word.

I caught up with a female friend later in the evening who had also managed an invitation and she shed some light on what went on in the female area. It seems things were a little more reserved; dozens of ladies sitting in groups eating traditional food, sweet Afghan delicacies and drinking tea. Outside the home, nearly all women wear the all-covering burqah. But inside, and amongst women, they are off, and the conversation turns to outfits, make-up and how beautiful the bride looks. In this instance, apparently she looked like a princess, adorned with jewels and her hands and feet intricately painted with henna designs. As the wedding draws to a close, the groom makes a short appearance in front of the ladies to meet his wife for the very first time.

Soon after, I am swept up in the sea that is the grooms' male family and friends as they flood out onto the street to see him off in the most ostentatious wedding car in the convoy. Three vases stuffed with plastic bright-red roses are taped to the roof, four more on the bonnet. The wedding procession snakes for hundreds of metres with drums being beaten by men sitting atop of mini buses, Kalashnikovs being fired into the air from Corolla windows and extremely large 1980s camcorders vainly trying to capture the celebratory chaos. I'm confused; should I take cover from the gunfire? Help out with the drumming? Maybe I should just enjoy the ride.

The party ramps up outside the groom's house as the bride arrives to start her new life. A new life in a new and ever-changing Afghanistan.