By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 4, 2005; A17
MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan -- "Looking at the audience, I see that you are all Kandaharis," the singer said into the microphone as he surveyed a sea of heads sporting the sparkly caps and long-tailed turbans common to that southern city. "But my Pashto is not strong, so I hope you will enjoy our music in Dari." The tourists crowded into the Ahmadi Supermarket and Restaurant applauded encouragingly. This northern city might seem an odd destination for travelers from Kandahar, which, after all, is the ethnic Pashtun stronghold where the repressive Taliban movement originated. Mazar-e Sharif, a city dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, was one of the last holdouts against the Taliban. During the violent struggle for control of the city, which the Taliban held from 1998 to 2001, members of both sides engaged in massacres of the other. But the Taliban is gone now. And when it comes to ringing in the Persian New Year in Afghanistan, even people from Kandahar will admit that Mazar-e Sharif has no equal. "This is the place to celebrate, so of course I wanted to come," said Abdul Rezek, 28, an auto parts salesman who had taken the 18-hour bus ride from Kandahar with 12 of his friends several days earlier. "Definitely people here know where I am from," he added. "But they say, 'You are as a guest here. We welcome you.' " It has been a recurring theme of this year's festivities in Mazar-e Sharif. The holiday, known as Nowruz, or new day, began on March 21 with the raising of a religious banner, or janda , in the courtyard of the city's magnificent blue-domed shrine. That is where, according to Afghan tradition, Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the fourth caliph of Islam, is buried. For several weeks, until the janda is taken down in a second ceremony on the 13th day of the new year, the city will host tens of thousands of visitors from across Afghanistan. Their reasons for journeying north are as varied as the provinces from which the pilgrims hail. There are giddy young men, who come to dance in the streets or listen to concerts. There are the devout, who come to pay solemn homage to Ali. And there are parents of disabled children, who come to beg him for a miraculous cure. Within each group, Afghans from vastly different provinces are mingling with a degree of ease that is notable in a nation still struggling to forge a national identity after years of regional conflict. That sense of community was one of the few uplifting aspects of the Chila Khana. A large, fenced-off outdoor nook in the Mazar-e Sharif shrine's western wall, the Chila Khana -- or House of Forty -- is reserved for the most seriously ill and disabled of worshipers. According to tradition, those who sleep here each night until the janda is taken down will be cured of whatever ails them. A few days into Nowruz, more than 100 pilgrims were huddled there in a tableau of human misery. On the men's side, an adolescent with wild hair and bloodshot eyes wailed incoherently. Nearby, Qurban Haiderboi, an elderly pilgrim who had traveled from the western Afghan city of Herat to help out in the Chila Khana, was touting the miraculous recovery of Askar Hamid, a 25-year-old with rolling eyes and crumpled limbs from the northern province of Kunduz. "Before, he could not speak a single word," Haiderboi shouted as he propped up Hamid against the railing to show him off to a gathering crowd. "But last night I sat with him and told him to say the kalima " -- the Muslim holy prayer. "Now he is saying the kalima for everybody." On the women's side, a middle-aged mother named Jamila looked on sadly as she cradled her sickly looking 4-year-old son. Yet her frown turned to a pleasant smile as she described the friendship that had sprung up between her and a 20-year-old woman with a mangled hand. "I didn't know anyone when I came here," said Jamila, who like many Afghans uses only one name. "Now she and I have become like mother and sister even though we are from different provinces. When it is time for me to go to the mosque and pray, I even leave my son with her." Several miles away, on the dusty plain where a buzkashi match was underway, the fans crowding the stands displayed a similar lack of regional prejudice. A wild and dangerous game in which dozens of galloping horsemen race each other across the Central Asian steppe while fighting to grab hold of a headless goat carcass, buzkashi is said to date from the time of Genghis Khan. With their Asiatic features, high-heeled boots and quilted jackets and sashes, the professional players looked as though they had stepped out of another era. But they had also accessorized their outfits with a few touches from Afghanistan's more recent past -- including olive-green Soviet tanker's helmets from the 1980s and black plastic knee pads that would have fit in with the rollerbladers in Rock Creek Park. Every few minutes, the scrum of horsemen whooshed by in a blur of clattering hoofs, rearing horses and cracking whips. Then the announcer would call out the name of the player judged to have gained possession of the carcass -- never an obvious choice -- and the winner would ride up to receive a fistful of cash from the sponsor of that round. In another time, fans might have rooted for players from their ethnic group or province. But the crowd favorite, known as Malang, appeared to be popular mainly because he usually wins the most rounds in a tournament. Isakhan, a 42-year-old language teacher from the nearby city of Samangan, confided that it didn't hurt that Malang was a fellow ethnic Uzbek. "I do feel happy when an Uzbek wins," he said. Others in the crowd immediately interjected that Malang was actually a Turkmen. "No, he's a Tajik!" said another man. "Okay," Isakhan said finally, "we are all Afghans." Not that the Nowruz tourists were always tolerant of differences. At the university auditorium, where a multi-day music festival was held in honor of the holiday, the young men in the audience greeted an Iranian troupe with disappointed jeers when it launched into a slow, funereal chant. Robert Kluyver, a Dutch consultant with the foundation that sponsored the festival, jumped up and asked the emcee to lecture the audience on the importance of appreciating "fine music" from other cultures. Afterward, the audience listened politely for a few moments, then broke into rowdy cheers as the music picked up a notch. "I guess they didn't get the message," Kluyver said with a shake of his head. Back at the hotel where musicians from the festival had been put up for the night, the Singing Mullah of Shebergan said he was sure he would enjoy a warmer reception when he played at the auditorium the following night. "I am famous around here," said the 62-year-old, whose real name is Taj Mohammed, as he leaned back on his thin hotel mattress with a confident grin. Certainly, he had the most interesting stage name, although technically he had given up his job as an Islamic preacher four decades ago. Now, Mohammed works as a supervisor at a natural gas mine by day and an entertainer by night. Mostly his band plays weddings. But perhaps his most memorable concert was in the early 1990s, when the band traveled to the front lines of the battle then raging between Abdurrashid Dostum, the pro-communist, ethnic Uzbek general, and Islamic guerrilla groups. "Suddenly we came under fire from Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades," said Mohammed, an Uzbek. "But we kept on playing for Dostum." A powerful militia leader who switched sides multiple times during Afghanistan's various wars and whose troops are widely believed to have brutally massacred hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001, Dostum remains a controversial figure. But Mohammed said he was unaware of those charges and had only fond memories of the period in the mid-1990s when Dostum ruled several northern areas, including Mazar-e Sharif, as his fiefdom. Still, Mohammed added that he had always been committed to national unity. Back in the days of civil war, he said, he frequently sang a song of his own composition called "We Love Our Homeland." Its message was that Afghans should stop fighting each other. Now the band was working on a new song, meant to encourage countrymen to make use of Afghanistan's natural resources. "It is for the reconstruction of Afghanistan," Mohammed said as his band mates picked up traditional Uzbek instruments for an impromptu performance. Buzkashi matches are held during Nowruz, or Persian New Year. Horsemen race each other while fighting for a headless goat carcass. Qurban Haiderboi, right, encourages Askar Hamid to pray at an area of Mazar-e Sharif's shrine that is reserved for the afflicted.