Guiding His Flock Through the Afghan Sky

Two Hours With a Pigeon Keeper

KABUL, Afghanistan

At 3:40 p.m., the cage doors open and the air is suddenly full of pigeons.

Not just your average gray pigeons. But a pageant of red, black, blue and white pigeons -- each one different from the next.

Some of these pigeons are the envy of the neighborhood. Some of them have been in training for years. All of them are Faqir Mohammed's pigeons. And they know it.

Mohammed is a 41-year-old shopkeeper with steely blue eyes and a haggard face who, like many Afghans of his generation, looks older than he is. He has been flying pigeons all his life. In Afghanistan, it is a popular way to pass the afternoon. It is also a fiercely competitive sport, with owners vying for one another's birds.

Mohammed learned how to train pigeons from his dad, who used to fly them on this very roof in the capital's oldest neighborhood, where the only color on the palette is brown.

"The roofs are the same. The cages are the same. They're all made of mud," says Mohammed Ismail, 32, as he watches his older brother work. "But somehow, the birds know as well as we do which one is theirs."

The routine varies little from day to day. After spending the morning in his shop, Mohammed comes home and lets loose his collection of 28 pigeons. At first he just watches them circle, and whistles. It is a piercing cry, high enough to make a child on the other side of the roof stick fingers in her ears. Mohammed whistles again. And again. Then he goes for his net.

He wields the net, which extends from the end of a six-foot pole, like a fly fisherman casting a lure. But the goal is not to haul the pigeons in. It is to widen the gyre, to send them flying a little farther from home.

So out they go. Past the nearest mosque, where the call to prayer is sounding. Out near the presidential palace, where an Afghan flag flaps in the breeze. Up against the barren hills, which serve as prelude to the snow-capped peaks beyond.

There are at least six flocks of pigeons flying in Kabul today, and as Mohammed's birds wander farther afield, they merge with someone else's. Together, they are mere specks on the horizon, flying directly into a setting sun.

But they haven't lost sight of home. In a flash, Mohammed drops the net and grabs his only pigeon who never flies -- a white female with a black nose who is, evidently, quite a catch. He holds her skyward, and her clipped wings sound like a balky lawn mower as they flap furiously, and futilely.