A memory of happiness – but at a high cost
Posted on 12 October 2009 by JDanish
By Jamil Dnish
October 2009 – Jawad Kohistani is sitting on a red sofa, looking pale and anxious, sipping a cup of green tea to steady his nerves.
The hotel manager is counting the number of guests Jawad plans on inviting to his wedding next week. He’s stamping every single invitation card Jawad has provided.
Photo by Freshta Dunya
But Jawad has a problem: he has no way to limit the number of guests. He wants to invite everyone and he’s very concerned about the expenses for 500 guests. “What discount will you give me for the 500 guests I have invited,” asked Jawad. The hotel manager tries to explain that he can only provide 10 free tickets per 100 guests. “I also would like you stamp some 20 blank invitation cards in case we have forgotten some guests,” said Jawad. In total, Jawad expects almost 600 guests to come to his wedding party, which will cost him $3,000 alone for the food and.
In Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, bridegrooms are expected to pay not only for their weddings, but also for all the related expenses, including big pre-wedding ceremonies. Shafi, who is a university student, is having his wedding bill picked up by his father. The total cost will exceed $20,000 which includes decorations, flowers, clothes and car hire.”
Competition among families raises the cost of weddings,” said Shafi. Shafi’s wedding will take place at the Oranoos wedding hall in Kabul, in two vast banquet rooms, one for the men and the other for the women. Afghan custom dictates that men and women are separated at weddings.
The big day is one of great activity for the family and involves a gathering of all the relatives, distant cousins and friends. The menu features 15 dishes including kebabs grilled on skewers, fish, chicken, meatballs, lamb, stewed vegetables and normally three kinds of rice, kaboli palaw, orange palaw and plain palaw all cooked with meat and served with at least two kinds of fresh fruit. (Can you make this last sentence more succinct?)
The host tries to put as much as food on the table as possible as part of the wedding tradition, even though the majority of the food usually ends up in the trash (American English). Half of the cost of every wedding goes into the hiring wedding of halls and catering.
Wedding halls are making a small fortune every week. “Aros Shahr” or the City Bride Wedding Hall in Kabul, which is actually one of the less popular wedding halls, holds a wedding every day. The actual cost of each wedding is determined by the number of guests and the type of menu. “It depends on the host of the ceremony. It can cost you from 150,000 Afg ($ 3,000) to 500,000 Afg ($ 10,000) just for the food,” explained Fahim Hakimi, the manager of the City Bride Wedding Hall. “On average a wedding hall in Kabul is making up to $ 20,000 a week,” Fahim admitted.
But since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, the Afghan wedding industry has sprung up and is now bigger than ever. The average guest list for a wedding ceremony often reaches 700 people and you can expect some 200 gate-crashers on top of that. The biggest weddings can exceed 2,000 people in number. The wedding halls in Kabul, most of them built in the last six years, stand out in the city with their mirrored green and blue glass and blinking decorated lights towering over the city’s dusty streets. The indoor halls feature mirrored walls and on the outside the neon lighting is powered by generators because there’s no guarantee of electricity in Kabul most of the time.
“The number of registered wedding halls in Kabul alone has reached 68 and that’s growing,” said Haji Abdul Salam the head of hotels at Kabul Municipality. That is seven times the number of wedding halls that there were in 2001. The names of the halls usually offer an idea of romance and glamour which can be more hopeful than realistic: An Evening in Paris Wedding Hall, the Aria Seven Stars Wedding Hall, the City Bride Wedding Hall, the Unique Palace and others.
Bridegrooms and their families end up organizing huge wedding ceremonies and then place themselves in huge debt for years afterwards.
As a day laborer Jawad makes about US$ 250 a month, but he’s already spent US$ 5,000; that excludes the expense of feeding another 550 guests on the wedding day which will inflate the price to US$ 9,000. He claims to have borrowed more than half of the total amount.
“My relatives, friends and family members have lent me money so I have to pay every single penny back,” Jawad said.
Asked how it felt to hand over the equivalent of 36 times his monthly salary, he replied: “The payment allowed the marriage to happen. Only a memory is left, a memory of happiness,” he exclaimed.
Posts
