Local Games in Afghanistan

Hi All,

There are so many topics that I wanted to write about but one of them got my attention the most, my country- Afghanistan. You will always hear about fighting, war, corruption and such things in Afghanistan. However, I would like to give you some other information- about the local games.

With all the talk about fighting and war outside, people inside the country are very peace-loving. I cannot deny there have been parties who fought but there have been hundreds and thousands who have been victims. The number of victims exceeds far beyond the ones who fight so it is obvious all the people are not pro-war.

I lived part of my childhood in Kabul. I went to school for many years in Kabul and enjoyed child plays here. I remember we were kids from different backgrounds and ethnicities and we were all playing together. We never thought someone else is different. The three main child-plays at that time were Ghorsai, Toshl-a-bord , Toop-Danda and skiing. I do not know the names of these games in English except the ski. In Ghorsia ther are two teams and every team has a base. You keep one leg above the ground and run to touch the other base. Toshl-a-bord is an individual game and is played with marbles. Furthermore, Toop-Danda is somehow like base ball with a difference that there are only two bases and the batsman throws the ball in the air himself and then hit it. Ski is performed in winter and in cold areas of the country. The difference is we do not go to the mountains; we prepare the surface of the ice in our streets and start skiing- Afghan style. Nowadays most kids, at least in the capital, play a lot with video games.

When I got young, we were playing other sports such as soccer and volleyball. There were so many teams around the town and we would always have matches and tournaments.  This was the time that video games were first introduced. There were many video game centers and youngsters were going there to play video games. The most interesting point was there would have been matches. Afghans are very competitive and like to play games when there is competition. In northern parts of the country, people do Buzkashi. This game is played with horses and there will be two teams. There will be a goat (slaughtered) in one circle and the teams try to pick up the goat and bring it to another circle. The other team will stop this team and will try to take the goat themselves. All this is done on the horses.

There is another famous game-kite running. I intentionally put it as this is played by children and youngsters and even elders. We run kites all our lives but the scope would be different. When we are children we have plastic kites and the threat is also not very good. When we grew up then we have beautiful kites and we use threads that are specially prepared for kite running. Every of the mentioned games have a specific time in the country. When it is time of kite-running, you will see a very colorful sky all around.

In addition to the above, people play indoor games such as cards and chess. There are some other indoor games as well but not very popular. It is also worth mentioning that the games mentioned above are mostly played by boys. Girls play some of them but they also have some special games such as Panjaq and Jiz-bazi. These two are very difficult to explain here.

Hope you enjoyed it. I will write about Afghan weddings in my next blog.

Regards,

Javid