KABUL – Flower Street and its continuation Chicken Street are by far the liveliest and most picturesque commercial thoroughfares in Kabul a river of color flowing through a desert of destroyed or rundown buildings.
This vibrant rainbow draws its hues from the nature of the goods sold here: fresh and canned groceries (many imported from Europe) pastries and flowers (of course) on Flower Street and a stunning variety of Afghan carpets gemstones and antiques on Chicken Street.
Walking up this urban market garden shaded by gracefully leaning trees on a balmy blue summer’s day toward nearby Asmai Mountain as diplomats joke with the shopkeepers and American soldiers test the action on the 19th century British Enfield rifles it is easy to forget the tragedy that brought us all here in the first place and the uncertainties of the struggle ahead.
With so much to command attention in this delightful oasis and the time allotted for escape from vastly more serious tasks so short it is unlikely that many of the foreigners who have descended on Kabul since the Taliban were driven out pause to notice a long drab building covered with dirty white stucco on the right as one enters the foot of Flower Street. Its shattered windows warped wooden door and lack of a sign on a street of stores makes it indistinguishable from the city’s countless other neglected or abandoned structures.
The only feature that could possibly catch the eye of a passerby is a large white terra cotta square set into the second story decorated with endlessly repeated six-pointed stars. Although these are not Stars of David proper but more like starbursts this is in fact Kabul?s only synagogue and its caretaker is one of Afghanistan?s last Jews.
His name is Zaboldan Simantov and he was born in the western city of Herat over forty years ago to a distinguished family prominent in commercial and public affairs.
“My uncle Joseph Simantov had a great name in Kabul in the time of King Zahir Shah and even as far back as the days of his father King Nadir Shah” he says proudly with an upward wave of his hand as he speaks through his translator Niaz the owner of a nearby curio shop who is a friend.
“He was a dealer in carpets antiques and textiles who imported and exported with special commissions from His Majesty. I too made a living in that trade until the disasters that overtook our country. It was the business of my family a family that had been in Afghanistan since Buddhist times before the coming of Islam.”
Mr. Simantov perhaps exaggerates the antiquity of his own family in Afghanistan for Bukhara a city with a strong and fabled Jewish community is known to be the center from which most Afghan Jews emigrated during the later Middle Ages.
But he is right about the Jewish presence in the country in general for it was a very ancient branch of the Diaspora active on the Silk Road between Central Asia and India as is evidenced by the discovery in the 1950’s of a medieval cemetery near the famous Minaret of Jam in the western province of Ghor.
An old apocryphal legend with wide currency in Afghanistan even posits a Hebrew origin for the country’s historically dominant Pashtun ethnicity claiming they are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
And his description of his uncle’s career fits the pattern followed by the most prominent Afghan Jewish traders who exported the country’s coveted handicrafts and imported textiles under the sponsorship of the Muslim ruling class.
“For a time the Jews held an important economic position in Afghanistan” Vartan Gregorian wrote in his seminal study The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan “and along with the Hindus served as a major channel of contact between that country and Europe.”
