A16 Afghanistan


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SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010 For affluent Afghans, houses that break the rules houses from A1


al Afghan residences are low- slung mud brick with internal courtyards and little external em- bellishment. Poppy houses, crit- ics grumble, are imported Paki- stani designs, with Arab, or sim- ply alien, influences.


“I mix designs from the U.S. KARIN BRULLIARD/THE WASHINGTON POST This house and three others are in a compound just outside Kabul.


and U.K. — I create my own!” said Haji Akram Mughal, a Pakistani architect who works out of a sec-


ond-story Sherpur office. On a re- cent day he displayed blueprints for two mansions he designed for Afghan air force generals, one of which resembled a plantation from the American South. The United Nations says more than one-third of the Afghan population lives in “absolute pov- erty,” and in most of the country mud walls and no running water remain the norm. That also pre- vailed in Sherpur until seven


years ago, when local authorities bulldozed rudimentary houses and gave the land to senior gov- ernment workers. In their place now stand houses that mimic Ro- man ruins, the White House and a cruise ship. Then there are the rooftop birds: Atop two domiciles sit gi- ant statues of eagles, their wings spread. “When I saw that eagle on my roof, I liked it more than a real


one,” said Fazil Mohammed, a construction executive who owns the larger of the eagles and its 16- bedroom perch, which he said is leased to a nephew of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Never, Mohammed said, would he have “such a fancy thing” in the typical Afghan neighborhood where he resides. “The eagles? I can’t place them


at all,” said Thalia Kennedy, an ar- chitectural historian at the Ka- bul-based Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which preserves his- toric urban areas. Poppy houses, she said, “seem to represent a massive leap from tradition.” But not entirely. Afghanistan has always been a crossroads, Kennedy said, and some of the poppy houses hint at past eras. The Mughals, whose 16th- and 17th-century South Asian empire included parts of Afghanistan, fa- vored glass decoration, a bit like the sparkly mosaics of some Sher- pur verandas, she said. An “obsession” with adorning


FOR A DREAM RATE. GET A DREAM HOUSE,


every inch of a building’s interior is common across the Muslim world, she said, something Af- ghanistan’s nouveau riche have taken outside. Zamani Nawid, a property dealer in Sherpur, said most homeowners acquire blueprints from Pakistan and hire local engi- neers to do the building, which is often fairly shoddy. Then they rent them to foreigners and go live in Dubai, he said. They are “very powerful people,” Nawid said — the sorts with posses of bodyguards — and so he asks no questions about their sources of funding.


Among Nawid’s listings is a 47- bedroom monstrosity that rents for $47,000 a month. He said he has also sold a property with a poolside feature that sounds like an urban legend: a mechanical contraption that looks like a black crow. It wraps its wings around swimmers, then blows air


Seven years ago, authorities bulldozed rudimentary houses in Sherpur and gave the land to senior government workers.


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MILE LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST


to dry them off. “It’s bigger than a man,” Nawid, 21, said approvingly. “In Afghani- stan, there is a lot of competition. So everyone wants a house that is better than the other person.” Among this set, the popular


features these days would make a fundamentalist Taliban com- mander keel over. For that rea- son, they are often concealed in the basement, said Mughal, the architect. “Barbecue — it’s a must. Swim- ming pool — it’s a must. And — I feel shame — drinking,” he said about his clients’ typical de- mands. “Yes, a bar. Everybody likes this.” A few blocks away, Mohammed Gul, 80, sold brooms and cucum- bers outside the earth house he built with his hands three dec- ades ago. It now stands in the shadow of Sherpur palaces, which he said he views with both awe and fear. They are lovely, he said, even if


they are “owned by drug dealers.” But the city has warned that his patch of land might soon be handed to developers. Then, said Mohammed, “the next day, they will come to us with their bull- dozers.”


brulliardk@washpost.com Mikrorayon


Bala Hissar Fort


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