Only in Afghanistan
A couple of days ago, while inspecting Hydro projects, I came across a door with a shoe tacked onto it's frame.
For the life of me, I couldnt figure out why someone had tacked a lone shoe on the door frame. So I asked my interpreter...and he fell over laughing. He then explained to the local Elder what my question had been...and he also fell over laughing. Since they were both incapacitated with laughter I took I wild guess out loud; "well, maybe someone found the shoe of the guy who is maintaining the facility and decided to leave it at the door...(?)." This only made my Interpreter laugh more. Eventually, he caught his breath enough to tell the Elder what I had said, thereby causing him to have a second bought of laughing fits.
Eventually, they calmed down enough to tell me that the shoe was there as a security measure. -- ' A what?!' -- This made no sense to me what so ever. They tried to explain, but the language barrier was too great or I was too dumb, or some such. So I dodged away and started asking questions about something else all together.
During our ride back to the base, it finally dawned on me what the whole shoe-on-the-door thing was all about: Afghanistan is saturated with a ridiculous amount of superstitions, symbolisms and incomprehensible customs regarding a great many things. Most of these things are completely outside of the awareness of decent God fearing Westerners (and non God fearing Westerners for that matter). Anyways, one of these bits of symbolism has to do with the bottom of feet. If someone directs the bottom of their foot towards someone else then it is an insult to the later; the foot-pointer is saying that the other person is 'beneath' them and is the equivalent of the dust on the ground. --> So the shoe on the door is taking advantage of this stigma and evidently serves as an effective security measure to keep unwanted visitors away. Sort of like a pink bench in a football locker room; no one is going to sit on the pink bench.
If conversation over a shoe tacked to a door will put them in hysterics, think about how easy it is to accidentally insult these people. There will probably be a full up burn-the-city-down riot when the first Nike store opens in Afghanistan. Crazy Afghans!
btw -- more photos in the gallery
Posted by paul at October 28, 2007 10:08 AM