The fortune-teller of Kabul - The Guardian
By his own admission, Sharifi was the last person you would expect to indulge in mysticism. Twenty-two years old, tall, handsome, with slicked-back hair, Sharifi usually wears blue jeans and a leather jacket, and walks with a swagger. Five years earlier, Sharifi had begun working as a shopkeeper’s assistant in Kabul selling carpets, gemstones, and other souvenirs. His customers were the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who came to Afghanistan following the US-led Nato invasion in 2001. They were experts, advisors, aid workers, and adventurers, each with their own ideas about what Afghanistan needed the... Sharifi sold them chapan robes with vertical stripes, the kind worn by former president Hamid Karzai, or Jinnah caps made from the fur of aborted lamb foetuses – things foreigners could bring home and brag about. For many young English-speaking Afghans like Sharifi, the early years of the occupation had expanded their sense of what was possible. That year, 1,523 civilians were killed, an increase of more than 50% over the previous year. He had once thought that he might be able to save up for a nice car, perhaps a BMW. Its owner let him go. Sharifi found a clerical job on an American military. Source: www.theguardian.com
