KABUL, Afghanistan -- It's Friday morning, the holiest day of the week. Mullahs call from mosques around the city, beckoning Muslims to kneel and pray to Allah. Men enjoy this, their one day off from work when they can mingle in markets, visit cemeteries or linger over tea with friends.
Others head to Shaaqa Kabul's, looking for a fight.
It's not an easy place to find. They walk through the Jada-e-Maiwand Market, past large grills sizzling with mutton and cages filled with singing canaries and cooing pigeons. Tea kettles boil over smoky, wooden fires. Plush red rugs lap from stalls.
The entrance to the fighting yard is a small square opening in a wooden wall. A toothless guard sits outside in a knit cap, puffing a Marlboro cigarette and waving the regulars through the door and into a long, dark corridor.
Stooping under the low ceiling, they walk toward a pool of light in the distance. The corridor opens into a sunny, bombed-out courtyard. Dogs snarl and bark behind a wooden stall, their chains rattling. The sweet smell of hashish hangs in the air, as men stare blankly at the ground, littered with rubble.
From inside a breezy bungalow come the shouts of men.
"One million afghani."
"Two million afghani."
"Five million afghani."
More than 30 men, wearing gray and white turbans and dark blazers, sit in a circle on a stained red carpet, speckled with seeds. They are haggling over the price of a bird -- a prize fighter.
Shaaqa Kabul, the balding fight promoter, sits at the far end of the circle, supervising the sale. Shaaqa has owned the yard for nearly 20 years, and business is booming again after a short hiatus.
The Taliban banned the fights and shut down the yard, he says.
After the American bombing campaign and the Northern Alliance ground offensive, the Taliban left the city on Nov. 13. Shaaqa reopened his yard the next day.
It's a popular pastime and lucrative business once again. Some men spend more money at Shaaqa's yard than most Afghans earn in a month. Shaaqa takes a commission on every transaction.
"Thank you, America. You are good people," he says. "You rescued us from the terrorists."
THEY DON'T look fierce, these small larks with brown wings, white bellies and scrawny yellow legs.
But these birds, called Bodena, achieve something that most Afghans cannot: They make money.
Lots of money.
Wagers in these bird fights can reach as high as $80, depending on the fighting prowess of the birds and the wealth of their owners. The men also come to sell and trade their fowl, like sports stars. On one Friday morning, a bird sold for $135. That in a country where some doctors and government officials earn $50 a month.
During the lean years of the Taliban, butchers used to drop off scraps for the dogs, which greet visitors on their way into the yard.
A caretaker would bring seeds to keep the birds alive. At night, Shaaqa used to sneak visits to his beloved Russian shepherd dogs, which, like the birds, he breeds to fight.
These days, the possibilities are endless. A regular at the fight yard recently captured a gazelle in the Shomali Plains and brought it to Shaaqa's place. They keep the animal roped in a corner of the bungalow, feeding it cucumbers. When someone gets too close, the gazelle tries to ram the person with its horns.
If they can capture another animal like it, the men at the yard are thinking about fighting them.
"I don't know why they closed us down," Shaaqa says. "In every country, . . . Pakistan, Iran, the United States, people need to do something for fun. This is our fun."
And so every Friday, dozens of teachers, businessmen and the unemployed -- a cross-section of the city -- come to gamble. Or according to Farid, 21, Shaaqa's jobless nephew and owner of a bird that has yet to win a single fight, not everybody gambles.
"Only the rich people can afford to bet," he says. "The poor come to watch."
SHER MALANG, the man known as "Commander Black," sits cross-legged at the edge of the betting circle. He's looking for a fight.
A commander, in charge of a small Afghan security force near the United States Air Base, in Bagram, Malang has a reputation, not so much for his soldiers, but for his birds.
Malang agrees to an interview, "as long as it doesn't involve politics," he says. His eyes light up when he learns it's a chance to talk about birds.
It hasn't been a great morning for Commander Malang. Five times he fought. Twice, his bird pecked the other bird senseless.
Malang and the other bird-keepers from the non-Taliban areas in the north have a distinct advantage because they continued to fight, while those living under the Taliban were forced into retirement.
Nicknamed "Toor," which means black in Pashto, presumably because of his black bushy beard, Malang has trained birds to fight since he was a child. His technique was passed down from his grandfather to his father and now to him.
Whenever there was a break in the battle with the Taliban or the Soviets or the rival mujahideen -- whichever group he happened to be fighting at the time -- Malang would stake out the fields and capture a baby lark.
He would keep the bird in a cloth bag in the dark for 10 days, feeding it seeds and water through an opening.
"You make the bird strange to the world," Malang says. "You keep it hidden from everything."
The first thing Malang shows the bird, after 10 days of isolation, is another bird. If it's a fighter, the bird immediately attacks. Then the commander knows his bird is ready for the ring.
On Fridays, Malang travels from Bagram to Kabul. He leaves his black Land Cruiser idling outside the market and walks to Shaaqa's place, accompanied by a bodyguard named Younos, the commander's "favorite mujahideen." Younos carries a handgun, which he tucks inside a rainbow-colored holster in his coat pocket. He offers to sell it to anyone who is interested.
A bearded man on the far edge of the betting circle accepts Malang's challenge and the battle begins.
In an instance, two birds scamper across the carpet and start pecking each other madly. The men, crowded four and five deep around the circle, crane their necks as the birds knock heads with their tiny beaks. Within seconds, one bird flutters out of the ring in defeat.
Malang's bird remains standing, the winner. He scoops up the bird from the carpet and cradles it in his hand, its scrawny yellow legs poking through his fingers.
"I wouldn't trade this bird for an American helicopter," Malang declares.
The men laugh.
