Nuth'n says yummy like a wheelbarrow full of sheep heads...

Nuth'n says yummy like a wheelbarrow full of sheep heads...
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

When being taxied around from place to place in Kabul (its not a great idea for foreigners to walk around Kabul at the moment) I see tons of things I want to get a picture of everything from 300 gallon pots which are actually ovens to… wheelbarrows full of sheep heads.

We had passed by this spot a few times so I thought I was ready to take a picture, or so I thought, the window on my side would not roll down, the driver noticed so he stopped right in front of the two boys selling the sheep heads (not 2 feet away, close enough that I couldn’t even open the door without hitting them). This was *not* what I wanted, pointing a camera in someone face and then driving off. I quickly snapped a picture through the window and told the driver to go (I *really* didn’t like this situation) but they kept saying go ahead and take a picture, even one of the boys started saying “take my picture” (he apparently didn’t notice that I was taking a picture of what he was selling, not him).

I had asked previously about how the heads are used and found that usually the are boiled and the soup stock is used but it is not uncommon for the head to be eaten. While I can stomach the head being used as soup stock the idea of eating something that is staring back at me would be a bit harder to swallow (literally and figuratively). In the southeastern US some people scramble pork brains with eggs though its been a long time since I have seen that.

Seeing these disembodied heads did make me think of headcheese though. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that headcheese is made in a variety of cultures/places but not Afghanistan.

Those hanging h'orderves in the background are, I believe, lungs. The ditch behind them and in front of the pedestrians is actually an open sewer. This is actually not an uncommon scene, its pretty representative of Kabul, to the left a guy in jeans and a western-ish shirt, in front of him a business-casual looking guy, in front of him a guy dressed in traditional clothes, in front of him a woman in a burqa, and in front of her a older man in traditional clothes and full beard.