Pile of dead stuff

Pile of dead stuff
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This is a truck loaded to the hilt with pelts, the dead stuff. No I am not necessarily one of those “fur is dead” types (fur for function, that is from an animals that is grown for lots of things like meat/milk/hide is ok, fur for fashion, some animal grown just so it can be skinned for a $800 coat seems obtuse to me) and this truck is carrying goat pelts (lots of ‘em) I belive.

In Afghanistan I kind of doubt people will be into raising animals just for their pelts (well sheep, but they are sheared) any time soon. I don’t think I have ever seen so many pelts in one place in my life, and from a distance I couldn’t tell what it was just “dead stuff”. Sheep are the dominant livestock here but goats aren’t too far behind and just about everywhere in Afghanistan (land of homosapi-us carnivor-us) you can find butcher shops with a line of cow/goat/sheep heads and a pile of fresh pelts. I assume that this truck makes its rounds picking up pelts from these butchers but I have no idea what they do with them. As freezing cold as it can get in some parts of Afghanistan I can’t recall having seen many fur jackets, actually I remember seeing more fur jackets in eastern Europe which has far less (per person) livestock than Afghanistan. There is of course the “Karzi Hat”; I can’t remember what it is called but the current president, Hamid Karzi wears this funky little cap that I call it a “Karzi Hat” which Afghans laugh because they all know what I am talking about. This hat is actually made from the lamb hides and seems to only be worn by older Afghans but apart from this hat I can’t think of many other leather products that I commonly see around Afghanistan. It’s quite possible these hides are sold in Pakistan where they have a more developed manufacturing sector and are probably better able to turn out leather products en masse.

While you can’t see much of the truck what little one can see does give you and idea of how most of the truck is decorated. This is part of the reason I thought this truck might be en route to Pakistan because almost all of these decorated trucks are Pakistani. There are usually chains hanging off the trucks with little trinkets of sorts hanging on the ends with colorful art ranging from picturesque scenes to religious depictions but some of the art is decidedly more psychedelic (It is rumored that many of these Pakistani drivers are perpetually stoned which, as I think I mentioned in a previous post, would go a long way towards explaining the designs on their trucks). The art on these trucks is usually pretty benign as I am sure having metal silhouettes of nude women on the mud flaps wouldn’t work very well in Muslim society though you see pictures of Indian and Pakistani movie stars all over the place, even without shawls covering their hair (gasp!) so I have never been totally clear on what was taboo here and what is acceptable.