Even in exile, Afghan women resist invisibility through tea, through language, through songs, and through everyday work.
My mother lights the stove at dawn. The smell of cardamom rises in the air. Somewhere in the house, an old Ahmad Zahir song plays softly, like a memory too delicate to be voiced.
For her, the kitchen is not just about food. It’s a place of survival, of remembrance—a place where she cooks and also keeps her identity alive.
When we arrived in Delhi, the first thing we unpacked wasn’t our clothes. It was the Istalifi bowl we had carried all the way from Kabul. Blue and green, cracked slightly at the rim. These bowls are traditionally made in the town of Istalif, a short drive north of Kabul, using techniques passed down across generations by potter families. For my mother, this bowl is not just a vessel. It holds memories across generations. My grandmother used to say those dishes bring barakat—blessing, abundance, goodness—to the home. We believed her. We still do.
Sometimes, when I step into our tiny kitchen in Delhi, it feels as if my heart has already traveled back to Kabul. The air is heavy and hot, the space barely enough to move—but the moment the cardamom hits the pan, or steam rises with the scent of dry mint, I’m somewhere else entirely. These aren’t just smells; they’re bridges, carrying me across miles and years to the city I still call home.
Our kitchen in Delhi is small. Two people can barely stand in it at the same time. There’s no window, no view of the open sky. In Kabul, my mother always cooked beside the window, watching the neighborhood children play football. Here, all she sees is a wall. She often says it’s hard to cook in Delhi’s heat, but she still enjoys it—because cooking freely lets her recall the Kabul of her youth.
Every Friday, she asks me to make qaimaq chai—a rich, creamy tea brewed with green tea leaves and topped with a thick layer of cream that forms on boiled milk. Not just for the taste, but because that cup carries her back to her youth in Herat. To soft golden mornings in her parents’ house, to memories of her father, who was an army pilot.
She remembers the laughter of cousins and uncles in Mahtab Qala, Kabul—back when it was possible to travel between Herat and Kabul freely by road. Every Friday morning, the whole family would gather at one of her aunts’ homes. Cups of steaming qaimaq chai sat beside warm, flaky roghani naan, their fragrance filling the air. The laughter seemed endless, as if life would always be that generous. Now, each cousin lives in a different corner of the world. My mother carries the memories of those mornings like treasures.
Even after she got married, it was her ritual to return to her parents’ home every Friday, to sit with her sisters and brother, holding that same cup of qaimaq chai, telling stories, laughing, remembering. And now, in exile, she tells us those stories—not just to remember, but to keep them alive across borders.
Many of the Afghan recipes we cook in our Delhi kitchen have changed. We no longer have the same rice, or qroot—the dried, tangy yogurt balls we once rehydrated for sauces and stews—or lamb as tender as back home. We replace what we can: kechri qroot is now made with yogurt instead; lamb becomes chicken. Qrooti and gosht-e-qa’q are harder to make. But the smells remain—the cardamom, the dry spearmint. When they rise in the air, I’m back in Kabul, even if just for a moment.
We have only one Istalifi bowl left. We rarely use it, but every time I see it, I remember shorba dinners in Kabul, when each person had their own bowl and we sat together, laughing and eating as a family. That bowl is a piece of home we managed to carry with us.
I remember a neighbor in Delhi, who had lived in the city as a refugee for over fourteen years, who still sang old Pashto songs while she cooked. One day, I watched as she cooked shorba, and the warm smell of onion and garlic filled every corner of her small kitchen. As she stirred the pot, she began to sing softly at first, then with more heart:
Rakra sharab de sro labano, sanam…
Nazar lara, nazar lara pa ashiqano, sanam…
(Pour wine upon your red lips, my beloved…
Turn your gaze away, turn your gaze away from the lovers, my beloved)
Her voice carried both longing and pride. They were notes from a world her children had never truly known. They had grown up in Delhi, fluent in Hindi, strangers to the language that their mother’s heart beat to. One of them groaned, “Stop! Don’t sing!” while another rolled her eyes, pretending not to hear. She smiled at their protests and told me, “I sing so they hear it—even if it’s by force—so they remember where they come from.”
Another woman I know has been here for over twenty years. She speaks fluent Hindi and English, but when we go out in public, she insists on weaving Dari words into her Hindi. The language is the form of Persian commonly spoken across parts of Afghanistan. One Monday, I asked her to come with me to the neighborhood bazaar. The air was thick with the smell of fresh coriander and ripe mangoes, vendors calling out their prices over the hum of the crowd.
As we walked past the stalls, I noticed her switching between Hindi and Dari with the shopkeepers. “Why don’t you just speak in Hindi?” I asked. “Whenever I come here,” she said, “it reminds me of Froshgah—the market in Kabul where you could buy everything: vegetables, fruits, even clothes. Back then, I spoke Dari to everyone. So I still do, to remind myself—and them—that I belong there.”
And then there is the woman who crochets Afghan flags. Her hands work patiently, knotting green, red, and black yarn. At local exhibitions and bazars, she sets out her small stand—not for profit, but for presence. “It’s just to remind people that we exist,” she told me.
Sometimes, when I step into our tiny kitchen in Delhi, it feels as if my heart has already traveled back to Kabul. The air is heavy and hot, the space barely enough to move—but the moment the cardamom hits the pan, or steam rises with the scent of dry mint, I’m somewhere else entirely. These aren’t just smells; they’re bridges, carrying me across miles and years to the city I still call home.
Every time I cook—whether it’s a dish from Kabul or an Indian recipe made richer with Afghan ingredients—I feel that quiet joy of belonging. I stir, I taste, I remember. And even in this cramped little kitchen, far from the mountains that circle Kabul, home is here with me.
I think of my mother, asking for qaimaq chai every Friday, as if that single cup could hold a whole homeland. I think of the Istalifi bowl we wrapped like a newborn the night we left. I think of all the women I know—resisting invisibility through tea, through language, through songs, and through stitches.
No one calls it resistance.
But that’s exactly what it is.
All images: Iffat Azimi’s notebook, courtesy Laila Ghezal Azimi.
