The village of Istalif sits high in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, looking out over clear mountain streams, grape orchards, crooked mudbrick houses and scattered walnut and mulberry trees. For hundreds of years, Kabulis – including the Emperor Babur himself – escaped the dusty capital for Istalif’s gardens and to shop in the famous bazaar, where the sole custodians of Afghanistan’s pottery tradition sold their wares: richly glazed ceramics in colours of emerald green, amber and turquoise.
In the late 1990s, this paradise was witness to tragedy. As the Taliban advanced on the armies of the Mujahideen, Istalif’s potters buried their equipment, packed up their possessions and fled to Pakistan. The Taliban burned large parts of the village to the ground. Istalif’s centuries-old pottery industry was snuffed out.
Among those fleeing Istalif that day was a young potter called Mansoor. Following the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Mansoor returned to Afghanistan with his family. Mansoor unburied his kick wheel and set about reviving Istalifi pottery. He learned how to harness the foraged desert shrub, ishkar, to create deep, characterful glazes, and how to produce products for a new audience that had arrived in Kabul – international aid workers, diplomats and journalists demanding high quality, consistent products, strong enough to survive their journey home.
During those years, I was fortunate to often visit Mansoor in Istalif. Watching him at work was hypnotic. He would enter a deep state of concentration as his foot would begin to drive the kick wheel, slowly, metronomically, his eyes focused on the slumped lump of clay before him. There was never any hesitation in his hands, no spare movement. Nothing in the world was important at that moment other than bringing a beautiful new object to life. Watching Mansoor was watching peace.