In Pictures: A taste of Afghanistan helps these bakers find home in India

|
Shefali Rafiq
People buy bread from Afghan bakers in the Lajpat Nagar area of India’s capital state, Delhi. The Afghans living in India have introduced their traditional bread, and customers have developed a taste for it.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 2 Min. )

Najibullah heads to the bakery as soon as the birds start chirping. He and his co-workers are among the many Afghan refugees to seek safety in India.

The bread-making starts at 7 a.m. and goes until 8 p.m., with small breaks in between. Afghan naan is different in shape, texture, and taste from Indian varieties. While the main ingredient – wheat flour – is the same, Afghan bakers hand-shape the dough, rather than rolling it out, and their use of a tandoor results in large, pillowy rounds. It is eaten by not only Afghans, but also by Iraqis, Sudanese, and Kashmiris, and now by local Indian customers, too.

Why We Wrote This

Finding asylum is only one step of a refugee’s journey. These bakers brought industrious spirits and a taste of Afghanistan with them to India. Both have helped them fortify a sense of home.

Najibullah says he and his colleagues have no plans to go back to Afghanistan. When asked if they miss their home, he says with a smile, “This is our home now.”

Click the “deep read” button to view the full photo essay.

For Najibullah, the birds act as his alarm clock. As soon as the chirping starts, he leaves his apartment for the small bakery shop in the Lajpat Nagar area of south Delhi. He does not care about the weather or the time, but trusts the birds.

He and three co-workers, Wali Khiri, Shahrukh, and Niamatullah, have been working in the shop for the last seven years. They are among the many Afghan refugees to seek safety in India. Since the late 1990s, Afghan naanwais (makers and sellers of naan, or bread) have been plying their trade in India.

For the four young men, bread-making starts at 7 a.m. and goes until 8 p.m., with small breaks in between. They mix wheat flour with water, yeast, salt, and sugar and set it aside. After this, dough balls are made and weighed so that each one is the same size. The balls are then flattened and kept under a cloth for the yeast to do its work. Then the rounds are shaped by hand, imprinted with a decorative pattern, and sprinkled with water and sesame seeds before going into the tandoor, or clay oven. The men spend the time chatting and listening to Wali Khiri’s jokes – they say he has a great sense of humor. 

Why We Wrote This

Finding asylum is only one step of a refugee’s journey. These bakers brought industrious spirits and a taste of Afghanistan with them to India. Both have helped them fortify a sense of home.

Afghan naan is different in shape, texture, and taste from Indian varieties. While the main ingredient – wheat flour – is the same, Afghan bakers hand-shape the dough, rather than rolling it out, and their use of a tandoor results in large, pillowy rounds. The bread is enjoyed alongside curries at meals and eaten plain or topped with butter as a snack throughout the day. It is eaten by not only Afghans, but also by Iraqis, Sudanese, and Kashmiris, and now by local Indian customers, too. 

According to Wali Khiri, they are able to sell 500 loaves a day and are doing decent business. After Afghanistan was retaken by the Taliban in 2021, Afghans who had traveled to India for medical treatment or jobs went home, which affected sales. “We would otherwise sell 1,500 breads a day,” he says.

The bakers also sell to small food stalls and local restaurants, with Niamatullah making the deliveries on his bicycle. 

Najibullah says they have no plans to go back to Afghanistan. When asked if they miss their home, he says with a smile, “This is our home now.”

Shefali Rafiq
Wali Khiri takes the bread out of the tandoor, or clay oven. The tandoor gives it texture and its famous golden color.
Shefali Rafiq
Shahrukh places dough balls on a board to rest. The balls have been weighed so that each is the same size.
Shefali Rafiq
Crisp-edged naan, sprinkled with sesame seeds, is stacked in the shop awaiting buyers.
Shefali Rafiq
Niamatullah carries the bakery goods to restaurants and food stalls on a bicycle.
Shefali Rafiq
Wali Khiri prepares a long flat naan before putting it inside the tandoor. He has mastered the art of baking bread since coming to India from Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, people tend not to make bread at home, so they rely on bakeries with tandoors.
Shefali Rafiq
Wali Khiri jokes around with Najibullah as he piles bread in the shop window.
Shefali Rafiq
Local Indians enjoy Afghan food along with traditional Afghan bread made in the bakery.
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to In Pictures: A taste of Afghanistan helps these bakers find home in India
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2022/0525/In-Pictures-A-taste-of-Afghanistan-helps-these-bakers-find-home-in-India
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe