Word: agha
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...with the banning of music and the requirement that all men grow beards, was a total prohibition of kite flying. In the first heady days after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, men shaved, music blasted on car stereos and kites took to the air. For Noor Agha, Kabul's best kite maker, business has been soaring ever since...
...that you would know it looking at his house. Agha lives in a graveyard. Land is at such a premium in Kabul these days that the dead compete with the living for space. A massive influx of refugees returning from exile following the Taliban's retreat has forced the near deserted neighborhoods fringing an old cemetery to squeeze between its graves. Agha's factory is his living room, where he has put his two wives and 11 children to work, cutting, shaping and gluing the intricate tissue-paper mosaics that make his kites stand out for their beauty and superior...
...Agha has been feverishly at work producing hundreds of kites for use in China on the set of the highly anticipated adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. Agha says he treats every kite he is making for the movie as a work of art, marking each with his name and signature scorpion image. Even though few of the kites will be used in competition, he incorporates in their manufacture the techniques he has honed through years of flying and fighting--using precision to curve the bamboo frame, creating invisible joints and employing a method for impregnating cotton twine...
...resurgent Taliban is close to being extinguished--and some are doubtful that the NATO forces assuming control of southern Afghanistan will be able to hold the insurgents at bay. "In 2001 the coalition toppled the Taliban in two months. Why can't the coalition stop the Taliban now?" asks Agha Lalai Destagiri, a provincial-council member who lives in Panjwai village, 16 miles southwest of Kandahar. "It means the Taliban has become too strong for the coalition. That scares...
...vocal performances were also outstanding. Kassab and Agha sang in a clear, incantatory style similar to that used in tajwid (Qur’anic recitation). During several songs, they launched into melismatic solos that exhibited their incredible range and respiratory stamina. Their performances were frequently interrupted by ecstatic applause from the Sanders audience...