Nan Factory

While walk­ing down the streets of Kab­ul last week I stared a lit­tle too inquis­i­tive­ly into a nan store/factory pump­ing out the long, flat bread that is eat­en with every meal in Afghanistan. The man stretch­ing the dough noticed my pry­ing and invit­ed us in to see the whole process up close, encour­ag­ing us to take pho­tographs and film the intri­cate, six man team work­ing togeth­er to form the vat of dough into iden­ti­cal dia­monds of flat bread. The bread is baked in a clay tan­doori oven, stuck ver­ti­cal­ly up against the inside wall. As the fin­ished bread is pulled off the oven walls with long iron hooks, a man in the win­dow sells the hot, steam­ing fin­ished prod­uct to cus­tomers, who fre­quent­ly go away with half a dozen or more loaves. In a tra­di­tion­al Afghan meal instead of a plate each per­son is giv­en a full loaf of bread. He or she tears off chunks and uses them in place of uten­sil­s to scoop up chunks of lamb or beans. They sent us away with a steam­ing, flat, piece of nan. Delicious.