Shoes
Behold a typical Afghan shoe.
It’s a dress shoe, because that’s the preferred style. And it’s bent in the back because they wear them like slip ons. This is convenient. Afghans take them on and off so many times a day. They take them off to pray 5 times a day. They take them off whenever they enter someones house for tea, etc. etc. And this is probably true across most of Central Asia and many other countries in the “rug belt”.
What I don’t understand, is why no one has seized on this huge market opportunity of making a fancy dress shoe, without a back, a dress shoe natural slip on? (Maybe someone has, and this is your opportunity to market their wares in the comments.)
Another interesting consequence of this, is that there is so much more work for shoe shiners. When you take off your shoes in the restaurant, they walk up and make their offers.
This is a much more natural way to do this than what I have seen in the West. I just couldn’t ever imagine myself sitting down to have someone kneel in front of me to shine my shoes, while I made myself look busy with a newspaper. To bad, I have nothing to shine here. Can you guess why?
I got some army boots from the Bush Market the other day, and while I smelled weed when we walked into the shop, I didn’t expect the shopkeeper to take a mini break to toke on a apple core bong in the process:
