$1000 USD Street Shave in Kabul, Afghanistan 🇦🇫

A day out in Kabul with Muhammad Jan, and the closing video of the Afghanistan cluster. Its subject is what things cost and what people earn — a 50-cent shave from a man who makes a dollar or two a day, a juice seller whose day’s takings are twenty dollars — and it ends with Harry giving $1,000 to a row of highway barbers.

The best sequence in it is quiet: an old street photographer working a wooden box camera he’s had for fifty years, who takes Harry into his house for tea, shows him his portfolio, and turns out to have been a soldier in the government army during the Soviet war.

The giveaway is the most honest thing in it. A crowd forms the moment money appears, people start presenting injuries, and Harry says on camera that he probably didn’t divide it fairly and that this is what it’s actually like to try.

Key moments

• [00:00] Kabul at around 6 million, and Flag Hill, known as a Taliban gathering spot.
• [00:00] The Taliban are Pashtun, and Pashtuns are famous for being the most hospitable people in the world — an irony Harry names directly.
• [01:44] Kids working the tourists for photo money, one of whom tries to switch his camera off. His line: more aggressive than the Taliban.
• [03:57] What life as a tourist is actually like — checkpoints several times a day, passports checked, the most intense security he’s seen, and no trouble at any of it.
• [04:32] Armed Taliban everywhere, with pickups carrying seven men.
• [04:32] The afghani is a closed currency: you can’t get it outside the country, so you change dollars with a man at a table on the street.
• [05:07] Count it before you leave. He gets 15,000.
• [05:55] A photographer’s box camera, fifty years old, with no buttons — a cover comes off, you smile, and it develops inside.
• [06:27] Invited into the house for tea while the household prays.
• [07:01] He was a soldier in the government army against the Soviets — which his guide distinguishes carefully from the mujahideen — and became a photographer afterwards. His grandson is learning it.
• [09:06] Harry on the hospitality: he expected it after Pakistan, and it’s on a different level here.
• [09:42] The jewellery quarter, where a shopkeeper who watches his videos sells him a ring at $20 and then offers it free.
• [11:29] Pomegranate juice from a roundabout that also does tyre repairs.
• [12:32] He tries the hand press and can’t work it.
• [13:44] Kabul’s juice is sweeter — the fruit comes from Mazar-i-Sharif, where Kandahar’s is local and sourer.
• [14:22] He pays $20, roughly the seller’s daily take.
• [14:52] A shave on the side of a highway: 50 afghani, about 50 cents.
• [15:22] He asks for a clean blade, which matters here.
• [15:59] The barber rarely does clean shaves, because men are expected to grow beards.
• [16:36] What the barber earns: about $3 a day.
• [17:06] His hand shakes badly throughout. Harry notes it with sympathy — forty years of conflict lived through, no complaints, still working.
• [18:10] Ten children, and about four customers a day.
• [19:21] A haircut next door. The whole kit is a triangular mirror, one pair of scissors, one razor and a bag.
• [20:25] Taliban watching from nearby, which he mentions and doesn’t film.
• [20:59] The head massage, which he rates the worst in history, and the barber’s clear effort at it.
• [22:05] This barber earns $1–2 a day, matching what the first one said.
• [22:38] The plan: $1,000 split between five barbers, handled through his guide to avoid arguments.
• [23:53] Money appears and a crowd forms; people start presenting disabilities.
• [23:53] What he tells them: he gives to people who work and who quote an honest price, not to people who ask.
• [24:27] 33,000 afghani each — about $500 — to the two who did the work, with instructions to take a day off and spend it on their family.
• [25:06] The barber who got the most immediately offers to share it, which Harry says he was not expecting.
• [25:37] They leave as it gets overwhelming, with people still asking.
• [26:08] His guide’s scale: 33,000 is more than these men could collect in a year. 2,000 each went to the barbers who hadn’t worked.
• [26:43] The honest ending — he isn’t sure he divided it fairly, it’s very hard in the moment with hundreds of people asking, and he was only trying to get a haircut.

Extracted pages

• Place: Kabul
• Country: Afghanistan
• Person: Muhammad Jan
• Tips: Reward honesty and hard work, Try the street version of everyday services, Travel with a local guide