The Gardeners of Kabul
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2017
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We are all familiar with the picture of the Afghan man with his large beard and Kalashnikov rifle - now meet the men with secateurs and watering cans. Gardening is in their blood and it has been forever. You can see this in Babur’s Garden, which was laid out in the early 16th Century by the man who established the Mughal dynasty in India. Largely destroyed during the civil war of the 1990s, the garden is once more a notable feature of the city, its largest public space.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the |
| 0:05.0 | documentary podcast. Every week we bring you a range of stories from our |
| 0:09.8 | presenters and reporters across the world. |
| 0:13.0 | If you have the time, please rate the documentary on your podcast app and leave us a comment. |
| 0:18.1 | Let us know what you think. |
| 0:20.8 | What's your picture of a man from Afghanistan? I bet he's got a beard and he's wearing a flat woolly hat. |
| 0:27.0 | He's got an AK-47 and a rocket launcher. |
| 0:31.0 | Well, I am going to introduce you to Afghans who carry secaters and |
| 0:37.0 | watering cans. People like Latif Kowestani. Pakistani. |
| 0:43.0 | As we're going to |
| 0:45.0 | Someone asked me once how many children I had |
| 0:48.0 | someone asked me once how many children I had. |
| 0:51.0 | I told him that I had 3,000 and he looked very surprised. He |
| 0:56.7 | asked me to explain what I meant and I told him that these 3,000 children were the trees that I'd planted. |
| 1:04.0 | Engineer Kewalstani is the man in charge of Babour's Garden in Kabul. |
| 1:09.0 | This is a spectacular place, a large formal garden laid out in the shadow of the mountain. |
| 1:15.3 | There's nothing else like it in Kabul, a huge public space dedicated to trees and |
| 1:21.6 | flowers. |
| 1:30.0 | When you've nurtured them with your own hands, they really are like children. When you see them happy and healthy and they smile at you. We smile back at them. |
| 1:38.0 | My name is Ali Hamadoni and in this program for the BBC World Service will be meeting the people who make this city beautiful |
| 1:46.0 | will be meeting the Gardaners of Kabul. |
| 1:49.0 | Babu's Garden takes its name from the man who 500 years ago founded the Morrill Empire in India. |
... |
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