Mystical Kabul

Image for Mystical Kabul
Members of a Sufi order prepare an opium pipe outside their shrine in Kabul during a mystical ceremony.
From Kabul words and images of war come our way. At a time of increasing violence, photojournalist Iason Athanasiadis explores part of the city’s underground rarely seen—the Sufi sect’s ecstatic ceremonies—in a photo essay he calls “mystical Kabul.” We see the Sufi tarighat (brotherhood) move to zikr rhythms, a practice banned by the Taliban, as he describes the comeback of Sufi mysticism. Many complexities of the Afghan story were brought into focus when Nieman Reports looked at coverage.