“Life under the Taliban was much better, there were no Snickers bars!”

My name is Musafa Ali

I spend my days boiling sweets here. I’ve been in the sweetmaking business for 25 years. First as an apprentice and then as the head of the workshop for about 13 years. When I was a kid I used to work in an icecream shop. Then my brother bought me here to make boiled sweets and I’ve been here ever since. If I’m not an expert yet, I must be almost there!

I normally burn my hands once or twice a week as well, which is quite painful.

It’s a tough job, very tiring and it can be dangerous. If you drop that boiling sugar on yourself you could die.
Working next to all the fire it gets very hot indeed, and then in Winter this building gets very cold. We use the normal tools of our trade: pots, pans, scales, spoons, ladles, rollers and so on.

I don’t know how many sweets I’ve made in my lifetime but we produce 750kg each day. We take the sweets to the shopkeepers or they come here to buy them, some from the provinces. The sweets aren’t just for kids, there is a separate kind for them, our ones are for all ages to enjoy. I earn about $180 each month. Given the current situation in Afghanistan I wouldn’t say this is a bad job. It’s not a good job either, but at least I can support my family. The main problem we face is a bad economy, and for our business the bad quality of sugar we have these days, from countries like India, is the worst issue. Apart from that I wouldn’t complain.

Business used to be much better under the Taliban. We only used domestic ingredients and we didn’t have all these imported sweets from China. Our sweet industry hasn’t changed much over the years, although now we have electricity. We didn’t have machines before, we did everything by hand. There are about 60 sweet factories in Kabul and about 200 in the whole of Afghanistan. Everyone that works here is my relative and we work as a team, but all my children are still at school. I have four sons and two daughters. I get up at 4.30 in the morning and get here at six to start work. At one thirty or two we eat something and then go home and relax.

We put the sugar to boil in the copper pots with temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. I put in a little bit of lemon syrup and it caremelises. Then I put the thermometer in and wait until it reaches 350 degrees.
After that we take the mixture over to cooling pots which float on water. We mix in the colouring to match the flavour: black, red, green, yellow.

Then we scrape off the viscous mixture, add in some extra sugary bits and knead it on the table, before cutting it into strips to go through the brass rollers. These shape the candy into sweets, that we put in the cement mixture with a bit of sherbert to be separated, before sieving them. Then finally they come through the last room, where the boys weigh them and packet them: quarter kilo, half kilo, one kilo. They seal up the bags and off they go into the world!