Fragrant smoke on a wintry Melbourne night rekindles friendships and evokes memories of home in far-off Kabul
I had no choice but to host them. I rushed around, borrowing extra chairs from my Polish neighbour, setting up tea, fruit and whatever snacks I had. In Afghan culture, hospitality doesn't wait for planning – it kicks in the moment a guest arrives.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Once we were all seated in the back yard, they got straight to it. No small talk. Why had I been skipping our weekly games? Was I losing interest? Their questions came fast, wrapped in jokes but serious underneath. I tried to laugh it off and blamed everything I could think of, but they didn't let up.
The time passed quickly, and the sun started dipping behind the rooftops. Just as the air turned cooler and I thought of getting the heater, I noticed a soft, smoky smell drifting in from next door. Firewood.
Sardar, the loudest of us, stopped mid-sentence and said, 'Do you all smell that?' We all turned toward it. And just like that, the energy shifted. We were still sitting in Melbourne, but for a moment, we were back in Kabul.
The scent – warm, deep, and familiar – hit something in all of us. It was the smell of Kabul winters, of firewood burning in stoves, of homes pushing back against the cold. It reminded me of early mornings when my mother would boil water for tea, and the house would slowly come to life in the glow.
In Kabul, firewood smoke wasn't just in the background. It was part of the rhythm of winter. It mixed with the smell of fresh bread and the sound of radio news in the morning. It clung to our clothes, our hair and even our memories. It meant life was moving forward.
When I first arrived in Melbourne, I noticed winter felt really cold in a strange and dull way. The heating coming from machines without any scent or sound felt empty.
Every drift of the firewood invoked further memories of snowy winters. It brought back to me the sweet memories of Shab-e Yalda, the longest night of the year – a tradition across Afghanistan, Iran and parts of Central Asia, which is not marked with loud parties but with small, intimate gatherings. Families stay up late with poetry, dried fruit, fresh pomegranates and stories. It's a way to face the darkest night with light, warmth and hope.
Sardar remembered sitting around a small fire with his grandparents, reading poems by Hafez, the great Persian poet who believed in love and beauty even in the coldest moments: The long nights of winter will not last forever / The warmth of compassion is the light of the heart.
Sign up to Five Great Reads
Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning
after newsletter promotion
And there is Rumi, who taught us that the soul needs warmth just as the body does: Set your life on fire / Seek those who fan your flames.
Sitting there with my friends, I realised that memory and meaning can arrive unexpectedly. Sometimes, in a poem. Sometimes, in a smell drifting across a fence. My Polish neighbour had no idea he was reminding a group of Afghans of their homeland, their traditions, their families.
Now, each winter in Melbourne, I look for that scent. Sometimes I find it while walking past an old brick home, or near a bakery using a wood oven. Every time, it stops me in my tracks. I breathe it in and close my eyes for a moment. For those of us far from where we were born, memory lives in the details. In sound, scent and small rituals. And in those details, we find pieces of home.
That evening, we didn't play volleyball, but we realised what we truly needed; the simple and warm connection of being together.
Shadi Khan Said is an editor, producer and journalist who has worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Australia
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Delays, breakdowns, frustration': NSW commuters left waiting at the station
As more families seek affordable housing outside Sydney, they are experiencing a daily stress: their bosses want them back in the office more frequently but the train services to get there are becoming more and more unreliable. NSW has just recorded its worst year for on time running for Sydney trains, with nearly one in five running late, but the real problem is with intercity trains. Since July, one in three have failed to meet the punctuality benchmark. 'It's usually late. It's a surprise when it's on time,' says Elita Bird, who travels from Gosford. 'The slightest thing with the weather, which is increasing, it just runs late.' 'Terrible,' says Kim, who asks not to use her surname. She makes the one hour, 40 minute journey from and to Tuggerah on the Central Coast to Central station every weekday. 'They just constantly cancel, reschedule them and they're very slow because we get stuck behind the all-stations trains.' Sign up: AU Breaking News email It raises serious questions for the Minns Labor government as it attempts to deal with a housing crisis and skyrocketing house prices, which are sending families farther afield to find a place to live. 'If you want to take the pressure off house prices we have to make it easier for people to live outside the major cities. That means having reliable public transport,' says Dr Geoffrey Clifton, senior lecturer in transport at the University of Sydney. The headline numbers the NSW government releases on train performance do not fully capture the agony of the state's long-distance train commuters as Sydney Trains combines the performance of the city and the intercity services. 'Whilst Sydney Trains did not reach its own 92% performance target over the past three years, in part due to protected industrial action during this period and severe weather events, on time running in 2022 was 92.1%, 95% in 2021 and 92.5% in 2020,' a spokesperson told the Guardian in an official statement. But it is an entirely different story if the focus is on the intercity services – trains to the Central Coast, South Coast, Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands. Those services have failed to meet the 92% benchmark – trains arriving within six minutes of their timetabled arrival during peak hours – for all seven years, where data is available. So far, in the first three weeks of the 2025-26 financial year, just 65.2% of trains on the four main intercity lines were 'punctual'. It was little better in the previous 2024-25 year: just 70% Worse still, punctuality is worse when commuters are trying to get home. In the week 30 June to 4 July 2025 just 37% of trains taking commuters home from the city were 'on time'. In the week 19 May to 23 May, when the east coast was hit by huge rainfall, just 21% of evening peak trains were on time. Rain leads to several problems: subsidence on to the lines, as well as crowding into middle carriages as passengers huddle under cover in the central part of platforms. Bird says she now looks at the weather to decide whether she should commute or work from home. 'If there is rain or wind, then often there's a line down. I know what the problem is: Cockle Creek station [on the Newcastle line] just floods really easily and that then leads to delays further down the line. It doesn't feel like they are being upfront about what's going wrong,' she says. Communication is another bugbear of commuters. 'My train stops multiple times and is often about half an hour to 40 minutes late to the final station,' says Liam, who commutes to and from Springwood in the Blue Mountains. 'There's some very quiet message. One of the days there was someone on tracks but delays are a very common occurrence.' Clifton says Sydney Trains relies on phone calls and paper instructions to tell train drivers what to do – such as skipping stations or terminating early. Digital systems are being introduced. The Central Coast and the Blue Mountains lines have seen a significant decline in the punctuality of their services since Labor was elected in 2023. The Central Coast line was on time 60 to 70% during 2024-25, with some weeks as low as 35%. On the Blue Mountains line, most weeks only 45 to 65% of trains run on time. The South Coast line's punctuality is also deteriorating while there has been some improvement on the Southern Highlands line. Clifton says NSW has struggled to provide a reliable service between cities partly because the lines are so complicated, with 'lots of old tunnels and bridges'. The other part of the equation is maintenance, he says. Sydney Trains admits maintenance backlogs are at 'a new maximum', which means temporary speed restrictions are now in place on parts of the network. A spokesperson says the maintenance backlog built up during the industrial action from September 2024 to February 2025. It's not the same story elsewhere. In Europe, Switzerland topped the list with 95% of its long distance trains arriving within five minutes of the timetabled time in 2024. The Netherlands was not far behind with 94%, followed by Belgium at 90%, France 89%, and Italy 80%. Surprisingly Germany, once a poster child for train punctuality, has achieved only 54% on the same measure, with commentators saying the deterioration is due to ageing infrastructure and a lack of investment. Sydney Trains points to the new Mariyung trains as one of the investments the Minns government has made. 'New trains can certainly help once the new fleet is introduced but the teething problems can last at least a year or so,' Clifton says. The transport minister, John Graham, says: 'Settling the rail agreement means all energy can now be focused on reliability. We have got that message loud and clear.' But Clifton says Graham and other members of the government should experience the train system for themselves. 'If they did, they'd see the delays, the breakdowns, the frustration… The truth is Labor thinks they can take these seats for granted.'
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Are young women finally being spared the unique cruelty of male literary opinions?
Gen X, millennial and gen Z men are reading less than boomers and older generations in Australia, and there's only one good thing about it. Thirsty, bookish young women might now be spared the niche heterofatalist torture of a sexual objective frustrated by the obstacle of male literary opinion. Oh, what a second-by-second social negotiation it was; if she hadn't read the enthused-about text, would her desired object find her vapid and shallow? If she had read it, she was in even more trouble: would his interest be piqued or levelled dare she confess she found Stranger in a Strange Land a meandering journey? Would she argue Fight Club beat you around the head with its message? Would the young woman really have to listen to him read out bits from And the Ass Saw the Angel before his pants removal? I'm grateful, at least, that the latest generation of girls who bear the heterosexual burden are unlikely to experience the unique cruelty of collective, instant male disinterest after blurting out 'Goldberry is a completely unnecessary character!' amid casual Lord of the Rings chat at the pub. But I am sad that, if figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and discussed by the ABC last week are to be believed, the steps of this complex, sometimes ugly, sometimes exhilarating dance may be becoming the stuff of anthropological archives rather than an ongoing scene of potential frisson. The ABS data does exclude reading for study or any online reading – including news – so it's possible younger men are indulging in the written word in other areas. Oh, boys; with the passage of time, have your forsaken your Goldberry … or have you forgotten her entirely? It's even sadder news that reading is down across the board. Among Australian senior school students, according to Australia Reads, 29% of them did not reportedly read a physical book last year. It's not an Australian problem. In the 1970s, 60% of American year 12 students read daily. By 2016, it was 16%. Obviously, screens, the internet, binge TV replacing long-form narrative consumption habits and the – yes, again – handheld doom machines are accessories to their cultural decline. Johann Hari's excellent book Stolen Focus explains in detail how technology has 'hacked' our attention spans for short-form, immediate interruption, with the result of rewiring our brains against the concentration required to immerse in a book. In case you can't find the time, energy or quietude to read it, Hari also explains that overwork, chronic stress, ultra-processed foods, poor sleep and environmental stressors are compounding the problem. Neuroscientists agree: Prof Maryanne Wolf has warned that reduced practice in sustained reading may not only weaken the brain's capacity to manage complex texts, but might also denude critical thinking, empathy and cognitive depth. This is where the gendered division of the world's remaining novel readers may be most painfully felt. Anna Burkey, from the book industry initiative Australia Reads, told the ABC that studies have shown parents read less to their male children than female ones, reinforcing an unconscious pattern that puts crucial developmental tools further away from boys who need them. As educators, male literary identity Brandon Jack and the Tough Guy book club movement strategise how to reverse the damage of gender-holing literary curiosity and get books back into boys' hands, the rest of us must grapple with the emotional world the present reading divide has contributed to creating. It's a gendered empathy deficit. Not only does it facilitate social carelessness and cruelty, but it is socially isolating. And it is leaving men and boys lonely and socially isolated at disproportional rates compared with women and girls. Nearly 43% of Australian men report loneliness, a recent survey shows, with 16% experiencing severe loneliness. I can't help but recall advice my mother gave me growing up as an only child with working parents: 'You'll never feel alone if you make friends with books.' I didn't, because I did. Humans invented storytelling in order to provide lessons in survival: we faced this, we dealt with it this way, this is the result, for good or ill. Sure, we can get stories from screens, but as that market has widened it's also flattened; a 'new literalism' of storytelling on screens has emerged of such comprehensive over-explication that there are few imaginative demands placed on viewers at all. It's from the imaginative, interpretative effort of reading stories from text that our brains wire a broader, personally felt social understanding, which provide us strategies for forming connections, maintaining relationships, overcoming restrictive and uncomfortable social roles, and being able to negotiate systems of help and of care. The same social psychologist who tracked the decline in reading among American teenagers published data from her 40-year longitudinal study identifying a maturity regression among today's western young people. They're having less sex, fewer dates, less civic participation and drinking less, meaning that 18-year-olds are more like how 15-year-olds used to be 40 years ago. Other scholars confirm; the rising generations have become more risk-averse. I've argued that the omnipresent social surveillance of mobile phone technology may be a reason … but one wonders if it's partially because they're consuming less vicarious experience from books to construct informed risk matrices around what they're likely to encounter. There are always social and emotional risks in the dance of sexual attraction. But sometimes, ah – mutual book-learnin' left boys and girls with some stories to tell. Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Rare water world: Australia's Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre from the air
The vast salt lake in the South Australian outback is dry for most of its life, having only filled to capacity three times in the past 160 years. So when water does arrive, this enormous landscape becomes a riot of colour
