Jalalabad
— — the city the river keeps green.
Not only on a wall.
“A walled city on the Kabul River, set against bare hills the colour of rope. Jalalabad keeps its orange groves through a winter that Kabul, two hundred kilometres uphill, cannot. The bazaars open early. The light in February has a softness that the rest of the country waits months for.
Jalalabad, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Jalalabad is the capital of Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, set on the Kabul River where it gathers the Kunar before turning south toward the Indus. The city sits at roughly 575 metres, about 150 kilometres east of Kabul along the gorge road, and 75 kilometres from the Torkham crossing into Pakistan. The Mughal emperor Akbar founded it in 1570 as a winter capital, and the descending valley has held that role for the country's elevated centres ever since. Orange, sugarcane, and rice fill the surrounding plain.
The Jalalabad valley acts as Afghanistan's warm room. Kabul, sitting above 1,800 metres in the Hindu Kush, freezes through January. Jalalabad, six hundred metres lower and open toward the subcontinent, rarely sees a hard frost. The Mughals chose the site for exactly this reason. February brings the orange blossom; March, the first of the citrus harvest. The dust softens after the spring rains. By June the valley turns furnace-hot and the city's pace withdraws into the early hours and the cooler stone courtyards of the old town.
The Nangarhar agricultural year keeps Jalalabad to a rhythm older than the modern city. Citrus orchards bloom in late February. Sugarcane is cut in winter and rice is set in summer, with the Kabul and Kunar rivers feeding the plain. Mushaira, the Pashto and Dari poetry gatherings the region has held for centuries, still draw audiences on summer evenings. The city has been a winter retreat for the high country since Akbar's court arrived, and the seasonal pull from the cold of Kabul down into the warm valley is unchanged.