Sheen Chai

Sheen chai — literally "green tea" in Pashto — is the quiet engine of Kandahari hospitality, poured from morning to midnight and refilled long after thirst has passed.

The name and the drink

In Pashto, shin (or sheen) means green, and chai means tea, so sheen chai simply names the pale, lightly brewed green tea drunk across southern Afghanistan. Spellings vary in English — sheen chai, shin chai, shpin chai — because they are transliterations of a spoken word. The tea is usually mild in colour and body, often scented with cardamom, and served in small handleless cups or glasses so it can be topped up again and again.

Green tea suits the south's climate and diet. After a heavy plate of pulao or grilled meat, a glass of hot, faintly bitter tea is felt to settle the stomach. It is caffeinated but gentle, which is part of why it can be drunk all day.

How it is brewed

There is no single official recipe, but the common approach is loose green tea leaves steeped in a metal or china pot of just-boiled water, often with a few crushed green cardamom pods dropped in. Some households add a little sugar to the pot; others keep the tea plain and let each drinker sweeten to taste, or take it with a sugar cube or a sweet held between the teeth. The first pour is sometimes returned to the pot to help the leaves open. The result should be aromatic and clear rather than stewed — over-boiling green tea turns it harsh.

Tea and hospitality

To understand sheen chai you have to understand Pashtunwali, and especially melmastia, the duty of hospitality. Offering tea is the first act of welcome in any Kandahari home, hujra (guest room) or shop. Refusing outright can seem cold; the polite move, if you truly cannot stay, is to accept a token cup. Business in the bazaar is conducted over tea, and negotiations rarely open without it. A host keeps a guest's cup filled, and an empty cup is read as a signal that more is wanted.

There is a widely repeated piece of etiquette — sometimes phrased as the rule of the third cup — that tea marks the stages of a visit and of building trust: the first cup is for arrival, the later cups for real conversation, and it is when the guest turns the cup over or covers it that the visit is understood to be ending. Practices differ from family to family, so treat this as folklore-flavoured custom rather than a fixed code.

Noql and the sweet side

Tea is almost never served alone. Alongside it comes a tray of noql — sugar-coated almonds or chickpeas and similar hard sweets — plus dried mulberries, raisins, walnuts, pistachios and sometimes fresh pomegranate seeds in season. Biscuits and, at celebrations, richer pastries appear too. At weddings and Eid the tea tray becomes a small feast, and sugared noql in particular is associated with festive and matchmaking occasions.

Green tea, black tea and qymaq chai

Although green tea is the everyday default in the south, it is not the only tea drunk in Afghanistan, and the contrast is worth noting. Black tea (tor chai or chai siyah) is more common in the north and among some households as a morning drink, taken stronger and often sweeter. On special occasions a third kind appears: qymaq chai (also called shir chai), a rich, pink-hued milk tea made by whisking green tea leaves so that they oxidise, then adding milk, and topping the cup with clotted cream and crushed nuts. It is labour-intensive and festive rather than daily. Sheen chai's appeal, by contrast, is its simplicity and repeatability — a pot can be brewed, refilled and re-brewed all day without ceremony, which is precisely what a culture of constant hospitality requires.

Sugar, salt and the daily rhythm

How the tea is sweetened is itself a small cultural marker. Many drinkers take it with sugar, either stirred in or, in the older habit, by holding a lump of sugar or a boiled sweet against the teeth and drawing the tea across it — a way of sweetening cup after cup from a single piece. Others prefer it plain to cut the richness of a meal. The tea punctuates the day rather than belonging to any one hour: a glass on waking, more with or after every meal, a pot to greet each visitor, and endless refills through the long evenings of conversation in the hujra. In the summer heat, hot green tea is also believed to cool the body by encouraging perspiration, so it is drunk even when the weather seems to argue against it.

Where to drink it

Everywhere. Chai khanas (tea houses) dot the roads and bazaars, serving drivers, traders and travellers; a pot of sheen chai is the cheapest and most reliable thing on any menu, and the tea house doubles as a place to rest, share news and wait out the midday heat. It is the natural companion to a plate of pulao or grilled street food, and no meal is considered quite finished without it. Many of the fruits and nuts served with it come from the same orchards described in our pages on Kandahar's agriculture and the pomegranate harvest season.

• Kandahari pulaoThe rice dish tea most often follows.
• Street food in KandaharBazaar snacks to pair with a glass of chai.
• PashtunwaliThe code of hospitality behind the teapot.
• Kandahar's bazaarsWhere tea and trade are inseparable.