Twenty-eight-year-old Humayun invested his entire savings of $10,000 to open his own arcade in the western Afghan city of Herat nearly four years ago.
The investment initially paid off as the powerful gaming consoles in his shop attracted young Heratis who spent considerable amounts of money to play the latest versions of the most popular video games.
Then came a downturn after the fundamentalist Taliban returned to power in August 2021. Mounting unemployment and a sharp economic downturn took a heavy toll on all Afghans, including potential customers among the city's half a million or so people.
Then suddenly, last week, it was "game over" for Humayun and other enterprising shopkeepers.
That's when authorities shuttered his arcade and hundreds of other businesses after the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice banned video games, foreign films, and music in Herat, branding them as un-Islamic.
"This business was my life," Humayun told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi. "I no longer have a source of income or a livelihood."
The impact of Taliban restrictions on businesses is conspicuous in Herat, an ancient center of cultural and intellectual life in the Muslim world that lies at a strategic crossroads leading to Iran and Turkmenistan.
In the years before the Taliban retook power in August 2021, Hazratha Market was the center of video gaming in Herat. Scores of shops lining narrow corridors also sold foreign films and TV serials on DVD. They offered Indian, Iranian, and Western music on CDs and cassettes.
But the once-teeming market that echoed with Afghan and Iranian music has now fallen silent and almost all its shops are closed.
"I have nothing left here, and now I must move to another country," said a former shopkeeper named Fakhruddin. His store sold movie posters, DVDs, and music CDs.
He says his nearly $3,000 investment in the business is doomed. "I am providing for an 11-member family, and this shop was my only livelihood," he told Radio Azadi.
The officials of the Taliban's morality police in Herat are adamant that closing game arcades and movie and music shops was the right thing to do.
Mawlawi Azizurrahman Mohajir, the provincial head of the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said the authorities closed the gaming parlors after many families complained that their children were wasting time there.
"These shops were selling films that depicted and promoted Indian and Western values and culture, which are very different from Afghan culture and traditions," he told Radio Azadi.
Mohajir, too, repeated the familiar Taliban argument that it considers such everyday leisure activities un-Islamic.
"The films they were selling did not have women in hijab, which is against Shari'a," he said, referring to the strict interpretation of the Islamic dress code that the Taliban insists be followed in Afghanistan. "This is why the sale of such films is prohibited." [RFE/JS]
