Sunday, March 6, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
From Hope to Home: Leaving Afghanistan
Mohammad Razai is a student at the University of Cambridge. Here, he explains why his family left Afghanistan and what it meant to him to settle in the UK:
When I was six years old, the enveloping darkness of the courtyard; the familiar sonorous sound of Muazzin from the pulpit of the mosque, calling the faithful to prayers, would signal the end of the day.
I would then go into the dimly lantern-lit room of our house and watch my grand mother prostrated on her mat, praying. She would teach me verses from the Quran, and then she would tell me the story of the three fishes: the wise, the half-wise, and the third, stupid.
When fishermen come to the edge of the lake with their nets – the wise fish recognizes the danger and makes a difficult journey to the ocean, the half-wise – realising he has lost his wise guide – escapes by feigning death, however, the foolish fish is jumping about unaware of the net closing around him.
The fable, carved in my memory, meant little to me then beyond my fascination with the fate of three hapless creatures. Today, this fascinating parable of Jalal al-Din Rumi in Mathnavi can be revisited. The foolish fish is bounded and limited by the world of his immediate surroundings. For him home is that lake, come what may; he lacks vision and foresight, Rumi says.
The half-wise, though capable of saving himself, is a follower whom requires guidance and cannot solve the riddle himself. It’s the wise fish that comes to the conclusion that his true home is not the lake that he has lived, but the vast ocean where he could actualise the potential he has, wherever that may be.
Rumi himself fled the marauding Mongols in 1219 and settled in the Anatolian city of Konya, modern day Turkey, where he lived most of his life and wrote his poetical works. Rumi derides those who define home on political and geographical terms. Home is where you can live.Where you are accepted. When your race, ethnicity and identity is not a crime.
I was born in a cold winter morning of 1986, though the exact date is unknown, to an ethnically Hazara family in the west of Kabul. My great grandfather had travelled on foot at the age of 13 from rugged mountainous central Afghanistan, where his forefathers were sent to exile by amirs and kings, to the city of Kabul where he started life selling sweet drinks and working as a vendor.
The family had gone to extraordinary lengths to forge a new identity to avoid racism and discrimination. They had internalised the inferiority ascribed to them by society – my grandfather’s advise was ‘as Hazaras we should know our place’.
The winter morning I was born everyone rejoiced that I wasn’t born a flat-nosed, however later I was disappointed that people called me a Hazara. The official history does not mention the collective suffering and persecution of the Hazara community, the pogroms and systematic ethnocide of a once thriving people.
“They called him flat-nosed because of Ali and Hassan’s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras… mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.”
Khaled Hosseini’s the Kite Runner is a searing indictment of a rotten society. Hassan, his protagonist is an exemplar Hazara:
“Then one day, I was in Baba’s study, looking through his stuff, when I found one of my mother’s old history books…I blew the dust off it… In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had “quelled them with unspeakable violence.” The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a. The book said a lot of things I didn’t know, things my teachers hadn’t mentioned. Things Baba hadn’t mentioned either.”
In winter of 1986 thirteen members of my family including my parents and grandfather were imprisoned, 8 months later my father and grandfather were executed. They were victims of a great purge instigated by the Marxist regime six years after the Soviet invasion in December 1979.
With the fall of the Marxist regime in Kabul a bloody civil war ensued. The family home was destroyed and we were made refugees. In autumn of my tenth year Kabul was taken over. Darkness descended on the city and all hope seemed gone. Being a Hazara, a Shi’a Muslim was no longer just a disadvantage, a hazard but a crime in itself.
We were sent to seek asylum. It was a journey to the unknown, I had no choice nor any idea where I would end up – it was the ultimate manifestation of my desperation- everytime an asylum seeker is made to disguise himself, gets strip-searched, locked-up and sent to a faraway camp he forfeits a piece of his dignity. Every time the Daily Mailqueries ‘why do we let in so many spongers?’ or the Mail on Sunday declares ‘ asylumseekers are a threat to our future’ he questions the wisdom of the choice made for him. But of course Britain has been a home for the persecuted, for those seeking sanctuary for centuries and this is what makes Britain great.
Source,
http://theglobalherald.com/from-hope-to-home-leaving-afghanistan/12660/
When I was six years old, the enveloping darkness of the courtyard; the familiar sonorous sound of Muazzin from the pulpit of the mosque, calling the faithful to prayers, would signal the end of the day.
I would then go into the dimly lantern-lit room of our house and watch my grand mother prostrated on her mat, praying. She would teach me verses from the Quran, and then she would tell me the story of the three fishes: the wise, the half-wise, and the third, stupid.
When fishermen come to the edge of the lake with their nets – the wise fish recognizes the danger and makes a difficult journey to the ocean, the half-wise – realising he has lost his wise guide – escapes by feigning death, however, the foolish fish is jumping about unaware of the net closing around him.
The fable, carved in my memory, meant little to me then beyond my fascination with the fate of three hapless creatures. Today, this fascinating parable of Jalal al-Din Rumi in Mathnavi can be revisited. The foolish fish is bounded and limited by the world of his immediate surroundings. For him home is that lake, come what may; he lacks vision and foresight, Rumi says.
The half-wise, though capable of saving himself, is a follower whom requires guidance and cannot solve the riddle himself. It’s the wise fish that comes to the conclusion that his true home is not the lake that he has lived, but the vast ocean where he could actualise the potential he has, wherever that may be.
Rumi himself fled the marauding Mongols in 1219 and settled in the Anatolian city of Konya, modern day Turkey, where he lived most of his life and wrote his poetical works. Rumi derides those who define home on political and geographical terms. Home is where you can live.Where you are accepted. When your race, ethnicity and identity is not a crime.
I was born in a cold winter morning of 1986, though the exact date is unknown, to an ethnically Hazara family in the west of Kabul. My great grandfather had travelled on foot at the age of 13 from rugged mountainous central Afghanistan, where his forefathers were sent to exile by amirs and kings, to the city of Kabul where he started life selling sweet drinks and working as a vendor.
The family had gone to extraordinary lengths to forge a new identity to avoid racism and discrimination. They had internalised the inferiority ascribed to them by society – my grandfather’s advise was ‘as Hazaras we should know our place’.
The winter morning I was born everyone rejoiced that I wasn’t born a flat-nosed, however later I was disappointed that people called me a Hazara. The official history does not mention the collective suffering and persecution of the Hazara community, the pogroms and systematic ethnocide of a once thriving people.
“They called him flat-nosed because of Ali and Hassan’s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras… mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.”
Khaled Hosseini’s the Kite Runner is a searing indictment of a rotten society. Hassan, his protagonist is an exemplar Hazara:
“Then one day, I was in Baba’s study, looking through his stuff, when I found one of my mother’s old history books…I blew the dust off it… In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had “quelled them with unspeakable violence.” The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a. The book said a lot of things I didn’t know, things my teachers hadn’t mentioned. Things Baba hadn’t mentioned either.”
In winter of 1986 thirteen members of my family including my parents and grandfather were imprisoned, 8 months later my father and grandfather were executed. They were victims of a great purge instigated by the Marxist regime six years after the Soviet invasion in December 1979.
With the fall of the Marxist regime in Kabul a bloody civil war ensued. The family home was destroyed and we were made refugees. In autumn of my tenth year Kabul was taken over. Darkness descended on the city and all hope seemed gone. Being a Hazara, a Shi’a Muslim was no longer just a disadvantage, a hazard but a crime in itself.
We were sent to seek asylum. It was a journey to the unknown, I had no choice nor any idea where I would end up – it was the ultimate manifestation of my desperation- everytime an asylum seeker is made to disguise himself, gets strip-searched, locked-up and sent to a faraway camp he forfeits a piece of his dignity. Every time the Daily Mailqueries ‘why do we let in so many spongers?’ or the Mail on Sunday declares ‘ asylumseekers are a threat to our future’ he questions the wisdom of the choice made for him. But of course Britain has been a home for the persecuted, for those seeking sanctuary for centuries and this is what makes Britain great.
Source,
http://theglobalherald.com/from-hope-to-home-leaving-afghanistan/12660/
Afghanistan's surviving treasures
Ten years after the destruction of Bamiyan's Buddha statues, the British Museum's Afghanistan exhibition recalls our rich heritage
Abbas Daiyar guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 March 2011 09.00 GMT Article history
Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues by the Taliban, an exhibition opened at the British Museum this week showcasing more than 200 examples of Afghanistan's cultural heritage over the last 4,000 years.
The exhibition, which has toured internationally since 2006, was inaugurated by President Karzai on Tuesday.
Among the items on show are 2,000-year-old artefacts from the ancient city of Bagram, north of today's capital, Kabul. "These are an extraordinary set of ivories stolen from the National Museum in Kabul, bought by a London dealer specifically to return them, restored by conservators at the British Museum … and after the exhibition they will go back," says Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum.
According to estimates, more than 70% of the artefacts at the National Museum in Kabul were looted and destroyed during the civil war of 1990s. The Taliban ransacked and destroyed much of our cultural heritage and the surviving items are a credit to the bravery of some Afghans who risked their lives to save them.
If you are in London, do visit the exhibition to see the richness of our cultural heritage, and a different picture from Afghanistan than the headlines of war.
It was not the looting of the museum in Kabul that brought the brutalities of the Taliban to the world's attention, but the blowing up of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in 2001. Mullah Omar, the Taliban's spiritual leader, ordered their destruction on 26 February 2001. Kofi Annan, then UN secretary general, sent his special envoy to urge the Taliban leadership not to destroy the centuries' old treasures. Unesco asked the Organisation of Islamic Countries to pressurise the Taliban and three OIC members – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – made appeals. The director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York even invited the Taliban leadership to sell the Buddhas to western museums, but all in vain. Pictures of the destruction caused widespread horror and the world finally recognised the face of Taliban.
But few reports at the time told the story of how it happened. During frequent visits to Bamiyan, in 2008, I managed to meet a survivor who had taken part in planting explosives in the roof holes and body structure of the statues.
Abdul Rahim told me that after offering Friday prayers, the Taliban forced some arrested local people to carry explosives on to the roof of the statues and plant them in the holes.
"Some people refused to do this," Rahim said, "and they were shot dead." He continued: "Seeing their fate, we trembled and took the materials on our backs, tied with rope on our waist, [and were] lowered from the roof down to the body of the Buddhas to put the dynamite."
It took almost a week of dynamiting to complete the destruction. Rahim added: "They [the Taliban] slaughtered 50 cows in celebration."
A local resident, Khaliq, put it like this for me: "It took two centuries to build Shamama and Salsal [local names of the female and male Buddha statues] and the Taliban destroyed them in one week."
The UN marked the 10th anniversary of the Buddhas' destruction this week. Unesco is holding a conference in Paris to discuss plans for preserving the heritage of Bamiyan valley. A delegation from Afghanistan, including the female governor of Bamiyan, Habiba Sarabi (an active advocate of the reconstruction of the statues), is attending.
The recent report by German scientists saying that one of the statues could be reconstructed has stirred hope among Afghan and international activists, who have launched a petition asking the Afghan government, parliament and the UN for support. Hundreds of people in Bamiyan had already signed a petition in 2008.
The government of Afghanistan opposes rebuilding, saying the cost does not make sense when people are living below the poverty line. Other critics say a reconstructed statue will be a "fake".
I believe the majority of people in Afghanistan would support the reconstruction of the statues. Hasan Malistani, an Afghan geologist and assistant professor of Bamiyan University (currently a research associate at the University of Bonn), told me: "The destroyed Buddha statues should not only be a matter for Bamiyan, or Afghanistan. It is human heritage for the whole world. Reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas is an important part of the preservation and restoration of human history and civilisation."
He believes a reconstructed Buddha wouldn't be fake as it would be rebuilt from the remains of the statue. Archaeologists and computer scientists have already made this fabulous 3D model of the statues.
In an interview in 2008, Governor Sarabi told me: "At least one of the Buddhas should be [re]built. It would be a great support to the economy of this poor province, attracting tourists." The financial cost of the reconstruction could be partly met from a world tour of parts of the destroyed statues, such as the exhibition at the British Museum, to generate donations and income.
Abbas Daiyar is a journalist from Kabul and an op-ed contributor to Daily Outlook Afghanistan.
Source,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/04/british-museum-bamiyan-buddha-reconstruction
Abbas Daiyar guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 March 2011 09.00 GMT Article history
Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues by the Taliban, an exhibition opened at the British Museum this week showcasing more than 200 examples of Afghanistan's cultural heritage over the last 4,000 years.
The exhibition, which has toured internationally since 2006, was inaugurated by President Karzai on Tuesday.
Among the items on show are 2,000-year-old artefacts from the ancient city of Bagram, north of today's capital, Kabul. "These are an extraordinary set of ivories stolen from the National Museum in Kabul, bought by a London dealer specifically to return them, restored by conservators at the British Museum … and after the exhibition they will go back," says Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum.
According to estimates, more than 70% of the artefacts at the National Museum in Kabul were looted and destroyed during the civil war of 1990s. The Taliban ransacked and destroyed much of our cultural heritage and the surviving items are a credit to the bravery of some Afghans who risked their lives to save them.
If you are in London, do visit the exhibition to see the richness of our cultural heritage, and a different picture from Afghanistan than the headlines of war.
It was not the looting of the museum in Kabul that brought the brutalities of the Taliban to the world's attention, but the blowing up of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in 2001. Mullah Omar, the Taliban's spiritual leader, ordered their destruction on 26 February 2001. Kofi Annan, then UN secretary general, sent his special envoy to urge the Taliban leadership not to destroy the centuries' old treasures. Unesco asked the Organisation of Islamic Countries to pressurise the Taliban and three OIC members – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – made appeals. The director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York even invited the Taliban leadership to sell the Buddhas to western museums, but all in vain. Pictures of the destruction caused widespread horror and the world finally recognised the face of Taliban.
But few reports at the time told the story of how it happened. During frequent visits to Bamiyan, in 2008, I managed to meet a survivor who had taken part in planting explosives in the roof holes and body structure of the statues.
Abdul Rahim told me that after offering Friday prayers, the Taliban forced some arrested local people to carry explosives on to the roof of the statues and plant them in the holes.
"Some people refused to do this," Rahim said, "and they were shot dead." He continued: "Seeing their fate, we trembled and took the materials on our backs, tied with rope on our waist, [and were] lowered from the roof down to the body of the Buddhas to put the dynamite."
It took almost a week of dynamiting to complete the destruction. Rahim added: "They [the Taliban] slaughtered 50 cows in celebration."
A local resident, Khaliq, put it like this for me: "It took two centuries to build Shamama and Salsal [local names of the female and male Buddha statues] and the Taliban destroyed them in one week."
The UN marked the 10th anniversary of the Buddhas' destruction this week. Unesco is holding a conference in Paris to discuss plans for preserving the heritage of Bamiyan valley. A delegation from Afghanistan, including the female governor of Bamiyan, Habiba Sarabi (an active advocate of the reconstruction of the statues), is attending.
The recent report by German scientists saying that one of the statues could be reconstructed has stirred hope among Afghan and international activists, who have launched a petition asking the Afghan government, parliament and the UN for support. Hundreds of people in Bamiyan had already signed a petition in 2008.
The government of Afghanistan opposes rebuilding, saying the cost does not make sense when people are living below the poverty line. Other critics say a reconstructed statue will be a "fake".
I believe the majority of people in Afghanistan would support the reconstruction of the statues. Hasan Malistani, an Afghan geologist and assistant professor of Bamiyan University (currently a research associate at the University of Bonn), told me: "The destroyed Buddha statues should not only be a matter for Bamiyan, or Afghanistan. It is human heritage for the whole world. Reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas is an important part of the preservation and restoration of human history and civilisation."
He believes a reconstructed Buddha wouldn't be fake as it would be rebuilt from the remains of the statue. Archaeologists and computer scientists have already made this fabulous 3D model of the statues.
In an interview in 2008, Governor Sarabi told me: "At least one of the Buddhas should be [re]built. It would be a great support to the economy of this poor province, attracting tourists." The financial cost of the reconstruction could be partly met from a world tour of parts of the destroyed statues, such as the exhibition at the British Museum, to generate donations and income.
Source,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/04/british-museum-bamiyan-buddha-reconstruction
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