Andrew Solomon - A Time of Hope

 

 

A lot of my work is about resilience. I've written about it in a whole range of contexts, I wrote about it among artists who were responding to the Soviet Union, I wrote about it in the context of a fat book about depression. And having been so interested in resilience and so interested in art, I was fascinated to think about a place where there was no art. And under the Taliban in Afghanistan, there was no art at all. And so, I decided that I would go there immediately after the American invasion and see what happened after the Taliban had fallen. 

 

Now, there are arguments to be made that if you are gay and Jewish with anxiety disorder and a tendency toward depression, [audience chuckles] a field trip to war-ravaged Afghanistan [audience laughter] may not be incredibly sound judgment. [audience laughter] And there were those who tried to discourage me. But I went. When I got there, I thought, "This is a whole new level of anxiety," and I thought, "But at least I've got my story to do." 

 

So, my first port of call was the UN, because that was the center of everything that was happening. I went and I met with someone at the UN and I said, "I've come, I'm doing a story. The New York Times agreed to send me, and I'm going to write about the resurgence of art in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban." I said, "You've been living here for some time?” I said, "Do you know any artists?" And he said, "There are no artists in Afghanistan." And I said, "Oh." I said, "Well, maybe some poets or some musicians?" And he said, "There are no poets in Afghanistan." He said, "But there's someone downstairs whose sole job actually has been to look at the music of Afghanistan, and in fact, try to get it out into the world. He'd probably know all about the musicians. So, if you just go downstairs, you could talk to him, and I imagine he'll be able to help you." 

 

I thought that would be great because well, I could just about imagine a world without film and without photography and without acting and without poetry and without any figurative visual art, I couldn't really imagine a country without music, a country where it had been illegal for a mother to hum to her child. People had been arrested for that. A country where it was illegal even to clap.

 

And so, I went downstairs to the man who'd come to study music in Afghanistan, and I did my little pattersong. I said I was there to write about all of these things and I said, " I wondered you've been studying this." I said, "Can you tell me about some musicians in Afghanistan?" And he said, "There is no music in Afghanistan." And I thought, "I've come quite a long way [audience chuckles] to get the story of how there is actually no art or music in Afghanistan." 

 

Fortunately, I had a translator with me, my translator, Farouk, who was and is an amazing friend and who had trained as a doctor under the Taliban, which meant that each day he had eight hours of instruction, seven hours of religious instruction, and one hour of medical instruction. He felt that he didn't really know enough to be a doctor and had decided to be a translator for a while he tried to educate himself. And Farouk said to me, "You know, I don't know much about the things you're interested in." He said, "But there is actually a museum in Kabul. It's small, but it's the National Gallery of Afghanistan, and they're reopening it later today. We could probably get into that if you wanted to go." And I said, "I would definitely like to go."

 

We went off to the museum, and we went in. And on the walls of the museum, there were a lot of empty landscapes. Of course, the Taliban had said that the representation of the human figure or even of animals was contrary to Islamic law. A debatable point, but one that they had held. It turned out that there was an artist, Dr. Asifi, who had, when the Taliban came to power, gone into the museum at night with a set of watercolors, and he had painted over all of the figures within the paintings. When we got there, Dr. Asifi was there, and he had a bucket of water and he had a piece of cloth. 

 

And Karzai, who seemed like the great hope at that point had come for this opening as well. And the electricity kept going out the way it did everywhere in Kabul that winter. Dr. Asifi carried his bucket, and he dipped his piece of cloth in, and he began to rub the surface of one of the paintings. Suddenly, everything began to appear. The figures came out, the animals came out, what the painting was about came out, and everyone burst into applause. Dr. Asifi said to me that he had a friend who was the greatest painter of miniatures. The Persian miniature is an art that began in Herat, and the Afghans therefore claim it as their own, and he said, "Go and see this guy who does the miniatures." 

 

There was no phone system in Afghanistan at that point, and there was no postal system, and there was certainly no fax or email. The only way to see anyone was to go and show up where they were. So, I got the address of this other artist, and I went off to see him, and he showed me these exquisite miniatures that he was painting. And I said, "They're very, very beautiful." I said, "But they seem very, very traditional." I said, "Are you introducing any kind of innovation?" And he said, "You come from the West where the past is safe, and so you can make things that are about the future. But for those of us in Afghanistan whose past has been very nearly annihilated, we have to secure the past before we can even begin to think about the future." 

 

And he said to me, "If you want to understand these feelings," he said, "I do know a poet who has gone back to writing secular poetry. You should go and see him." And so, the next day, went to see the poet, and we showed up at his house. He showed me some of his poems, one of which said, "On the highest escarpment, on the sharpest peak, inscribe this epitaph of a futureless generation that instead of mother's milk, we were given guns, and instead of education, we were given war. Don't blame us. We could do nothing for you." And he said to me, "You should talk to other people who are writing and other people who are doing things." He gave me a few more names and addresses. One of them was for a woman who was doing poetry with some other women.

 

We went to their house, and they agreed to come and meet with us someplace else. When they walked in, they were all wearing burqas, and they took off the burqas so that we could sit and talk. They were incredibly sophisticated and cosmopolitan. And I said, "The Taliban has fallen. Why are you still wearing that thing? Why is everyone in Kabul still wearing those burqas?" And one of them said, "Well, I'm wearing it, because they might come back to power. And if they do, they'll punish anyone who went out without one." And one of them said, "I'm wearing this, because if I get raped or beaten up, people will say it was my own fault." And then, the third one, who was the poet, said, "I always thought if the Taliban fell, I would burn this thing and I would never put it on again. But after five years, you get used to being invisible, and the prospect of being visible again is very overwhelming." 

 

She was the one who said to me, "There's a lot of music. There's a lot of music." And she said, "This is the best singer. You should go and see this man," and she gave me his name and his address. And so, the next day, went to his house. We arrived, and he greeted us, and he was very warm. We stood outside the house for a minute, and I said to him, "You're a singer." I said, "You couldn't sing for all of these years. You had no music at all." I said, "Didn't you go crazy? Wouldn't one go crazy having no music at all?" And he said, "At the beginning, I thought I would go crazy." He said, "But then, I realized that there was a kind of music that even the Taliban couldn't forbid." He said, "Come in." We walked into his house. 

 

As we were walking in, he said, "A few months after they came to power, I went to the market, and I bought 20 pigeons and I bought 20 doves. And they've lived in the house with me ever since." We sat in his room while these doves and pigeons flew around us in circles. The room was a mess. [audience laughter] And he said, "That was the music." And he said, "If you're really interested in music," he said, "there's actually a group of amazing musicians who are really trying to bring back the great Afghan classical tradition." He said, "They practice most afternoons in the basement of a building opposite the television tower. Go there and hear what they're doing." 

 

So, that afternoon, Farouk and I went off to hear the other musicians. When we arrived, they were in this basement. It was cold in Kabul. It was February. There was no heating anywhere. They were sitting there, and they were playing with gloves on, on string instruments, which I must say does not improve the performance. But nonetheless, they were playing beautifully. I sat and I watched them. At the end of an hour, they said, "You seem so interested." They said, "Do you have any questions for us?" And I said, "If you weren't able to play for all those years, how did you remember these instruments and what to do with them?" One of them said to me, "You know, we couldn't practice in real life during the day, but I practiced every night in my dreams." 

 

And then, I said to one of them, "The instrument you're playing, I know that's a traditional Afghan instrument. All the instruments were supposed to be destroyed when the Taliban came to power. How did you keep it and in good shape, too?" And he said, "Oh yes, this is a Sarinda." He said, "And what I did was I had a wood pile behind the house where I kept all of the wood, and I put the Sarinda in the middle of the wood pile. And every few days, I'd bring in some more logs or I'd take some logs away and I'd rearrange it. And if you were only looking at it from the end, it could pass for scrap wood. I knew that if any of my neighbors reported me, I could get stoned to death." He said, "But it gave me such comfort to know it was there in the pile." 

 

And then, I said, "I've loved hearing your music." And they said, "But there are only seven of us here today, and there are actually 11 in our group. We could get the whole group together if you want to hear us all play." And I said, "I would love that." And they said, "Well, when do you want to do it?" And I said, "How about Friday?" And they said, "Sure, Friday would be good." And I said, "Afternoon, 5 o'clock?" And they said, "5 o'clock would be great." And then, I had a little inspiration, and I said, "I'm happy to come back and hear you playing here again. I know this is where you practice, but actually, a group of journalists and I rented an old Al Qaeda house, which were the only houses that actually did have heating in Kabul at that point." They said, "And maybe you'd like to come and play someplace where you didn't have to have gloves on your hands to play string instruments." And they said, "That would be fantastic." And I said, "Great. So, 5 o'clock Friday, this is where I'm living. I'll see you then."

 

And then, we left. And I thought, "Wow, I have 11 musicians coming to play in the house at 5 o'clock on Friday." And I thought, "Those poets we saw and that other singer, we should invite them to come and hear these guys. These guys are really amazing." I thought, "We should find the artists we saw." And then, I thought, "And I'd love to invite my friend Marla, the human rights activist who was living down the block and who was killed in Iraq and who I miss." I wanted to invite the other journalists with whom I was sharing the house, and I had to invite the man from the UN who had told me that there was no music in Afghanistan. [audience chuckles] And I thought, "I'll just invite all the people I've met." I had been there only a week, but I had met a lot of people. Farouk and I spent Thursday going around and inviting people, and we invited everyone. 

 

There was a guy who cooked at the house where we were staying, and I said to him, "There's going to be a bunch of people coming on Friday. Could you by any chance provide some snacks for people?" And he said, "I could make dinner if you want me to." And I said, "I don't think you could make dinner." I said, "There'll be 80 or 90 people coming here." And he said, "Oh." He said, "80 or 90." He said, "Well, the only way I could make dinner for 80 or 90 people would be if I got an assistant and I had money to buy ingredients. That's a big thing." And I said, "Well, I understand that." I said, "What would be involved in all that?" He said, "You know, that would cost-- It could be $150. It could be even $200 to do dinner for 90." [audience laughter] And I said, "I'm going to spring for it." [audience laughter] And I said, "You go ahead and do that." 

 

And so, the next day, it was Friday, and at 5 o'clock the musicians arrived, and they sat down and they began to play. It was so long since they'd had an audience and they'd had people who wanted to listen. The Afghans came, and the foreigners who I'd got to know came, and the guy from the UN came, and everyone came. There was this amazing buffet dinner. I went to Afghanistan to do a piece for The New York Times. But after I returned, I did a piece for Food and Wine magazine. [audience laughter] 

 

But we sat there and everyone ate. The musicians were so enraptured by having us all there that they would get up one at a time to get some food or to do something, but they just never stopped playing. They went on and they played and they played. The Afghans started showing the rest of us how to do certain kinds of traditional dancing to the music. We began dancing and they played and we ate. Someone showed up with a bottle of whiskey, which was strictly contraband in Afghanistan at that point. It was like being in 10th grade and having someone show up at your party with a bag of weed. [audience laughter] 

 

I taught Farouk in English, so he could teach as well as he could in some relevant language, everyone else the word for "hangover", which was a word they had not previously needed. [audience laughter] And they just went on playing. The music seemed to get more beautiful, the more they played and the more they played together. It was warm and it was glowing. There was a curfew in Kabul at 10 o'clock, and you couldn't be in the streets past 10 o'clock. And so, at 09:30, I began saying to people, "Do you want to get home? It's going to be 10 o'clock soon." I said it to the musicians and the musicians said, "Oh, it would take us an hour and a half to get home. We've missed the curfew. We'll have to stay." [audience chuckles] 

 

The guests started saying, "Oh, I can't leave while this is happening." And the musicians went on playing, and the curfew was a curfew until dawn, and they played until 6 o'clock the following morning without ever taking a break. 13 solid hours of music. Afterwards, I thought to myself that when I'd written about depression, I had said, "There's a kind of joy which is possible only after you've been profoundly depressed." I realized there's a kind of music that is possible only after you've been silent for five years, and that I had been the fortunate witness to those extraordinary sounds, and to that sacred and holy moment when the music began again. 

 

I told Farouk a few days ago on Skype that I was going to tell this story, and we had a long talk about it, and went over some of the details. When we finished, Farouk, for whom I have tried to get a visa to come here now for almost 10 years, Farouk said to me, "I'm so glad that you'll tell that story and that people will be able to remember the moment of hope when the American invasion had just happened, and we were so joyful and had such belief in what we thought was going to come." Thank you.