twenty four suns

“Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving, it doesn’t matter— Ours is not a caravan of despair, but one of endless joy. Even if you have broken your vows a hundred times— Come, come, yet again, come!” Rumi

“Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving,
it doesn’t matter—
Ours is not a caravan of despair,
but one of endless joy.
Even if you have broken your vows a hundred times—
Come, come, yet again, come!” Rumi

Harrison E. Salisbury, Afghanistan 1977

Harrison E. Salisbury, Afghanistan 1977

Hilma Af Klint

Perspectives on London from Qais Akbar Omar

I hope your trip to Kabul was fruitful and you enjoyed it. I am enjoying England. It rains

almost every day. This is a good change from Kabul. Here I am breathing clean air after

years of breathing dust and gunpowder. Sometimes when it is raining lightly, people say

the weather is “fresh.” Sometimes when it rains hard, they say the weather is “filthy.” As

you know, in Afghanistan we do not have so many names for rain. When it rains, we just

thank God.

A few days ago I saw the Queen as she went to the parliament. Wow! Quite a show!

Once Shakespeare said, “All the world is a stage.” So true in England. The British are

brilliant at pomp and display. I suspect that has a lot to do with their sense of empire.

I am staying at Delfina Foundation, which is only two blocks away from Buckingham

Palace. When I tell people that, they say, “You are lucky living so close to the Queen.” I

reply, “So is the Queen.” But very few get the joke. People here are fond of toilet jokes,

which I find it odd.

Everyday I’m seeing a corner of England. London is nice and busy, but very expensive.

What I like the most are the parks. Absolutely beautiful! I call them little paradises. I take

long walks in them as I look at trees. The other day as it was sunny, I counted 15 shades

of green. The leaves are so shinny, you wonder if someone polished them.

British people are really good with gardens and have a good sense of how to keep an

open green space for the public. I wish they built a few gardens and parks in Afghanistan

instead of “war on terror” and their claims of “we are winning”. I often ask

myself, “What are they winning?” By killing one Afghan, be he a Talib or a civilian, they

create 12 more enemies. Nobody can win in Afghanistan. History proves that. The only

way to win in Afghanistan is to rebuild it and win people’s hearts and minds.

Anyways, let’s keep that discussion for another time. So far I have been to Lewes,

Brighton, and Salisbury. When I walked in Lewes, on the hillside and golf courses, I

thought it was the most beautiful place in the world. But then I went to Salisbury,

Stonehenge, another ancient circle at Avebury, and walked in the countryside, I thought it

was even more beautiful. I think England is the most beautiful country in the world

when it comes to greenery.

I’m enjoying my time here a lot, but unfortunately the visa guys gave me a very short

visa. I have to leave on May 30. I will be able to see the first performance of “The

Comedy of Errors” in the afternoon of the 30th. If I want to extend my visa, I have to pay

867 pounds, the visa extension fee.

Darren Almond 

Darren Almond 

Darren Almond

Darren Almond

Osborn White Sunrise Loafer 

Osborn White Sunrise Loafer 

Shakespeare in Kabul

Last week I read a book called Shakespeare in Kabul that probably upends everything you thought you knew about Afghanistan.

It’s an important book — and it’s being published just after U.S. officials pledged to support Afghanistan for a decade beyond the exit of U.S. troops at the end of 2014.

That deal isn’t yet final. But if we want to maintain a long-term relationship with Afghanistan, more Americans need to understand the yearnings of ordinary Afghans. This moving tale of Afghan efforts to stage Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost reveals what might have been — and might still emerge one day — in Kabul.

The idea for the play emerged in 2005 at a time when Afghanistan was swept by optimism in the wake of successful presidential elections. “Everyone saw good things ahead,” says the book’s coauthor Steve Landrigan. He spent five years doing development work in Afghanistan, and was inspired by the Afghan passion for poetry.

Landrigan joined forces with Corinne Jaber, a Paris-based actress, who wound up producing the play, and with Qais Akbar Omar (coauthor of the book), a remarkable young Afghan who had survived the horrors of Afghan civil war and Taliban rule.

As a student, after the Taliban’s fall, Omar had stumbled upon a Farsi translation of Othello in the Kabul University library. (Farsi is the Persian language, which is similar to the Afghan Dari dialect.)

“As I read the first few pages,” Omar told me by phone, “I was immediately fascinated. Who is this man, with this foreign name, I wondered, who writes like one of our great poets?” He called the bard Malem Shakespeare, because in Afghan culture the title malem (teacher) conveys the highest respect.

But the Taliban had burned most books in Kabul, and there were no other Shakespeare texts to be found. Moreover, as the group auditioned Afghan actors and described Shakespeare’s famous scenes of war, the actors made clear they did not want to perform anything connected with bloodshed.

“They said we have to do something funny, something romantic,” Omar told me. Love’s Labour’s Lost was chosen because of its beautiful poetry and courtly notions of love. Shakespeare in Kabul describes the daunting obstacles the group overcame, including the need to translate the complex language of the play from a version by an Iranian professor.

The actors would sit in a circle reading the language until they grasped it. “They loved the poetry, which was so rich,” says Omar. One actor told him, “I think Shakespeare is an Afghan who migrated to England.”

The producers also had to overcome the inexperience of the Afghan actors, who had only done TV or movies. And they had to find women willing to risk appearing on stage with men — the first time this had happened in 30 years.

Finding funding was also a huge task: the British Council, which promotes British culture overseas, was a major backer. But the U.S. Embassy refused to help because Shakespeare was British — and Congress has mandated that it must use funds to promote only American culture. I kid you not.

Sadly, the play appeared just as the situation in Afghanistan started going downhill. As America’s attention was distracted from Afghanistan by the Iraq war, the Taliban regrouped. Armed and trained by Pakistan, they began attacking inside Afghanistan again.

“In 2005 things looked bright, but after 2006 suicide bombers came back,“ says Omar. “People thought the Americans and NATO would stop this, but things got worse and people lost hope. Families would be afraid to come out to see a play today.”

Yet, the bigger story that emerges from this book — and from the rapturous reception the play received in its handful of performances — is the hunger of Afghans to emerge from decades of war and Taliban repression.

“Ordinary Afghans are thirsty for knowledge,” says Omar. Shakespeare’s themes — of men facing autocratic leaders and doomed lovers defying ethnic or tribal taboos — spoke to their yearnings for change. Most Afghans do not want the return of the backwardness imposed by the Taliban.

Omar was scheduled to attend his book launch in London, on Shakespeare’s birthday. Instead, he is in Pakistan, where he has been waiting in vain for five weeks for a British visa. (There is no British consulate in Kabul, and the Brits hold onto Afghan passports while the visa applicants are waiting.)

This indignity reminds me of how casually Westerners often treat Afghans, and how little they know of Afghan culture.

“I will sit quietly with a glass of green tea,” says Omar, “and in my own way say, ‘Happy Birthday, Malem Shakespeare.’” Read his book.

April 29, 2012|Trudy Rubin THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Intimate Portraits of Life in a Remote, Peaceful Part of Afghanistan

by +

The Wakhan corridor — a 140-mile stretch of rural land in Afghanistan — is home to 12,000 residents, many of whom have never seen a camera, let alone had their picture taken. Inspired by a New York Times article that they read about the rarely-visited region, Fabrice Nadjari and Cedric Houin (aka Varial) decided to visit the area and shoot a series of portraits documenting its citizens. First, they took a Polaroid of each of their subjects, followed by another black and white image of the villager holding their own photo. The expressions found in these second shots — which range from embarrassed to proud to blank indifference — are the most fascinating part of the project.

“Those images led us to amazing encounters,” they write of the experience. “We’ll never forget this head of village who left us go on through his territory without a costly escort of his horsemen — a favor almost never granted to foreigners. Nor this old man who was crying while holding us in his arms, not wanting to let us go when we had to leave to go on with our journey.”

Click through to check out a slideshow of select photos, which we spotted thanks to My Modern Met, and if you live in New York, see them in person at Milk Gallery beginning on May 18.

-via: Dazed Digital

A Film by OCTV and Kenzo for Barney’s

Our story isn’t a file of photographsfaces laughing under green leavesor snowlit doorways, on the verge of drivingaway, our story is not about womenvictoriously perched on the onesunny day of the conference,nor lovers displaying love: Our story is of moments when even slow motion moved too fastfor the shutter of the camera:words that blew our lives apart, like so,eyes that cut and caught each other,mime of the operating roomwhere gas and knives quote each othermoments before the telephonestarts ringing: our story ishow still we stood,how fast. -Adrienne Rich (5.16.1929 – 3.27.2012)

Our story isn’t a file of photographs
faces laughing under green leaves
or snowlit doorways, on the verge of driving
away, our story is not about women
victoriously perched on the one
sunny day of the conference,
nor lovers displaying love:

Our story is of moments when even slow motion moved too fast
for the shutter of the camera:
words that blew our lives apart, like so,
eyes that cut and caught each other,
mime of the operating room
where gas and knives quote each other
moments before the telephone
starts ringing: our story is
how still we stood,
how fast.

-Adrienne Rich (5.16.1929 – 3.27.2012)