Afghanistan
19 December 2006
I have fallen in love with a country. It started a few
years ago, when watching the movie “Kandahar”
by the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. It was shot before the
Taliban was expelled from the country and seems to be te movie that
was shown to George Bush when he decided to attack them after the
9/11 events.
Ever since, something was touched inside me and I cannot
get my my thoughts off
Afghanistan. It's the
pictures of a country where there is absolutely nothing, where
people are trying to survive in surrealistic circumstances, where
women were forced to cover themselves completely under burqas and
where, also nowadays, they still prefer wearing it, as society is
not accustomed to women without cover.
Since then I have followed the news about
Afghanistan,
which is still sad. Whatever changed there has not significantly
changed the way of life of the people, who are still as poor as they
were under the Taliban. Having suffered war for 25 years is not
something that easily goes away from the shared memory of a people.
I have read books about Afghanistan (albeit a novel, “The
Kite-Runner” by Khaled Hosseini must have been at least partly based
on events that were real, as nobody can have an imagination to come
up with stories and images like that) and am simply deeply touched
by the fate of a country and a people who are at the base of
development and still have so far to go, have so much to develop.
Hopefully, western presence can help them find their own way of
developing and building their future, without simply imposing
western-style democracy or western values onto a people that have
totally other needs: the gap between Afghan society and western
society is too large to bridge in a few years.
Afghanestan, doostet daram!
