Shifting Into Neutral and Risking

Tired tired and badly tired. The engine has got a problem, it becomes hot so hot. It seems the fan in front of the engine is broken. It stopped in the middle of Sheebar Pass, thanks god; the shepherds helped me to reach the top of the mountain. I had no option but shifting into neutral and driving down to the bottom which was a big risk. If i was remained at that top of the mountain at night, probably the wolves would bite me.

I am in Bamyian right now, if you have ever been in a dream to see a scene of paradise, come to Bamyian. The blue sky, the cool weather, the greenish nature, all these bring you joyful moments. The villagers smile at you and invite you for a cup of tea, and then they share their stories with you which is untold and unheard yet.

It happened to me yesterday, I was almost broken in to pieces if the woman of the village wouldn’t give me a cup tea and bread. I was so hungry, my legs were almost paralyzed. When I had tea, there were another two women; they asked me if I am doctor to give them medicine for her sick child. It is really hard to get close to the villagers, especially women but if you respectfully talk to them and call them mother and sister they behave you so kindly.

Tomorrow I am going to Tob Chi School which is linked to a North Carolina friend school in the United States.

Traveling to Germany

I just came back from L'Aquila, the capital of Abruzzo region. Today, there was a photo exhibition and one of my Photos was also exhibited among 50 photos from different photographers there. The association which called themselves “the Cultural Association “L’Idea di Clèves” was born and developed in the provincial reality of L’Aquila” organizes this competition every year.

This year they had two categories, prize for online competition and the one which jury had to choose among 200 pictures. The photo which was selected by the jury was a red lip and with white face and side red colored. I didn’t understand why the jury selected this picture as the winner as I found lot of great shots there. I have doubt nepotism is so strong and influenced here in Italy.

I am tired, my domain kabuli.net is expired and my kabuli.org is still not working, it was hacked before and a few days before the data moved to a new server but the DNS is not fixed I don’t know why. I wrote several times to the host and technician who is helping me but there is no positive answer. It is not complicated but now it turned to an exigent problem.

Tomorrow, I am traveling to Berlin for a workshop which is organized by GTZ, I will write more about this later.

Back to Kabul

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I am in Kabul now. Over the last few weeks I was in Hamburg, Germany, for a Summer school on freedom and responsibilities in media. What a wonderful occasion and what wonderful people from 18 countries who I’ve met there. I miss all of them now and the only thing that remains with me are memories and pictures.

If this course was held in Kabul, it might not have been so successful and interesting. In Germany I had to learn every step, I had to learn about the people, cities and culture. I came back with lots of information and memories that I am now sharing with my friends who are coming to meet me.

One of the topics we had to work on was ‘dealing with the past’. Working with 8 people from different countries in one group on how we can deal with the past is not such an easy job. In most of the cases it is taboo to write about the past or it might not be so secure, or even dangerous. In a situation like Afghanistan it is very difficult to write about criminals and the warlords who are in power right now. But alas, in our class we never thought about the hows, and which methods we could use to write about our past. But now, I don't know what to do with these criminals who are in power and still threatening.
We only overviewed the history of Germany and the time when the Nazis committed genocide.

For several days, my heart was wounded. I couldn't imagine what happened to Jewish people there. But some times it was also very irritating when some of my colleagues were making funny pictures with the commemoration statue of a Jew who died from the severe conditions of living in one of the concentration camps. Maybe they had only eyes to look at the statue and the pictures around them. Maybe they only have eyes to look but have no heart to feel. May be most of us are like this, without doubt. Who feels our pains here? No one.

The Neuengamme concentration camp, close to Hamburg in northern Germany brings tears into your heart. You cannot believe how brutal and savagely those innocent people were killed. May be, this is an example of savageness of a period in history that reminds us to look back, to what has happened in the past. “We can not forget, but we can forgive always”, is a fine quote from Nelson Mandela.

Anyway, the workshop gave me the idea to build a group of researchers, to research about the massacre and genocide of the Hazara people of Afghanistan. In the 1880s in Afghanistan, King Amir Abul Rahman Khan committed a first Hazara genocide. Later in 2000, when the Taliban captured Mazar-e Sharif they massacred a number of 10,000 of the Hazara people, and when they captured Bamyian again they killed more than 10,000 of people. Today talking about the massacres and the civil war that took place in the 1990s has become a big taboo. If you talk about what happened during these times, you are labelled as an enemy of unity.

I hope to make a research-centre to research our past. This can also help Internationals because they can learn how many problems we had in our past. Unfortunately today, foreign politicians and those people who intend to favour Afghanistan and who are theorizing the construction of an Afghani nation-state don’t see that this will be a completely impossible mission. They have the wrong approach.

Going to Germany

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I am writing this post from Dubai International Airport. Within a few hours I should leave to Vienna then for Germany. There is a short-term training course the so-called Summer Academy on freedom and responsibility in the media. I am very excited to attend this course well. This is my first visit to Europe I hope all things go well. I will try hard to benefit a lot from this workshop.

I hope to meet some useful and nice people there from other countries. Their will be 23 participants. I don’t know if I can screen some pictures from Afghanistan for participants and may be ask from Inwent to help me with that.

I like to share many things with other participants. I will try to write my experiences from Germany here after this.