My close (and slightly less close) encounters
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country’s capital and largest city. Afghanistan’s population is estimated to be between 36 and 50 million.
Let’s get this straight, I’ve never been to Afghanistan. But I have encountered the land beneath the Hindu Kush many times on my travels and in other ways.
One of my earliest memories goes back to the late 1960s, to the time of the hippies and the hippie trail across Afghanistan. Somehow I didn’t have the courage to go on this journey myself. But the names Herat, Kandahar, Kabul sounded so exotic. And the final destination in Kathmandu on Freak Street. Which I managed to get to in late November 2007. Like they said, old hippies never die, they just flew away…
Then the Afghan coat appeared. “Afghans”, as they were often called, were worn by many celebrities through the late 1960s. Then, for the best part of a decade, they became standard youth clothing — an archetypal hippie garment and emblem of the counterculture. And it was worn, among others, by John Lennon.
The hippie trail came to an end in the late 1970s with political changes in previously hospitable countries. In 1979, both the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan closed the overland route to South Asia for Western travellers, and Chitral and Kashmir became less inviting due to tensions and territorial conflicts in the area.
John Lennon wore an Afghan coat and a sporran at the press launch for the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, held at Brian Epstein’s house in May 1967.
John Downing/Getty Images
And then there was chaos, the Taliban government, 9/11, the US military attack and the Taliban’s return to power.
When I was travelling around Ukraine in the early 1990s, I saw a lot of young boys without legs, arms, and cripples begging around churches. When asked where so many of them came from, the answer was simple – the result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
I had seen something similar a decade earlier in the USA, except that it was the result of the intervention in Vietnam.
In June 1985, Steve McCurry’s photograph Afghan Girl appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine. Afghan Girl is a 1984 photographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet–Afghan War. I own a copy of this magazine.
And then in the summer of 2015 I traveled through Tajikistan. For four days along the southern side along the Panj River, which is the border river with Afghanistan. The river is raging and full of water even in summer. The snow melts in the mountains and fills the riverbed. Because the river is so strong, there are almost no guards along it. It is impossible to swim across it due to the strong current.
Across the river I notice only a few, seemingly empty villages. One or two barracks, one of which has an Afghan flag and a camouflaged tank. The other is unmarked, supposedly occupied by the German army.
Two, three bridges. Since no one is allowed to cross from either side, residents meet halfway across the bridge on weekends and exchange goods.
Somewhere I notice a stranded truck, closer to the Afghan side. Once even a small watchtower, a remnant of the fortified Silk Road.
And of course the mighty mountains.
And a single local man, who was driving his donkey up a hill.
In 2017 I toured Iran. In the small old town of Fahraj, I spent the night with a friendly local guide, Masoud. Two girls, ten or twelve years old, came from the house next door. They told me that they were Afghan refugees. Big sad eyes that silently watched us, playful foreigners. No child joy, too soon grown up…
The reality of today’s world.
In 2018, the exhibition Afghanistan, Slovene views was organized at the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum.
My friend Ralf asked me if I could tackle the design of the catalogue. Of course, I gladly accepted the challenge.
To start with, we had to make a logo in all creativity. After a long exchange of opinions and ideas, we decided to use the Afghan folk instrument rubab as a basis. The rubab or robab[a] is a lute-like musical instrument of Central Asian origin. It is the national musical instrument of Afghanistan. The similarity of the stylized drawing of the instrument to the layout of the land under the Hindu Kush prevailed.
And finally, another little joke – Afghanistan Banana Stand.
In the early seventies, I watched the film The Hot Rock (1972) starring Robert Redford. “Afghanistan Banana Stand” is a reference to a movie quote from The Hot Rock, where the phrase is used as a hypnotic trigger by jewel thieves to get a security guard to open a vault. The phrase has also been adopted as a secret phrase for various purposes and has even inspired songs and merchandise.