Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

“We could not mirror our Taliban-era society,” the poet Mohammed Yasin Niazi said. His colleague Abdul Raqib Jahid added, “Under the Taliban, I tried simply to write poems that would relieve people of their tension.” Their new poetry is enthusiastically nationalist.

Niazi wrote:

We saw the results of the work of the ignorant.

Now we should be rational.

It is time for open windows

Through which the sun shines.

Jahid wrote:

Communism and terrorism wanted to swallow Afghanistan

But the knife of liberty cut their throat . . .

I just want to tell you the story of liberty

As politely as possible.

Other poets, however, express deep bitterness. Achmed Shekib Santyar wrote:

Epitaph

On the biggest escarpment,

On the sharpest peak,

With bold letters,

Etch this,

The message of a futureless generation:

That in childhood, instead of mothers’ mercy, we received the rough talk of soldiers;

And in youth, instead of pens, we got guns in our hands;

And in age, instead of rest, we went out begging.

Don’t blame us.

We could do nothing for you.

Close Call for Filmmakers

In 1968, with support from Hollywood, Afghan Films was established. It made a dozen or so films a year—documentaries and features—until the Soviet invasion and the mujahideen, when things slowed down. Under the Taliban, they stopped entirely. The Taliban burned more than a thousand reels when they took Kabul. “They started doing it here in the office,” said Timur Hakimian, head of the company, waving a hand in front of his face. “You can’t imagine the smell. Since it was asphyxiating them as well as the rest of us, they went to the stadium and made a public spectacle of their bonfire.” Fortunately, Taliban censors didn’t know the difference between prints and negatives; what they burned was mostly replaceable, and the negatives, hidden elsewhere, survived. “Unfortunately, we were unable not only to use our equipment during these years, but also to clean or maintain it,” Hakimian said. “Much has been destroyed not by abuse, but by neglect. If we could get the equipment, we’re ready to roll again.”

Hakimian is a drily humorous and sophisticated man who has traveled to film festivals around the world. He served for many years as president of the Union of Artists, a position he has now reclaimed. Because he had made a film whose narrator accuses the Taliban of being against culture and Islam, he went into hiding during their ascendancy. “There was good reason to be afraid!” he told me. “If these people could blow up your World Trade Center, they could blow up little me! I feel lucky to be alive at all.” He got a friend who worked as a cleaner in the security department of the Taliban to remove and burn his file, and he attributes his survival to this act.

Dozens of men and three women have approached Hakimian about playing in films again. The great actress of pre-Taliban films was Zamzama Shakila, usually just called Zamzama, a gorgeous woman whose physical presence was particularly alarming to the Taliban. She wanted to stay in Afghanistan despite the Taliban; she gave up acting, and her husband (also an actor) sold clothes in the street. But Taliban agents hunted them down, and in one attack by fundamentalists she took five bullets and he took seven, one of which is still embedded in his skull. They survived and fled to Pakistan. For years she managed by singing for weddings in Peshawar. The day Kabul was taken, they came back. “I was so thirsty for my country,” she said.

She wore the burka for her trip back into Afghanistan; when she arrived in Kabul, she took it off and burned it in the street. She is one of the few women to go without cover today. “I hear women talking as they pass me, saying they admire my shedding my burka,” she said. “I confront them and say, ‘Take yours off. Nothing terrible will happen.’ Sometimes they throw off their burkas there, and we walk in the street together. Someone has to start this tendency.” Zamzama complains that while Afghan men stare, American soldiers in the Special Forces units are the ones who are obnoxiously aggressive. “I say to them, ‘You are worse than the terrorists. You are making life impossible for Afghan women. Cut it out.’ ”

In the dilapidated offices of Afghan Films, Zamzama explained, “The old crowd is coming together. Of course, actors are more liberal than others, and in these offices we meet each other and shake hands.” She became emotional, held my arm. “In our happiest dreams we didn’t see this.” Since Afghan Films has no equipment, Zamzama keeps her family going by acting in two weekly television programs. “I’m ready to do comedy now,” she said. “Romantic comedy.”