Ep 1: Troubletown - Monuments Woman

Transcript

00:04
George Gavrilis

This is Monuments Woman. I am your host, George Gavrilis.

00:12

George Gavrilis

This is finally happening. It's George and Laurie doing a podcast that will probably blow our lives sky high, mostly in bad ways, I'm sure, but... So, Laurie, could we jog our memories a little bit about how we met?

00:29

Laura Tedesco

Oh, I was thinking the same thing, George, earlier today. We met, I think on the phone in Kabul, but I feel like I met you in person, but maybe I didn't meet you in person, and we only met on the phone. But I think we were friends within 12 seconds.

00:47
George Gavrilis
We were.

00:49
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, you were there to monitor elections in Afghanistan. Correct?

00:54

George Gavrilis

Yeah, the disastrous 2009 parliamentary elections. Yeah.

00:57

Laura Tedesco

Right. And I think you were interested to go to the National Museum.

01:02
George Gavrilis
That's right.

01:03
Laura Tedesco
And we have a mutual friend, who is the one who told you to get in touch with me anyway.

01:09

George Gavrilis

That's right. Yeah. I think we didn't meet until— until you were back in New York.

01:16

Laura Tedesco

… for the first time in, like, face to face?

01:19

George Gavrilis

That's right. Those were relatively good days, too.

01:24

Laura Tedesco

In Afghanistan?

01:26

George Gavrilis

Afghanistan. Oh my god. 2009 was so calm and quiet compared to today.

01:34
George Gavrilis
I was staying at the Intercontinental, and it was before it had been blown up and attacked, where I think even a senior Supreme Court person was killed there, too. They would tell you— you can walk around the hotel, but don't venture too far out in the grounds of the hotel. I remember thinking I probably shouldn't be doing this. I did it anyway.

01:58

Laura Tedesco

So a couple of months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a journalist and was covering Afghanistan in the 1990s. I don't remember the exact year and he had stayed at the Intercontinental at that time while the Taliban were in power. And he had described there being cardboard cutouts of scantily clad women sort of pointing the direction through the lobby and to various touch points in the hotel, as well as dead dogs thrown into the dry swimming pool. So I think the Intercontinental must have looked a little different when you were there.

02:36

George Gavrilis

And I think during one of the— the last days that I was staying there, I heard not a commotion, but there was a very loud discussion, and I went around to see what was happening at the pool. And there was this— this meeting of all of these gray-bearded men. They were talking in Dari and Pashto and I could make out some words, like about the importance of peace and reconciliation and so on and so on. And in thinking that it was such— such an atmospheric place, I mean, not just the Intercontinental but— but Kabul in general.

03:10

George Gavrilis
I fell in love with Kabul from the moment I walked off the plane. And I've told you this because I feel like it's the kind of city where you squint, and it looks like Los Angeles, especially during the sunset. It's just such a beautiful atmospheric city.

03:37

Laura Tedesco

When I first arrived in Kabul, I did not fall in love with it, like you did. I sort of approached it the way you might when you meet a person for the first time, and you're kind of assessing, like are we gonna be friends, or not? How's this gonna go? And eventually, I came to describe Kabul as sort of like a lover to me, in a way.

04:03

Laura Tedesco

And we can go back to that, but I think about it sometimes, because I won't be going back. And given where we are in 2021, I don't see myself going back to Afghanistan after having been there 50 times. And the thought of it makes me sad, at first. The first thought is, yeah, I'm sad about that, but really reflective and just thinking about it a lot. It's a tough place to love, George. I don't know how you fell in love with it the first time you went.

04:40

George Gavrilis

I think my life is too clean and regimented here in the States. And so when something is just utterly chaotic, and slightly dangerous, but totally wonderful in many other ways, sucker for that, you know. And the Afghan people are just so, I mean, you know this, they're so remarkable, wonderful and hospitable, at least the ones that aren't trying to kill you.

05:03

Laura Tedesco

Right. Right. Right.

05:04

George Gavrilis

That's an important caveat.

05:06

Laura Tedesco

And, and, and they're complicated.

05:09
George Gavrilis

Very, very.

05:24
Laura Tedesco

"July 26, 2010, Kabul. Must start somewhere. Just arrived yesterday after grueling training. Utterly exhausted. I think the only words of advice I received before leaving were from my brother. And he said, to stick to my personal principles."

05:48

George Gavrilis

So I want you to talk about a memory that I think is really cool. And eventually we'll get to what it is that you're doing there. But, when an American lands in Kabul, and it's to live there for a protracted period of time, somebody who doesn't know the country might imagine that you're living in some decked out apartment, in a complex with air-conditioning and a balcony, you know, and maybe a pool in the back, and security guards. It's not quite the situation that you were living in.

06:26

Laura Tedesco

Right, so, like many people were at the time, I was housed in one of those metal shipping containers. And I was told in advance, and you know what they're about maybe, like 10 feet wide by maybe 30 feet long. Having lived in New York City for a while, it seemed spacious enough. But it was outfitted to house two people, so two beds, two desks, two closets, one sink, one toilet, etc. And you could gussy it up, but it was never going to be particularly fancy.

07:05

George Gavrilis

But what did you do to make a shipping container feel more like home?

07:08

Laura Tedesco

I think I brought my own sheets. I came like, really with one suitcase of stuff. So I didn't bring, you know, my favorite flower vase or things like that. It was fine, though. And I was living at the American Embassy in Kabul. There was a swimming pool there. I never swam in it once in all the time I spent there.

07:34

George Gavrilis

Why, why was that?

07:36

Laura Tedesco

It wasn't quite my scene to swim in the swimming pool. It was used a lot. It was not my cup of tea. And it seemed weird to be hanging out in the swimming pool in my bathing suit with a thousand colleagues. I don't know, it just felt uncomfortable. There was a tennis court. I never played tennis once. A beach volleyball place— I never picked up a volleyball. So there were lots of things to do that had the veneer of being kind of a community for active adults.

08:05

Laura Tedesco
When I arrived, I didn't know what to expect. So my expectations were really rather low. And they got lower over time.

08:14

George Gavrilis

This is uh, 2010?

08:17

Laura Tedesco

Yeah, July 2010.

08:19

George Gavrilis

Let's back up here for a second. I wanted to ask you what it's like to fly into Kabul, and get off the plane and go through customs, and all of that.

08:26

Laura Tedesco

Well, in 2010, it was one way. And at present, and for the last several years, it's been a different way. But in 2010, you did it just like everybody else, who flew in on Safi Airways from Dubai, you know, a commercial airline that no longer exists, went out of business, got run into the ground. And it was sort of multiple times a day flying plane loads of mostly foreigners, a lot of Americans, into Kabul, definitely some Afghans on the plane, but it was predominantly Americans and foreigners.

09:06

Laura Tedesco

You arrive, you walk into the terminal, you go through passport control, pick up your luggage, just like anybody else would. And then once you've got your luggage, there's a person standing there with a little sign that says, you know, like a piece of printer paper written on it "U.S. Embassy Kabul," and you just follow that person. You get into a vehicle, a van, a whatever. And you're driven sort of all of three kilometers to the U.S. Embassy, the community for active adults that I mentioned.

09:37

George Gavrilis

Do you remember what was going through your mind at the time?

09:43

Laura Tedesco

Yeah, just taking it all in, like, wow, it smells different here. I hope my luggage arrives. I'm really exhausted, you know, the way one can feel after long international travel. I hope that the person who's supposed to meet me at the Embassy remembers to meet me because I don't know anything. I don't know where to go, how to get a badge, where am I gonna get a bottle of water. You know, just like when you go into some place new, and you don't know what to expect. You just hope that it's gonna work out.

10:19

George Gavrilis

Describe to me how your daughter would describe to somebody what Mom does.

10:23

Laura Tedesco

Oh, that's a good question. She has an idea. Well, we would have to ask her. So, when I went to Afghanistan, she was one. So, she didn't have any ... when I went for the first time, she had just turned one. So she didn't know anything. And then over the years, she's observed me traveling there frequently. And I think she's had an idea that I do something related to culture. But beyond that, we'd have to hear from her what she thinks now as a, you know, a preteen.

11:03

George Gavrilis

Imagine that you're introducing yourself from scratch to somebody that doesn't know what it is that you're going over there for in 2010, or what it is that you do and why you have the background. So explain that.

11:17

Laura Tedesco

I was hired by the Department of State, out of the realm of non-governmental, non-diplomatic people. The Department of State put a job posting on this broad listing of jobs that said, "We're looking for someone with a background in museums or archaeology or anthropology or history, who might know something about Afghanistan but not required." And who also hasn't, you know, it'd be great if you had a Master's degree, anything more than that would be nice. And these are the responsibilities that you'll be expected to carry out in the position.

12:04

Laura Tedesco

And so I applied for the job, because it seemed intriguing, and I met some of the qualifications. And months went by, and I assumed I wouldn't be hired because it was taking so much time. And ultimately, I was hired to help guide cultural preservation projects on behalf of the State Department in Afghanistan.

12:32

Laura Tedesco
And what does that mean, cultural preservation? It means a lot of different things— monuments on the landscape that are maybe in need of repair, or restoration, and museum collections that may be sitting broken, and in cigarette boxes in a museum storeroom, or musical traditions that are dying out, because the old musicians, there's like three of them left, and they're dying, and let's get their music recorded.

13:05

Laura Tedesco

So when I arrived in Kabul, I had only the really vaguest idea of what the work I was supposed to do would encompass. And I think the people that I was sent to work under also had a rather vague idea of what they wanted me to do. So I did a lot of learning on the ground, a lot of listening, and just sort of trying to take as much in as I possibly could in a short period of time.

13:36

George Gavrilis

You— I remember, one of the things that we talked about when we did your oral history was about how different the time was in 2010 versus now. And you used some interesting imagery about how the U.S. was just like pumping money furiously at everything.

13:54

Laura Tedesco

Yeah, it was... it was the height of the so-called surge, the military surge, but that also coincided with a diplomatic surge. So there were thousands of Americans working at the U.S. Embassy, and everybody was tasked with such important urgent work, to bring peace, to change hearts and minds, to save monuments, to important...

14:22

Laura Tedesco

Yes, truly important work and accompanied with that was sort of money being bulldozed to make these efforts possible. Getting women integrated into, you know, important positions of power and an education, and supporting schools. And so the work that I was tasked to do was one small sliver of this much larger effort to help kind of— I don't know how to characterize it, 'rehabilitate' is not the word but, bring Afghanistan to a kind of operational level— Afghanistan, the staggeringly complex society that it is, to kind of make it more operational.

15:07

George Gavrilis

But, what do you mean by that? Say a little bit more to somebody that doesn't understand the role that cultural heritage plays in stitching a country together?

15:15

Laura Tedesco

Oh, well, yeah. So, narrowing in on cultural heritage, you know, an identity for, for people— for an individual, for a community, for even a nation— it's defined by so many different attributes. But culture and heritage are really key elements of this kind of— how does one shape a sense of identity?

15:45

Laura Tedesco

And so the idea was, if we can bring attention to what is so rich and beautiful about Afghanistan's heritage, and bring some efforts to help preserve it, and restore it, so Afghans and the international world can appreciate it more, that it would, perhaps, strengthen an Afghan sense of themselves as participating in this kind of bigger global sense of ... Afghanistan has a lot to offer. And its heritage is one element of that.

16:28

George Gavrilis

Make it a little bit less abstract. Imagine that you're speaking to somebody who has no clue where Afghanistan is on the map, but maybe has traveled around the world and has seen archaeological sites in places like Italy, or, or something like Stonehenge in the UK. Where does Afghanistan's richness fit into that mosaic of global heritage in terms of how important it is, or how rich it is? What's under the ground in Afghanistan, or in these museums that are falling apart?

17:01

Laura Tedesco

So Afghanistan's placement geographically is both its most winning and its worst attribute, in that it's this landlocked country that straddles Central Asia and South Asia, and it's bordered by Iran and Pakistan and the other Central Asian countries. It's got a little sliver that it borders with China. And it's sort of criss-crossed by these abundant rivers and mountain passes.

17:33

Laura Tedesco

So it made it a crossroads. Even it remains that way. But it, had for millennia, been a kind of crossroads of cultures, armies, influences, ideas, artistic traditions, religious traditions, and I call it a cultural roundabout, where over time these groups, I mean, I can start naming them off, like the Mongols, but even before that ...

18:01

George Gavrilis

Take a moment here, rattle them off, what are the groups that one would find under the ground in Afghanistan?

18:08

Laura Tedesco

Okay, not even under the ground, but still remaining aboveground. So we'll just start arbitrarily, but he's by no means the first, let's start with Alexander the Great, and his armies that came in through Afghanistan and left enormous traces of their citadels and their architectural features, but also this Greek Hellenistic influence, which influenced art for hundreds of years following Alexander's, long after he was killed. He's just one.

18:41

Laura Tedesco

And then there's followed by sort of the Buddhist influence coming in from India and early Islam, and which may have made its way— The earliest Islamic site in Afghanistan, it's only known antecedent is in Iraq. How did that happen? So there's all this evidence. If you look at the cultural remains, there's all this evidence of others having come to Afghanistan and then something very new and special having been made there as a result of all these mixing influences.

19:18

George Gavrilis

Because we are talking about cultural heritage here and archaeological sites in particular, do you think people remember the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas?

19:27

Laura Tedesco

I do. I think people do remember that. And because the visuals, that the video of the explosion of the two Buddhas in Bamiyan, even if it is so startling, it's so searing that even if you had never heard of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, or knew that they existed, or had even really given Afghanistan much consideration at all, when you— when one saw that grainy video clip of the final explosion, because they had been trying to destroy the Buddhas for a long time prior to that last explosion that we've probably all watched, or anyone can find it on YouTube. I think that was actually a turning point that brought the world's attention to the brutality of the Taliban. Because visually, you couldn't ignore the destruction.

20:32

George Gavrilis

Why were they so hard to destroy?

20:33

Laura Tedesco

Well, they were enormous. One was bigger than the other, they were both carved out of a cliff face, but also bits of them were— were molded to give a kind of sculptural look to the Buddhas. The Taliban didn't have great expertise in explosives. So they had to sort of contract the work out to Al-Qaeda, who had better expertise and explosives. So it took a little while to acquire the needed expertise to do the final pulverization of the Buddhas.

21:06

George Gavrilis

What do you mean pulverization?

21:07

Laura Tedesco

Well, they are basically when those explosives were rigged, and you may imagine, oh, those were stone objects, or stone sculptures, and so they just kind of explode into fragments that could, in theory, be glued back together. It wasn't really the case, there was a kind of pulverization that happened. So yeah, there are some whole pieces that you could kind of piece together. But you would never be able to recreate the Buddhas out of their original material— was just not going to be possible.

21:53
George Gavrilis

You've been listening to Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. For more information, go to www.themonumentswoman.com. Today's episode was for our journey into Kabul. Join us next week when we dive deeper.

22:15
George Gavrilis

This show is produced by Christian D. Bruun and May Eleven Projects. It is recorded by Audivita Studios, and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song is This Love by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader.