In the End, Love Wins

---

00:00

George Gavrilis

This episode was recorded after the Taliban took over the whole of Afghanistan.

00:09

George Gavrilis
This is Jamal’s story. He’s an Afghan who chose to stay in Kabul after the Taliban took over. He’s not an archaeologist or cultural heritage specialist or even a historian. He’s one of many resourceful, tireless, educated Afghans who have a capacity to reinvent themselves and keep going. He worked in journalism, in government, and on rural development projects. He’s my colleague and a good friend.

00:37

George Gavrilis
Jamal comes from an Afghan family that is fiercely protective of everything that is beautiful about the country. And it includes his mother’s love of poetry and his father’s beautiful book collection. In this episode, Laurie and I talk with Jamal about culture in Afghanistan, the traditions he lived through as a youngster, the destructions he witnessed during the country’s civil war and the first Taliban regime, and his hopes for the future.

01:03

George Gavrilis
I should add that his real name is not Jamal. Maybe one day we will be able to use his real name, but with moderate and extreme Taliban factions struggling for power behind the scenes in Kabul and so much uncertainty, that day is not on the horizon.

01:21

George Gavrilis
This is Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Today, we are continuing on Laura's journey into Afghanistan. If you are new to this podcast, we recommend going back to start with Episode 1. For everyone else, welcome back. Let's jump back in.

01:39
George Gavrilis
With the Taliban taking over so suddenly the way it did, it seems that a lot of the work that Laurie did for culture in Afghanistan, in some ways it seems distant now and out of reach. I guess I'm looking to you, Jamal, to tell us whether this podcast matters to you or to people like you, or to anyone out there. What's your sense as an Afghan?

02:02
Jamal

I think it matters to a great extent, especially now that we are not very sure what the future holds. I can tell you from the '90s, I would constantly hear the news that pieces of Afghan cultural heritage surfaced in the black market, or appeared in the houses of Pakistani generals, and they would proudly showcase it as their victory. Afghanistan cultural heritage surviving so much, especially in the past half century— to a huge extent, it's because of the people who remain committed to at least report what they are seeing, what they are knowing.

02:42
Jamal
We lost the Buddhas of Bamiyan. So I think recording this now will really help Afghans connect with their cultural heritage, give them a sense of identity, that Afghanistan is not just about mass exodus, it's not always about instability, change of regimes every 20 years. But also to negate the notion that Afghanistan is a tribal society— ungovernable. Our history says there were systems here, governments that gave way for civilizations to flourish. It's very important to connect Afghans to their cultural heritage.

03:22

George Gavrilis
It always drove me crazy when people would refer to Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, because it's been such a cradle of civilizations in many ways in the way that Greece or Rome or Turkey have been. How do you feel when you hear people talking about Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires?

03:39

Jamal
To me there are two sides to that notion that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. It's a matter of pride, on the one hand, that we do not accept external influence, you know, in a blanket manner. But especially in our contemporary history, it has militarized our society, this very notion of a graveyard of empires, of Afghans who love their weapon. And they are portrayed constantly with a weapon beside them and calling the association with weapons a cultural thing. This is not true.

04:13

George Gavrilis
How so? What do you mean?

04:14

Jamal
The thing that really bothers me about this notion is this incentive for Afghans to constantly be on the lookout, to pick fights, and that they should not engage, choose a path of dialogue, but rather stay rigid in their positions. That is the part that I think really bothers me about the evolution of the graveyard of empires. And I really don't buy in it. It is time to move on, and to get on with something else that is education. I think we need to stop that particular attribute to Afghans.

04:50

Laura Tedesco
We're talking about heritage and what may be at risk. One thing that I'm really worried about are all the young Afghans who work in the heritage sector, who have devoted many years of their lives to becoming specialists in their own right as archaeologists, as museum curators, as architectural historians. And they have no opportunities right now. They want to leave, and I don't blame them one bit that they want to leave.

05:25

Laura Tedesco
And the hope is that maybe one day, these young, educated, bright, thinking Afghans will be able to come back to their homeland. But the loss of this intellectual capital, the loss of these specialists, will be the greatest detriment to the preservation of Afghanistan's heritage, in my opinion. Yeah, the Taliban might go through and do something angry and ideologically skewed, thinking that it adheres to sort of Taliban ideology. But what I regard as the biggest threat now is that these talented Afghans who work in the heritage sector— they have no opportunities, and they all want to leave.

06:13

Jamal

Laura, if I may add to your last point, which I think in particular is very important.

06:18

Laura Tedesco
Please do.

06:19

Jamal
You see, the sad thing is that most of them did not get the opportunities that they deserved in the past 20 years as well, because of the nepotism in the Ministry of Culture and Information.

06:29

Laura Tedesco
Um-hum.

06:30

Jamal

And now everything is falling apart before their eyes and then they have to leave this behind.

06:34

Laura Tedesco
Um-hum.

06:35

Jamal
I mean, can you imagine the pain that they must go through?

06:40

Jamal
I know a couple of these young Afghan archaeologists who were trained in the past 20 years. And one of them I was supposed to go to Mes Aynak in Logar Province, which unfortunately didn't happen because the morning which we were supposed to go there, there was the mine explosion and two police soldiers died of that on a roadside.

07:02

George Gavrilis
This is an improvised explosive device on the road to Mes Aynak?

07:06

Jamal
It was an IED, most probably. Mes Aynak was heavily guarded by the Afghan Public Protection Force, APPF. So it was a rare opportunity for me to go and see inside Mes Aynak, not only from afar.

07:20

Laura Tedesco
When did that happen?

07:21

Jamal

It was in 2018. And then that trip never happened.

07:26
Laura Tedesco
Right.

07:27

Jamal

So the Chinese are active there. They say it's the second largest copper mine in the world.

07:32
Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

07:33

Jamal

But I hope that I can go at some point.

07:39
Laura Tedesco

So Jamal, a couple of days ago in the Afghan press, like two days ago, I read a quote from the Taliban in Herat— I read this in Ariana News— and I was curious about this— it was translated into English, which was how I read it— that they plan to start restoring monuments in Herat.

08:02
Laura Tedesco
Do you think that's sincere? Do you think the Taliban are just saying they're going to protect and restore monuments in Herat for the internationals to feel more comfortable about their governance? Or do you think they are genuinely doing it to show Afghans that they care? What do you think?

08:26

Jamal
I think there are a couple of sides to this. First off, I think they are on a charm offensive, as you just said, to sound sane and logical for the international audience in particular, that they have changed their attitude towards the cultural heritage of Afghanistan, as they have on many other things. But that remains to be seen.

08:47

Jamal
Now I mean, when they rose to power back in the '90s, when they first came out of Kandahar and reached Ghazni province, they did not destroy anything or indicate along the way that they would destroy anything. But by 1999, when they learned that their efforts to be recognized at the UN was not working, they felt that they were being isolated.

09:12

Jamal
And it's very famous about Mullah Omar who said: if the international community does not care about our present and future, the international community does not have the right to discuss our past and what we do with it. And then they destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan. I mean there wasn't anything initially about it. It was an abrupt reaction and I think they might do it again.

09:36

Laura Tedesco

They might. They might.

09:38

Jamal
So that's my take on it.

09:41

George Gavrilis
Since we're talking about the Buddhas, you were a young teenager at the time when they were destroyed. What are your memories of that?

09:47

Jamal
I heard it in the evening of the day that it happened on BBC Persian broadcasts on the radio that the Taliban had detonated the Buddhas of Bamiyan by placing explosives. I saw the video after the fall of the Taliban, the video of the destruction of the buddhas. It just came as a shock. But it wasn't something new. It came in the long line of a lot of other cultural heritage of Afghanistan being destroyed, being sold into black markets.

10:20

Jamal
It might sound beyond comprehension for you, George and Laura. But I don't know how I got to this conclusion. But you know, if Afghan cultural heritage gets destroyed inside Afghanistan, I feel more content than it being smuggled outside the country and put on sale.

10:37
George Gavrilis

Wow.

10:38

Jamal
I don't know how I got here. But I feel fine if they are at the end of the day destroyed. And I feel like they met their end at least in Afghanistan and went to dust in Afghanistan. The dust is still here.

10:51

George Gavrilis 

That's a very deep sentiment, my friend.

10:54
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, that's heavy. I have to think about that.

10:57

Jamal
But I don't want them to just be on sale. Because I feel that's part of my identity and our shared identity in Afghanistan. I just want it to be destroyed here if it's going to be destroyed.

11:08

George Gavrilis
Yeah. And you mentioned that a lot of it went just across the border to Pakistan, which makes it doubly galling and upsetting to Afghans, of course.

11:16

Jamal
Absolutely. I would continue to read about it, in the years that there were just newspapers and radios to read and listen to, that something surfaced and was written in the auctions.

11:26
Laura Tedesco
Yep.

11:28
Jamal
And I heard that they were returning some of it when the Taliban fell. I don't know if it happened—

11:32

Laura Tedesco
It did. Yeah.

11:33
Jamal
—or did not.

11:34

Laura Tedesco
Yeah, it did, it did. The British have returned a lot of material to Afghanistan. The Japanese have. The Americans have. A lot has been returned and it is in Kabul now. All that material that was returned, remains safeguarded in Kabul.

11:51

Jamal
I'm so glad to hear that it actually happened. Yeah, I heard that there were plans to return them. But I did not know if they ever did. But this is very good news. I'm very happy to hear it.

12:02

Laura Tedesco
I was thinking also about what I have read about the decision-making that led up to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan— the decision-making on the part of the Taliban and their public statements around it. And the efforts by the international community— Islamic leaders from Egypt, for example, others who work in the culture sector, trying to convince the Taliban not to destroy the Buddhas. Even Nancy Dupree herself spoke to leaders of the Taliban at the time. I have heard her tell that story.

12:37

Laura Tedesco
But in the end, none of the convincing worked because we all know what we saw in the video, we all know what they did. And you may know this, Jamal, Al-Qaeda was involved as well in the destruction of the Buddhas, because they had better explosives expertise.

12:55

Jamal
Precisely. What I heard was that Al-Qaeda was not involved in the decision to destroy it—

13:00

Laura Tedesco

Right.

13:01

Jamal
—but they provided the manpower who would devise this explosive material and plan where to put it. And the most painful part is that I read an interview by a local from Bamiyan, forced to dig holes in the statues of Bamiyan to place the explosives. I have tried so much to imagine and feel what that guy feels, when he says that he lives with a contradiction now, he cannot forgive himself, but he also knows that he was forced to do it. Because initially the Taliban had tried to blow it up with a couple of shells from a tank.

13:36

Laura Tedesco

Right.

13:37

Jamal
Apparently it didn't work. So they sought support from Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda provided them the support on their own volition. There was a connection. Yeah.

13:47

Laura Tedesco
Yeah. So the Al-Qaeda mastermind who had the ultimate explosives expertise, he's in jail now, by the way. And he's in jail, not because of his participation in the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but he's in jail for other bad things he's done. I think there's 60 different bad things that are on his rap sheet, so to speak, for why he's in jail.

14:11

Jamal
Okay.

14:16
Laura Tedesco
But you know another thing that I'm worried about is not just the sort of what we call the brain drain and all these young, talented, educated Afghans who work in the heritage preservation sector, but I'm also worried about ISIS in Afghanistan. We know they're there, and they destroy sites too. So it's just something that keeps me up at night.

14:38

George Gavrilis
Sorry, Laurie, you're referring to Palmyra in Syria, their destruction of that site, for example?

14:42

Laura Tedesco
Well yes, not just in Syria, but ISIS destruction of sites in Iraq. In many places, but the most headline-grabbing were the sites in Syria and in Iraq. But we know they're present in Afghanistan, what they call ISK, I think ISKP— Islamic State Khorasan Province, and that they have over the last couple of years done some cultural destruction in Afghanistan.

15:10

Jamal
They have, they have, actually—

15:12
Laura Tedesco

Yeah, they have. They destroyed a shrine in Logar, a couple in Ghazni.

15:17

Jamal
And the most famous shrine, sorry for the interruption, was in Badakhshan Province. They destroy cultural heritage based on general principle.

15:25

Laura Tedesco

Right.

15:26

Jamal
They are idols and were once worshipped and deserves to be destroyed. While with the Taliban, I think it's very much political than religious. That's the difference. The branch of the ISIS here in Afghanistan would destroy them on general principle.

15:41

Laura Tedesco
Yeah, you're right. You're right.

15:47

George Gavrilis
Jamal, we talk about culture in this podcast in terms of archaeological sites and tangible stuff. But a big part of culture is how we live it and what traditions we pass down. Your dad was a really important cultural force in your life.

16:00

Jamal
My late father— when I turned five, I would see less of him at home and around.

16:07

George Gavrilis
Why was that?

16:09

Jamal
That was the height of the war. This is back in '89, '90. And he would usually be in the front. Each time that he came back home, there were no phone lines, or a lot of them, to let us know that he was coming home. So he would just appear one day after months and months. He'd come home, that would really be equal to Eid for us, or you know, New Year.

16:35

George Gavriis

Sure, like the EID celebration, yeah.

16:37

Jamal

When he would be home, he'd spend most of his time around his books. He left us a small library. And as children, we would just go around him, pick up his books, put them up and down, even if we couldn't read it. That interaction with the books, I think it had its impact later.

16:55

Jamal
I recall this set of books that was called the Afghan Encyclopedia. And that had a lot of these pictures on it from different civilizations that passed through this region thousands of years back, and that always fascinated me. There were statues, there were coins, there were citadels. And he had other history books that I later read, and I am still reading. I think it was for us to shape a sense of identity, and maybe also to be able to see what the future might hold.

17:34

George Gavrilis

Yeah, when the war came to the cities and the situation became tougher in the cities, you had told me once that your father had to sell many of his books, many of the books that he really loved.

17:43

Jamal
He did, including the encyclopedia that he loved very much. And he sold it among a huge collection of books. He never regretted selling other books. But he really did regret selling those encyclopedias. But he bought it again.

18:02

Jamal
You know, when Kabul fell on 15th of August 2021, to Taliban this time, a lot of people did not have much other things to sell, including a lot of friends, they put up their books for sale. And what does this tell you, George, apart from the you know, economic hardship, that these books are really coming in handy? This tells you that Kabul has always had a very vibrant reading society. No matter how dire that situation got, every little bookstore had hundreds and hundreds of members. And it was like smart societies— every book would still have a buyer and every book would still be sold.

18:52

George Gavrilis

I know that your mother is a very strong source of culture in your life because of her love of poetry. Tell us about that.

19:01

Jamal

My mother is an ethnic Tajik while my father is an ethnic Pashtun. So I have sort of been exposed to both cultures, Pashtun and Tajik cultures of Afghanistan— the many many diverse ethnicities that we have in Afghanistan.

19:15

Jamal
My mother is actually from a family of poets. The village that she's coming from in the north of Kabul is named after her great, great grandfather. She has nine sisters, and she would recall all these musical pieces that they would compose and they would sing in their big fortress or compound. And they would use this musical instrument— it's a circle, very much similar to drum, but the other side is not covered. So it's only one sided. That was very famous with women and singing and poetry.

19:50

Jamal
Poetry is slowly slowly fading away in the traditional sense, but I know the educated Afghan girls right now, they are bringing it in another form.

19:59

Laura Tedesco
Wait, Jamal, you said that young Afghan girls are bringing poetry in another form? Is that what you said?

20:07

Jamal
Yes. I said precisely that.

20:09

Laura Tedesco
And what is this other form? That's really interesting. What is it?

20:13

Jamal
Yep, precisely. The poetry in Persian in particular, has all these rules, where everything has to rhyme. And the grammar around it is so complicated. But this new style of poetry, it is sort of free, it doesn't have to follow a particular set of rules. And it gives really a lot of freedom, I think, to the poet or to the writer, to put out their ideas on the paper, which is called white poetry. And I think that has helped a lot of Afghan girls to stick to poetry.

20:46

Laura Tedesco
I didn't know about that. That's fascinating.

20:53
George Gavrilis
There are some really beautiful New Year's traditions that you took part of when you were a youngster.

21:00

Jamal
Eid celebrations, this was a characteristic of rural Afghanistan. With the children, we would go house after house, and we had these plastic bags with us. We would receive a lot of popcorn, boiled eggs, different kinds of nuts and cookies. And at the end of the day when we returned home, you'd have a lot of things to eat.

21:21

Jamal
But I was very much fond of the eggs as when they boiled them, they would put colors, beautiful colors— blue, orange. I was fascinated by the colors on the shells of the eggs. So I would collect them, and so did my cousins in the rural areas that I visited during Eid celebrations. And I couldn't wait for the Eid celebrations to start, actually, because of this particular practice that you would go around and spend a good five, six hours to go, you know, into multiple villages. Then come back with all the souvenirs.

21:56

George Gavrilis

Good memories.

21:58

Jamal

Those are actually the very few good memories before the wars and everything started. I mean, the war was already going across Afghanistan, but since we were in the cities we couldn't feel it. But it was already hell for the people across Afghanistan.

22:16

Laura Tedesco
Hey, do you happen to know if the National Museum is open yet, or again? I know it closed around the afternoon of August 15. Have you heard anything?

22:27

Jamal
It remains closed. The Taliban haven't yet introduced any new director. And from what I understand, the former director of the National Museum is still in Kabul. I don't know if he's going to his duty or not.

22:43

Laura Tedesco

Do you know if Babur's Gardens is open?

22:45

Jamal

Babur Garden is open. And there were a lot of children. I was passing by the other day. And there was a long line of families trying to get tickets and to get in. But most of the people who are coming are the Taliban soldiers—

23:00
Laura Tedesco

Right.

23:01

Jamal

— not the public. That's very new.

23:03

Laura Tedesco
Yeah, I've seen some of those video clips of the Taliban, you know, on the paddle boats at the lake and on the amusement park rides. And it's just so weird and interesting to see.

23:15
Jamal
Yes.

23:16

Laura Tedesco
Right? To see them— they're praying, and then they jump on the amusement park rides.

23:22

Jamal
Precisely.

23:23

George Gavrilis
But Jamal— let's linger on this for a second. Because, you know, people are seeing this in the press. And I think many people that are reading the newspapers don't realize that these are people who didn't grow up in Kabul, people that never had the benefits of city living and all of the benefits the city has to offer. It also speaks to what you know about, which is socio-economic dynamics. So what is the socio-economic dynamic at play right now with the Taliban floating around the city?

23:49

Jamal
That's a very interesting point, valid to a huge extent. There are a lot of Taliban members who are from surrounding districts of Kabul. But they had not seen the capital city itself until the 15th of August.

24:01

Jamal
From a socio-economic perspective, those Taliban members who are coming from provinces are far from Kabul, for example, from the south, or from the north. There has always been an urban/rural divide in Afghanistan and that the Afghan elites in the urban areas forgot about the rural Afghans. And that incrementally built agitation for people from the rural sides, that the elites are not counting them as equal to themselves. And the economic differences are huge.

24:38

George Gavrilis
Is this going to bring the rural areas up to the level of the cities or is this going to pull cities like Kabul down to the level of the rural areas?

24:46

Jamal
It will pull Kabul down to the level of the rural areas immediately, but in the long run, it's Kabul that takes over. I'm seeing this from the experience of not only the Taliban but the mujahideen when they first came to Kabul in '92, which was the last Soviet-backed government in Kabul.

25:07
Laura Tedesco
So, can I ask you a couple of questions, Jamal, that I'm just really curious about because I haven't been to Kabul in—

25:12

Jamal

Sure.

25:13
Laura Tedesco
—quite a while.

25:14

Jamal

Sure, please.

25:14
Laura Tedesco
So are the wedding halls very busy these days and lit up? And you know how you're driving around Kabul, and they're these bright wedding halls and they're, like, carnival of lights— Are they still busy in this time?

25:28

George Gavrilis
Are they even playing music?

25:30

Jamal

This is very interesting. I was supposed to go to one this evening. And I called it off, because we're doing this.

25:39

George Gavrilis
No!

25:40
Laura Tedesco

[laughing]

25:41

George Gavrilis
We kept you from a wedding! We kept you from a wedding!

25:44

Jamal

No, the thing is that— which takes us directly to the music. The music is still getting played. A couple of days back, it was my cousin's wedding. And surprisingly, this music was as loud as ever. The only difference was that there was no live music, but it was played.

26:00
George Gavrilis

Recorded music, only recorded music. Interesting.

26:04

Jamal
Recorded music, but they were on the loudspeakers. The Taliban from the police district that frequently patrol the area, they could clearly hear it. And there seems to be no problem with that. And I thought to myself, why is there no live music? A lot of the musicians have run away or have gone to hide after Taliban takeover of Kabul because of their treatment of musicians in the First Emirate in the '90s.

26:34

Jamal

There are a lot of wedding ceremonies taking place because a lot of people who are engaged are trying to get out, and they want to take their fiancées, now wives, with them. So you can imagine the rush on hotels.

26:50
Laura Tedesco
Right. Yeah.

26:53

Jamal
So the hotels are the real winners. Yeah, the wedding halls.

26:56
Laura Tedesco
Right.

26:59

George Gavrilis

Well, hey, thank you, thank you for doing this with us.

27:03

Jamal

You're very welcome. As an Afghan, it gives me a huge sense of pride that archaeologists put so much importance on the cultural heritage of Afghanistan that deserves the preservation, the attention, to write things about, to be spoken of. I think this is the greatest service you are doing to find some time for heritage. I'm a very positive looking person. So I really hope for the best. Thank you very much. Thank you.

27:32

Laura Tedesco
Yes, thank you.

27:33

George Gavrilis
Thank you. Hey, I'm so sorry you missed the wedding. I'm really sorry.

27:43

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. To stay in touch, also follow us on Instagram at the_monuments_woman. Join us next week when we dive deeper.

27:59

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.

Ep 14: In the End, Love Wins — Jamal

Topics Covered in this Episode
Does the podcast matter?
Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires
Afghans today in the culture sector
Jamal's dashed hopes to visit Mes Aynak
Taliban announcement to restore Herat monuments
Bamiyan Buddhas and the destruction of cultural heritage
ISIS in Afghanistan
Jamal's late father and his books
Jamal's mother and Pashtun poetry
The evolution of poetry today
Eid celebrations in rural Afghanistan
National Museum and Babur's Gardens
The socio-economic dynamics of the Taliban in Kabul
Wedding halls and music

Recorded on October 3, 2021

You can read more from Jamal on his blog posts "The Power of Dad's Books," "Three Thousand Years of Time, One Square Meter of Space," "A Few Thrilling Days for the Afghan People," and "The Jubilance of Nowruz."