Ls, as someone with some experience in the area, you might appreciate this account of an aid worker in Afghanistan
Temporal vertigo
New York Times Magazine; New York; Sep 30, 2001; John Sifton;
A bit that stuck in my mind:
We had to wait for more than two hours. We got bored. I examined a curious calendar on the wall that displayed a map of Afghanistan surrounded by planes, tanks and ships all labeled "U.S. ARMY" and all pointing missiles toward the center of Afghanistan. Various Taliban functionaries came and went - new Talibs mostly Finally, the official returned to inform me that I would be staying at a hotel reserved "for foreign dignitaries" (this is how my interpreter translated it) called Dostum's Castle. It was obvious that this was an honor, so I made an effort to thank him profusely, despite the fact that I did not want to go. I insisted, however, that the Afghan staff accompany me. He obliged me at least on this point. Off we went.
Dostum's Castle. What can I say? It was chintzy Soviet-style public architecture combined with low-rent Miami design: long frosted-glass windows and a faux marble facade. There were peacocks on the front lawn -- peacocks - and a swimming pool filled with algae-plagued water.
Inside, it was like "The Shining." We walked down long wide corridors with dark red carpeting; each of the hotel-room doors had a padlock on it. We were the only guests. The air-conditioner in my room sounded like a Harrier jet, and there were bullet holes in the furniture.
The bathroom in our room didn't work, so we had to go down two floors to use another one. On the landing of the stairs two floors down, there was a large landscape painting, about 16 feet by 12 feet, of a pond, some flowers, a forest and a few animals. The heads of the three animals had been cut out of the painting to comply with Taliban aesthetic restrictions: the creation of images of living beings is forbidden under the Taliban's kooky interpretation of Islamic law. This left a decapitated deer standing by a pond and a headless beaver sitting on a tree stump.
I considered the piece as I stood on the landing. A terrible painting in the style of Bob Ross, done entirely with two shades of green and one shade of brown and then vandalized by Taliban police trying to ensure its innocence before God without destroying it altogether. In its own way, I thought, it is a post-post-- modern masterpiece. But surely I could add still more to this artwork. I could buy it from the Taliban, sell it for a fortune in New York and give the money to the Afghan opposition. Yes. Participatory political art. It just might be crazy enough to work. How much would a rich New York liberal with a sense of irony pay for this, this bad art, vandalized by the Mosquitoes of Islam and then sold to raise money against them? A new school: censorship as an art form unto itself. Politics as art. Art-dealing as art. I could be rich.
I was still chuckling to myself when one of the Afghan engineers came down the stairs. "What are you laughing about?" he asked. "I don't know," I answered.
Sorry, no link available, send me a PM if you'd like the whole article. |
