Nur
(Light)
A journey into the other Afghanistan

A solitary journey in the Afghans’ land. Sharing food, sleep, efforts, hunger, cold, whispers, laugh, and fear. Travelling by bus, taxi, horses, trucks, on yak-back. From the Iranian to the Chinese border, on the Wakhan snows, armed with a notebook and a Leica, all set for the privacy of each meeting.
Balkh, Panjshir, Samanghan, Herat, Kabul, Jalalabad, Badakshan, Pamir Khord, Khost wa Firing: weaving all the time in order to avoid the bandits, and following the complex security geography that all Afghans know very well.
When speaking to Afghans, I discovered that war is a multi-million self-fuelling machine, that just to keep working goes as far as paying in a roundabout way bribes to its own enemies.
From the time when I refused to travel “embedded” in a military unit – wearing a Kevlar helmet – I re-discovered the world that Europeans, from Maillart to Bouvier, loved a lot, that same world that after ten years of military presence, we have given up to know.
The Sufis’ cradle. The tolerant Islam’s cradle. The cradle that the West likes to ignore, as much as Bosnia. A world that Talibans hate, and our bipolar crash scheme threats.
A naked and mineral country, where a tree has an unrivalled majesty, where each person has no room for arrogance.
Deserts where the call “Allah u Akhbar” sounds much purer than anywhere else.
A dazzling land with endless skies, so flooded with sun to the point that in order to give new meaning to light, fire, and shining looks it is necessary to seek shelter in the shade. Inside, at sunrise, at sunset.
A desperate country where women are crushed by tribalism and opium is the only medicine of the poor, but where a foreign woman may be welcomed in a mosque and where the stranger’s enchantment is considered as a blessing.
In this country one risks his/her own life just by going to school and in the outskirts children wake up at four a.m. to go get some water on donkeys’ back.
Yet, in this country there is irony, and people laugh even in their darkest moments, have affection and show respect to the eldest, are conscious that their only chance for a future life is in schools and in their children, the men of tomorrow.
In the “bright garden” of Afghanistan I have followed by instinct its paths, and found centers of hope in the most un-hoped for places, at the darkest bottom of desperation.

Monika Bulaj, 2010

The project of Monika Bulaj about the “hidden worlds” of Afghanistan won Aftermath Project Grant 2010 , founded by Sara Terry and TEDGlobal Fellowship.

Le Lettre de la Photographie, portfolio

TAGIKISTAN. POST-UTOPIAN LANDSCAPES

The forbidden Pamir, inaccessible to its very inhabitants. The most complicated borders of the planet are here, drawn by Stalin in order to be in command of the most incontrollable neighborhoods of the Soviet Empire: passages as narrow as geese necks, which can be crossed only in summer. Baffling minorities, deported in valleys that are reachable only on a mule after a long and difficult journey. Mountains crumble easily here, as short pastry. The mythical river Panj is a border ridden with holes contiguous to Afghanistan, and is one of the few places never reached by Talibans. The fertile valley of Fergana, divided into three states intertwined as snakes, united by a common geographic destiny that has no solution. And the Uzbek villages, the Kirgiz tents, the houses of the last Russians. This is the roof of the world, set in an outstanding position, yet very unlucky. Here are the springs of the Asian rivers, yet women drink, cook, and wash their laundry in the rain drainages at the sides of the road. Tajikistan is the poorest country of Central Asia: half of its population lives on aid, but you can find also elaborate buildings and huge wealth. And then of course you can see what is left of the first city who built the nuclear weapon, the wrecks of kolkhoz, huge skeletons of concrete in a land that for three generations has experienced nothing else but cabbages and cotton. Here, in this country that lingers still in the memories of a long civil war, forgotten by the rest of the world, I try to tell the efforts of its inhabitants to take their country out of the desperation of one culture, by going backward, to the most simple things: seeds, old plants, traditional agricultural techniques, the reactivation of long forgotten water networks, and the precious forgotten manual art of weaving.