PACIFYING BLAST
WALLS IN KABUL —
A ‘HOW TO’ GUIDE
“Right now we are thinking about,
because there is a lot of street
harassment happening in Afghanistan,
doing a mural. We have a creative team
and we are working with other womanled organizations and groups that are
focused on women’s rights. So we always
brainstorm with these organizations what
best fits to raise this issue or highlight
this issue. So there is a consultation
happening and then our creative team,
two or three people, we sit there and
conceptualize those thoughts and come
up with a design or an image.
So once we have an agreement what
we want, how we want to highlight
this issue, then we use real models, we
stage the whole thing — take pictures.
For example, if it’s a woman walking
on the street showing the way men are
harassing her then we will stage this
thing and take pictures. And for pictures
we make it an illustration in a computer
program, and then we project it, and the
location… we usually decide on a very
prominent location, like [the] presidential
palace at the heart of the city. Main roads
where there are thousands or hundreds
of thousands of people walking by.
We usually tend to go to educational
institutes like the ministry of education
or ministry of higher education or
universities.
“Art is not what you
see, but what you
make others see.”
Edgar Degas, French Painter
Omaid speaks with CAI students.
Artlords mural, A brave man stands for
women’s rights.
And it’s not just his life that has changed.
“It’s a lot of things have changed. If you
look at the issue of women’s rights, like
millions, I don’t know 7 or 8 million girls
or less I don’t know the exact numbers,
are in schools. Look at our parliament. For
ministers, women. Many ambassadors who
are women. Women who are in many decision-making positions in the government.
We have a civil society. Not a vibrant one,
but one that is really trying to be there to
represent the citizens. So all those institutions are building up.”
He gets emotional as he continues:
“The changes that we see as Afghans,
as persons who have been through all that
darkness and through all those periods, it is
enormous. It’s huge. We’re thankful. We’re
grateful. And we know how far we have
come. But these kind of changes if you look
at it from an American or a British lens perspective, you might not see this. But for us it
really means a lot. It’s given us another life.”
But this new life is still fragile.
Omaid told me later that although his
friend made it out of the university attack
alive, leading more than a dozen of his students to safety, his cousin was not so fortunate. Eighteen years old, she had just started
at the university.
Despite the tragedy, not to mention the
years of heartbreak and danger, Omaid remains committed to seeing his life’s work
through. In a note he wrote after his cousin’s
passing, Omaid told me:
“We can’t stop living. We can’t stop fighting and working. It would mean that the
dark clouds are winning. We will continue
despite everything.” n
So that’s how we decide on the location.
And then we sketch that particular
illustration during the night and on the
next day we start painting. We don’t
announce our paintings beforehand
because I am a bit afraid because
the insurgents and the terrorists are
following us and sometimes they might
do something or target us. We just show
up on that location and whoever that
passes by, we invite them to paint.”
– Omaid Sharifi
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily
reflect the views of Central Asia Institute.
I am Afghanistan’s future - a mural painted by Artlords and CAI students.
10 | JOURNEY OF HOPE
CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE