Setara came from an educated family as did both her parents. When the Taliban came she was in seventh grade. Even at that young age she had dreams of being a university professor. For the next five years she studied at home under her father’s tutelage, but was still very frustrated at not being able to attend school like her brothers. Ironically, they had little interest in academics. After the Taliban left, she resumed her public school studies and in June, 2010, she graduated from Kabul University with a Bachelor of Arts in Persian literature.
Sahraa Karimi
Filmmaker
My main subjects in high school were mathematics and physics. But when I went to the University, I don’t know, somehow I went into art and studied film directing.
During our interview, I felt very close to Sahraa. We are alike in many ways. We both feel the need to spend time alone, to create, and to do things in our own way. That is easily understood and respected here in the West, but Afghanistan is a very communal society, and group identity and approval by the family is paramount. This way of being keeps society stable and protects it from change. It keeps the group safe, but also inhibits individual blossoming. Afghans who break out of these boundaries are more courageous than we may imagine.
Sahraa was born in Mashhad, Iran, a modern university town near the Afghan border. When she was 13, her father died and she and her mother moved to Tehran, Iran’s capital. After high school, Sahraa went to a university in Slovakia and earned a PhD in film directing. In 2009, she came to Afghanistan, got married, and began teaching at Kabul University. In 2011, to pursue her passion for film making in an environment more conducive to her creative self-expression, she returned to Slovakia. In order to fund her artistic endeavors, she accepted a university teaching job at VMSU, a Slovakian branch of the University of Edinburgh. Her latest film, Nasima: a Refugee Girl’s Everyday Memories, won the Slovakian Academy Award.
Elaha
Singer
The biggest consequence of being on television was that now some people loved me and some people hated me. Before, no one knew me so I didn’t have this experience.
My translator and I arrived at Elaha’s small, gray house in mid-afternoon. She led us through her sparse courtyard; up a dark, cramped staircase; into a vibrant peacock-blue room with orange trim. Red and gold toshaks and matching pillows lined the walls in lieu of couches and chairs. We pulled back the heavy curtains to have enough light for photography. Elaha reminded me of a little bird, nervous, self-conscious, and fragile.
Despite being a refugee from Afghanistan, Elaha grew up a leader among her Iranian classmates. At about age 12, she fell in love with painting and created some modern works in oil and graphite. When her family returned to Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan, she worked as a journalist on a radio program about women.
Later her family moved to Kabul, where she studied music at a private school for five years. She studied many kinds of music but chose to perform pop/rock because she can best express her feelings through that musical style. Her break came when she appeared on the television show Afghan Star, a program like American Idol. She sang occasionally on Ayna, an Afghan TV channel, gave a performance at The Women’s Garden2 on International Women’s Day, and also a concert in Mazar-e Sharif for Now Ruz, the Afghan New Year.3
Because of her appearances on TV and the resulting family conflict, she, her sister, and her brother moved out of their parents’ house to live on their own, where I met her in 2010. A year later, she went to India for further study.
Peggy: What is it like for you to be onstage, singing a song that you love to a huge audience listening with rapt attention? What is that like?
Elaha: Most of my songs are sad. When I try to sing a happy song, somehow it seems to contain tragedy or sadness. When I’m onstage, I try to express my feelings very strongly. Some people make fun of that; some people like it. Some just listen to the tune and others to the poetry. There are also people who resonate with the feelings in the song and the way I sing it. The most important thing is that I can express myself and share my experience. But my interpretation of the songs is related to the audience; every listener finds him or herself in my song. So it’s not just about me. The audience is also part of my singing and they interpret my songs however they like. I take something from the culture and transfer it to the audience. Their interpretation of my art is not related to me personally, but it has a very clear relationship with their own personal and historical experience.
Peggy: Do you write your own songs?
Elaha: No, but I love the poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad4 and Siavash Kasrai and I often sing their poems.
Poems by Forugh Farrokhzad
Afghans and Iranians share similar languages (Farsi and Dari) and the love of poetry. Both Setara and Elaha mentioned Forugh Farrokhzad, a modern Iranian poet, as their favorite.
The Captive is about the poet having to give up her son should she divorce.
The Captive
I want you, yet I know that never
can I embrace you to my heart’s content.
you are that clear and bright sky.
I, in this corner of the cage, am a captive bird.
from behind the cold and dark bars
directing toward you my rueful look of astonishment,
I am thinking that a hand might come
and I might suddenly spread my wings in your direction.
I am thinking that in a moment of neglect
I might fly from this silent prison,
laugh in the eyes of the man who is my jailer
and beside you begin life anew.
I am thinking these things, yet I know
that I can not, dare not leave this prison.
even if the jailer would wish it,
no breath or breeze remains for my flight.
from behind the bars, every bright morning
the look of a child smile in my face;
when I begin a song of joy,
his lips come toward me with a kiss.
O sky, if I want one day
to fly from this silent prison,
what shall I say to the weeping child’s eyes:
forget about me, for I am captive bird?
I am that candle which illumines a ruins
with the burning of her heart.
If I want to choose silent darkness,
I will bring a nest to ruin.
The Sin
I sinned, a sin all filled with pleasure
wrapped in an embrace, warm and fiery.
I sinned