Reader's Quotient:Transforming the DNA of Society

Authored By:Nadi Ghulam

My father woke me up at six in the morning.  “If you still want to go to see the Buddhas then you better get up now,” he said.  Ever since my cousins came back from their trip to Bamyan and showed me the pictures of the enormous statues, I was dreaming to go and see them.  My dad eventually gave up and decided to take me on a road trip to Bamyan province, northwest of Kabul.  Even though I was only six years old, I still remember the excitement which was mounting as we were getting closer to Bamyan.  Bamyan is a valley up in the mountain, basically, in the middle of the country.  It took us around 7 to 8 hours to get to the place since the roads were bad and dirty, but we were passing through the beautiful green valley which was 400, if not more feet below.  The first sight of Buddhas took my breath away.

Bamyan is the largest province located in Hazarajat region.  Two monumental statues of standing Buddha were carved into the side of a cliff.  A large Buddhist colony inhabited the valley in third and fourth century, before the introduction of Islam to this region.  At that period of time around 1,000 monks were living and praying in caves that were carved into the cliff.  They built two standing Buddhas, one large and the other small.  Buddhas main bodies were hewn from the sandstone cliffs and the rest was covered with mud and coated with stucco.  The Chinese pilgrim, Xuanzang, was passing through the valley in seventh century. He mentioned that Buddhas were “decorated with gold and fine jewels.” He also mentioned that there was a third Buddha, however, archaeological expeditions are searching for it to this day. Buddhas were bigger than I imagined them to be, more astonishing than they looked at the pictures I saw, and more startling than my cousins’ descriptions.

 

The image of two standing monuments is still in my head and I see them clearly while I’m writing this down.  I don’t remember the surrounding that good.  I don’t remember the face of our tour guide who walked us to the feet of statues and showed the way up to the caves, but I remember the magnificence of Buddhas and a unique aura that was around this whole place.  Looking at the statues was like going back in time, living the history of my country thousand years ago.  For a six year old me, it was just an adventurous trip back then, but I’m glad that I convinced my dad to take me to see the Buddhas.  Now that I can’t travel there anymore to see them, I can, at least, say that the image was forever carved in my brains along with the images of other places in my country and people who I will never be able to see again. When Talibans came to Afghanistan, we already left the country.  It was never in my dad’s intentions to leave his home for good.  We were leaving unaware of the fact that the war, which came so unexpectedly, would be lasting for ages.  We left with hopes to come back soon, but it took my dad 16 long years to be able to see his mother and siblings again.  Talibans came with peace.  They were bringing knowledge of Islam religion and freedom from the Soviet army invasion and Afghans bought it.  All we ever wanted to be is free.  We fought everyone who tried to invade us and welcomed anyone who was coming with peace.  Did we know that Talibans were just little fishes in the big pool of dirty politics?  Puppets on the strings….  We didn’t know and with all our courtesy and hospitality we welcomed them.  We let them in only to find out that they were no better from all others who came before them, Soviet army and British army earlier.  They were no better than others, in fact, they were much worse. In early March, 2001 I was following up with the news on TV and newspapers every day.

I don’t think I ever watched news as much as I did during that period.  I was getting up and we were turning on the TV immediately and then after school I was running home to find out the latest news about the statues.  Taliban government decided to destroy Buddhas because they were “against Islam” and according to Islamic law there should not be any idols for worshipping.  Mullah Omar, a reclusive leader of Talibans, stated earlier in 1999: “The government considers the Bamyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The Taliban states that Bamyan shall not be destroyed but protected.” However, two years later, he changed his position and became against the statues. It took several weeks to destroy the statues by the use of mortars, dynamites, tanks, anti-aircraft weapons and rockets.  First Talibans were firing at Buddhas, then they were placing mines and at the end different explosives.  It was painful to see how monumental and historically crucial Buddhas were being destroyed by human creatures.  It took hundred years to build these amazing pieces of art and several weeks to bring them down, humiliate and demolish our history and culture.  I couldn’t believe till the very last second.  I was expecting that they would change their minds or the public outrage of other countries could somehow influence Talibans and stop them from making this horrible mistake.  It was like watching a movie where everything goes wrong and then someone comes and helps to make things work out. Happy endings are usual for Hollywood, but nobody came to Bamyan to save our Buddhas that March.  We were watching them turning into dust and memories, and all I could do was mourn. Like through every dark night there is a bright day coming after that, there’s always a place for something good after something bad.

Demolishing of Buddhas brought a huge mass media attention to what had been going on in Afghanistan all this time and to Taliban regime in particular.  The sad part about it was that people were getting tortured and killed by Talibans every day for years and, with all my love to Buddhas of Bamyan, I couldn’t help but ask the same question again and again, “Why did they start caring only when some statues were destroyed?”  After all, as one of the Taliban militia leader said later, “All we were breaking were stones. UNESCO and other world’s famous organizations were protesting and sending assemblies to Kabul to sort out situation and prevent Talibans from destroying “cultural heritage”. Why didn’t they send anyone to prevent Talibans from slaughtering our women, children, past and present generations?  When Afghan women were banned from going to schools, banned from attending general hospitals, leaving the use of one all-women hospital in Kabul, beaten up and getting killed on the streets for nothing, who protested that?  Where were the foreign assemblies back then? The government of Japan and several other organizations have committed themselves to rebuilding the two Buddhas.

The project will cost an estimated nine million and is currently pending approval.  If the project is going to be approved, it will be completed by summer 2012.  At the moment, officials are doing a careful study and taking measurements.  The rebuilding of Buddhas will be done by anastylosis, an archaeological reconstruction technique used to restore ruined monuments using original architectural element where possible.  However, people think that even though one of the Buddhas should definitely be rebuilt, the other one should be left as a reminder of what had happened to Afghanistan during the last thirty years.