I just remembered a teacup story to share. One of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen was when flying high over the Himalayas on a clear full moon. It was a May night in my 33 rd year and I was on mission from Abu Dhavi to Tokyo. Strangely, also not sleepy at all. I opened my portal blind and peeped down at the world blow. There under a big bright chinaball moon, I was blown away by jagged mega peaks, glaciers and even the rising plains. For miles and miles, I was transfixed by the sheer beauty of our planet from semi-space.
Eventually I was distracted by another passenger turning in their seat. I looked around and noticed everybody else on the plane was fast asleep. I look back out the window and the world smiled at me.
“Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself”
Tokyo is almost up. Yesterday it hit me like a tonne of bricks.
After finally jumping a difficult output hurdle at work, i jumpcut and glimpsed the horizon. Later to my delight, I found myself sorting outdated psychological baggage into the appropriate recycle bins. Im shedding skins & gaining courage for a radical haircut. That’s always a good sign too.
Slowly, favoured vintage clothes, exotic talismans and professional e-gadgets are being systematically sorted into suitcases for the hallway. i arrived 2 and 1/2 years ago with a backpack, and although I am still very much a foreigner in a strange land, i will shortly leave across the horizon with excess baggage of wisdom, new friends and worldview.
Nobody really can pinpoint the lessons learnt during a foreign culture phase in life, until blessed with hindsight months or maybe years later. I know for sure I’m definitely stronger, more independant (which may amuse some old friends!) more determined. But its the many hours spent alone in this sardine-can metropolis, that taught me a lesson or two about humility.
Sadly, today I am further away from my family than I have ever been. However, i accept and understand life is a oscillation you cannot fight against. Its easier and better to ride the waves that pick you up and grow you towards your purpose. That’s the kind service the universe blesses us with. I guess we just need to gamble on the right waves.
By the end of next month, I’ll be somehow standing on Waxham beach in UK, feet finally grounded in my ancestoral soil and brain processing the tsunami of climate science. Its an exciting change, but it scares the hell out of me too.
A cemented plaque in front of Afghanistan’s Kabul Museum proudly states “A NATIONS STAYS ALIVE WHEN ITS CULTURE STAYS ALIVE”. Culture, with its seemingly intangible nature, i always think, is like a yoghurt that surrounds and permeates us. We ferment in its endemic-ness, its organic-ness… connecting to identity, language, place, race, religion, ethics etc. And as a live matter, culture shapeshifts as influences ebb and flow.
But, what of a country’s culture ripped apart by centuries of war?
Recently, whilst visiting Bonn, I managed to see the travelling exhibition “Afghanistan Surviving Treasures: a selected collection of the Museum of Kabul”.
In the summer of 2003, Afghanistan announced the discovery of several museum boxes in the presidential bank vault in Kabul. Inside these boxes were priceless artifacts rescued after being hidden 14 years earlier by National Museum workers during the chaos of civil war.
Amongst Bonn’s darkened air-conditioned rooms, glass cases glittered and glowed. Wide eyed, i glimpsed at the truly breathtaking Mesopotamian, Hindi, Hellenistic, Far eastern and Nomadic fusion 4000 years ago in Northern #Afghanistan . Each artifact radiating an important light from our intercultural roots.
Glass, ceramic, gold, wood and ivory were shaped by ancients hands into works of art – to be worn, used and traded across the euro-asian continent. Buried in the sands of Afghanistan are golden crowns with Korean designs, golden winged Greek cheribs complete with third eye Hindi Bindi, Siberian nomadic animalistic icons with Mesopotamian jewelled influence.
This collection is Afghanistan’s imperative cultural legacy. Its little publicised message runs thicker and deeper than popularised westernized references synonymous to this region: terrorism, warlords, narcotics, burkhas. This region was clearly an ancient New York. And 4000 years ago, it harboured an inter-cultural fusion – networked and transmitted across land and sea trade routes – which was a vital chain link for the entire euro-asian continent and beyond.
Its influence possibly reached your ancestors and somehow shaped your heritage too. I believe this region and its history holds an important key to understanding ourselves.
As fundamental religious doctrines and gutless US robot drone experiments explode and compete for the sands, resources and civilisations of Afghanistan, tears roll down my face. No empire has ever won a war in Afghanistan, yet families, landscapes and cultural matrixs are being blow apart, fragmented and traumatised for generations to come. There is so much positive heart work to be collaboratively done, with and for our Afghani people, I am just trying to stay a breast with these things, building courage and narrowing down who to ask where to start.
Certainly I do not agree with the way women are being systematically and violently brutalised into submission, nor do i agree with the fundamental extreme violence permeating from the war business in this region. What i do know is, I have met Afghanis in my travel, struggling to cross borders with their passports, doing daily business from donkey/battered 4wd, or standing up for what they believe in at international meetings. I know firsthand the Afghani kindness, family orientation, proud tribal heritage and most importantly, awareness of inter-humanity.
One day, I’d like to visit this collection again but at Kabul museum or on the site where they were uncovered. I’d like to be amongst Afghani children on schoool excursions, or general public visiting for leisure. These artworks will be taken care of by the hands and hearts of the good Afghani peoples. I hope for new generations of Afghanis, to glimpse, like me, at their ancestor’s belongings, and to understand, to see and dream towards an interconnected but respectfully diverse future. To stand proud on the planet, and contribute an Afghani perspective of who we all were and are.
As part funder of this exhibition, National Geographic have published an easy to navigate website map, which gives you geo-tagged information about each location and their treasures.
Below, I have embedded a National Geography trailer for this exhibit, where you can catch glimpse of the incredible heritage. I have also included into this playlist a 6 part lecture series from the exhibition’s guest curator – American Archeologist, Dr. Fredrik Hiebert. Although I feel this lecture comes from a very American and western perspective (communicated as though Americans are the first civilisation to understand that preservation of cultural heritage is important), nevertheless, its a fascinating lecture helping English speakers to connect the dots of this region, its legacy and its influence on the worlds of yesterday and today.
Hiebert says, “One of the things that we are seeing in the 21st Century which i find really incredible and wonderful as an anthropologist and as a scholar of the world, is to see more and more people around the world who are becoming engaged with their cultural heritage … You know we have a lot of problems. We’ve got climate change, we’ve got ecomonic problems, we’ve got overpopulation … but you know, to think that we are beginning to understand about our own past, that’s really important, that gives me optimism about the future, for my kids for your kids, that we will use the past to help us better understand and take care of the world, as we move into the future”.
