HELP MY FRIEND LEAVE AFGHANISTAN TO TAKE UP AN ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE POST IN RURAL INDIA IN EARLY 2022

For reasons of security some personal details are withheld.

 

My name is Dr. Sadie Harrison, a university lecturer and music teacher living in the UK.

 

I am hoping to raise £4000 for my dear friend to leave Afghanistan in order to take up the life-changing, life-saving opportunity of becoming an art teacher in a fabulous village school in Tamil Nadu. The position is waiting for her!

 

The funds will pay for :

 

 

MY FRIEND'S STORY (the paintings and drawings are her own):

On the 27 October 2021 a few days after the Taliban moved into Kabul, my young Afghan friend messaged me. She is 18 years old. I know her and her family through many mutual friends, musicians and artists in the UK, in the USA and Afghanistan. Reaching out to me was the first of many bold acts of courage and defiance in the face of Taliban rule.

 

Before the Taliban arrived, she was in full time education and at the top of her class. One of her teacher's described her as 'one of the brightest students I have ever had'. Her dream was, and is, to go to university and to become a teacher of art. Her English is fantastic and her references are exceptional - she was most certainly on her journey to becoming a teacher in her home city of Kabul.  Alongside her school studies, she was already tutoring young kids in the local part-time education institute.

 

She believes that teaching is her vocation, her duty and her right- and that it is the right of every child to express themselves through being creative.

 

 

On the actual day the Taliban entered Kabul she was doing her final graduating maths exam. It was never finished. Her teachers evacuated the school immediately to get the young women into safety and she has not entered school again. As with all girls her age, she is banned from having an education, she is banned (like all Afghans) from listening to most types of music, she is banned from watching TV, she is banned from painting, from drawing, from reading many types of books. When the Taliban arrived, her dreams evaporated in a single moment.

 

 

ART DESTROYED BY THE TALIBAN

Most devastating of all, she watched while her drawings and paintings were burnt by the Taliban soon after their arrival. Her father, supportive of her work as an artist, managed to collect a few sheets of paper together and smuggle them to their family village but most are lost. She has sent me photographs of just a few.

 

It is absolutely extraordinary that these exist at all - she continues to draw and paint in secret, sometimes in the dark by the light of her phone, hiding them from the older generations of her family who do not approve. Art is her life blood and her solace- it is not a hobby. She makes art every day because it is in her heart and body to do so. She is utterly undaunted!

 

 

Having witnessed Taliban atrocities and bombings first hand, she is often too scared to go outside. She has sent me dreadful photographs she has taken - ones which I cannot share here. She lives with her parents, her 4 sisters, 2 brothers and grandparents in a small house, often without electricity or internet.

 

Every day we message together in secret about art, music, books (she is currently reading Obama's A Promised Land), about what it is like to be a young Afghan woman who feels as if ‘the darkness of Winter will never end…that she is a bird who has lost her plumage never to fly again’ (her words). After our conversations she deletes everything and hides her SIM card in her clothes. Our contact is both her means of escape and a great danger.

 

THE FUTURE

It was clear to me that this situation was utterly untenable and so the plan for her evacuation began. A plan that will mean not only her freedom but also the beginnings of her being able to support her own family, all in the hope that one day she will return to Afghanistan as a young woman able to teach and create openly.

 

With the incredible, tireless help of artist Rob Fairley in Scotland and the open hearts and arms of Raghavan and Aruna Arasavanangkadu of the Shikshayatan School in Arasavangkadu Village, Tamil Nadu, India, Alina has been given the opportunity to join the school as both teacher and Artist-in-Residence in early 2022.

 

 

 

 

Not only will she be gaining experience as a teacher, she will be able to develop her skills as a young artist. Also, the School will support her continuing education online (Cambridge A Levels) in order for her to gain the necessary qualifications to enter university at the end of her tenure with the school. We are looking forward into the future with great hope and much joy at how her life and her family's life will be transformed.

 

 

So, we are asking for your assistance dear friends.

 

 

Tashakor doostan azizam

Thank you dear friends for your love and support!