Nathalie Handal" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Essays, GlobetrotterOctober 26, 2016

“Kabul stops time. Its mountains are songs…”

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • Version 3
  • 9

Kabul stops time. Its mountains are songs. When I landed, its voice enveloped me. While there I taught literary workshops at Kabul University and the American University of Kabul (sponsored by the Iowa International Writing Program, directed by Christopher Merrill, and the U.S. State Department). On my moments alone, I thought, as I do now: What is the length of our failure there? Where does its hope dwell today? What of its wounded beauty? What can the words of Afghan writers offer in form of solution or solace? With such a rich literary and intellectual heritage to turn to, from Rahman Baba and Ali-Shir Nava’i to Mahmud Tarzi and Ustad Khalili, Jalil Zaland and Abdul Bari Jahani, Nadia Anjuman and Prix Goncourt winner Atif Rahimi, Afghan American Zohra Saed (who played a role on my journey to becoming a university professor) to the voices that can be found in the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association, and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

How can past traditions be preserved while pursuing a forward motion? How do we think of the past in view of so many pressing social problems? Prominent Afghans in the Diaspora and various organizations have offered their vision of change, among many others are The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance as well as economic opportunities, education, and healthcare; and Turquoise Mountain, a British non-governmental organization, founded in 2006 at the request of HRH The Prince of Wales and the President of Afghanistan which offers a preservation of the past through the work of artisans. They established an institution for professional training in the arts where young Afghan artisans are trained in woodwork, calligraphy, ceramics, and other crafts. The organization has equally helped the transformation of the Murad Khani district of Old Kabul by renovating historical buildings and rebuilding infrastructure.

Despite numerous attempts—due to security reasons—I’ve not been able to return. But I also don’t remember leaving, perhaps because one never really leaves Afghanistan. Like missing someone you’ve briefly crossed but who is part of you. So I return to Rumi: “Lovers think they’re looking for each other, but there’s only one search: wandering this world is wandering that, both inside one transparent sky.”

 

Click here to read ‘Opera Kabul’, by Nathalie Handal

Nathalie Handal was raised in Latin America, France and the Arab world, educated in the United States and United Kingdom, and has moved between cities in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and the United States most of her life. Her recent books include the flash collection ‘The Republics’, lauded as “one of the most inventive books by one of today’s most diverse writers” and winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award; the critically acclaimed ‘Poet in Andalucía’; and ‘Love and Strange Horses’, winner of the Gold Medal Independent Publisher Book Award. Handal is a Lannan Foundation Fellow, Centro Andaluz de las Letras Fellow, Fondazione di Venezia Fellow, and winner of the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature, among other honors. She is a professor at Columbia University and writes the literary travel column The City and the Writer for Words without Borders.

Tags

AfghanistanglobetrotterNathalie Handalphoto essays

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleTwenty Questions
Next articleOleka and the Personal Diary

You may also like

A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia

Nature and Self

Open Immigration Has Never Been an American Value

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

Author of the Month: Sabyn Javeri

“My first and only reader is myself.” Sabyn Javeri, The Missing Slate’s Author of the Month for November, talks to Umamah Wajid.

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
Twenty Questions

"I press my forehead against the cold glass as the bus moves onward, the sliver of land between highways, the...

Close