War and Theatre in Kabul

A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story by Qais Akbar Omar and Shakespeare in Kabul by Stephen Landrigan and Qais Akbar Omar are part memoir, part history. (Helpful hint: the author bio states that “Qais” is pronounced “Kice.”) In A Fort of Nine Towers, Omar tells the story of the years from the Russians departure and subsequent factional fighting through the rise and fall of the Taliban. Some of the strongest depictions are of life before the Soviets left; while Qais was only seven at the time, he vividly describes his grandfather’s house with its orchards, servants, warehouses filled with carpets, daily outdoor banquets as regular meals for an extended family of more than fifty, and ramparts suitable for kite-flying competitions. Equally memorable are some harrowing encountering during the early years of factional fighting; with the family scattered (eventually retreating to a wealthy friend’s property, Qala-e-Noborja, the titular fort), young Qais and his father must brave the city streets, encountering brutal soldiers who style themselves as mujahideen while they torture, dismember, rape, and wage a mercenary war for neighborhood turf.

        While the later stages of the family’s journey have fewer thrills and seem less likely to be representative of typical Afghani experience (even typical wealthy Pashtun experience), Omar’s story remains absorbing. Travelling now with just his parents, sisters, and infant brother, mostly in the sometimes unreliable family car, Qais’ adventures include raiding pomegranates from a walled garden at night, camping in the caves behind the historic Bamayan Buddhas, learning carpetmaking from an alluring deafmute, and traveling with a Kuchi nomad camel caravan.

        Throughout, Qais presents himself as clever but deep, resourceful, hard working, and (with undoubted truth) quick with languages. Qais paints himself as more in tune than his peers with the Afghan verse and traditions, but still surrounded by Afghan youth and adults who take their codes of honor, their poetry, and (perhaps more problematically) their religion seriously. He walks the line of presenting Afghan culture and history as appealingly exotic and as a serious, meaningful part of daily life. There’s a dash of hyperbole, an exuberant optimism through which sometimes shows profoundly observed darkness that reminds me of Twain. The story is more than a picaresque; Qais and family encounter real danger and tragedy. By the time the family finds itself back in Kabul (the book includes helpful maps of Kabul, Afghanistan, and its neighbors), Qais is college-aged and positioned to take on an adult’s decision-making burden. The book’s final section ranges from a Taliban prison to an entrepeneurial backroom carpet factory to streets full of joyful dancing as the Taliban is ousted and music once more allowed. In A Fort with Nine Towers, Qais Akbar Omar tells an important and compelling story with a poet’s power and sensitivity.

       

Shakespeare in Kabul is less personal; co-written by Qais Akbar Omar and English playwright Stephen Landrigan, it takes place during in 2005 and 2006, as the U.S./coalition forces are preparing to withdraw from Kabul but still investing heavily in. (Qais is too politic to spend much time covering this period in A Fort with Nine Towers; he expresses cautious optimism, briefly profiles the national characteristics of various foreigners, and relates a telling story of an Englishman who rents property in Kabul and promptly cuts down the trees Qais “had kept … alive during the worst years of drought by carrying water twice every day in buckets strappped to my bicycle from … a pump more than a mile away”.) After meeting French actress Corinne Jaber at a cultural festival in Afghanistan, Landrigan and Jaber hatch a plan to put on a Shakespeare play in Kabul. They will translate one of the plays into an Afghan (Dari, as it ultimately transpires) and recruit and train Afghani actors (including women, revolutionary in a country with no history of co-ed performances). The first section of the book, “Exposition,” written by Stephen Landrigan, describes Corinne’s first encounters with Afghan actors, who are enthusiastic but unevenly trained, as she is invited to give drama workshops. It covers the choice of a play (Love’s Labour’s Lost), the complicated process of script development and translation, and the search for funding.

        The most interesting section of the book is the middle, “Climax,” written by Qais, who served as translator and assistant director for the production. It describes the auditions, the histories and personalities of the actors, the conflicts between actors and between some actors and Corinne, the search for costumes and props, the challenges of balancing day jobs in a rebuilding city with demanding evening rehearsals, and the struggles to understand not just the archaisms of language but Shakespeare’s concept of inspirational romantic love. Qais has a gift for conveying the various players’ perspectives (including Corinne’s, though she is perhaps portrayed a little harshly despite a cumulatively positive depiction). Highlights include the casts’ teatime discussions and their reaction to the scene where the play’s .

        The third and final section, “Resolution,” is co-written by Landrigan and Omar and describes the performances, including in the Queen’s Palace of Kabul’s Bagh-e-Babur and later on-the-road performances in northern Afghan cities. It describes audience reactions and chronicles the logistics and cast changes necessitated by the later performances. There are ominous hints in the beginning of the book that the project may not have turned out as planned but, though less well received than in the capital, Love’s Labour’s Lost incites no riots in Mazar-e-Sharif or Herat. I won’t give too much away about audience reactions, though I will note the sometimes melancholy tone that seems due to a 2012 Afghanistan not living up to 2005 hopes (civic and political as much or more than cultural). Shakespeare in Kabul brushes on history, but is truly notable for how it engages deeply with the idea of theatre, a cultural conversation between east and west, and the details of how and whether a specific Shakespeare comedy remains relevant to a specific modern nation in conflict.