Falak

How can I capture the sadness of a Badakshi falak? The music had cut into my heart.

I sat in a chair in front of my colleague, the ghichak teacher, my digital recorder capturing the soundwaves, puzzling out how I could write down the pitches and rhythms. Soundwaves, pitches, rhythms: no, this doesn't capture it. I asked my friend if the recording could be excerpted on radio so that Americans could hear something about Afghanistan other than war, and he eagerly said yes. Not only that, he wanted me to write it down. He actually wanted my help in imprisoning this raw emotion in a cage made with the five bars of the musical staff. And on top of that, I was even planning on how I would make an arrangement for string orchestra. How could I?

On the other hand, would the falak be so effective if I didn't know that it is the only Afghan music traditionally used for mourning? Would it be so searing if not for Afghanistan's recent history?

After all, much of Badakhshan only belongs to Afghanistan because of the Durand Line, the border that Britain and Russia drew in 1893 to prevent their empires from touching. Badakhshan is one of Afghanistan's most peaceful (and beautiful provinces), its remote, verdant land proudly guarded by immense mountains.

The ghichak, a small, two-stringed cello-like instrument with a nasal, keening tone, seems an unlikely vehicle for a tragic musical form. Yet as soon as it begins the falak, the ghichak ends awareness of anything but the sense of memory and of vast, lonely space its timbre evokes. The falak, sung at funerals in Badakhshan, begins with a slow chant, in which the notes move by such small intervals that you feel as though moving by a larger interval would simply be too painful. Abruptly, the chant leaps into the abyss of silence, before resuming.

Ornaments, used by European composers three centuries ago as the musical equivalent of curlicues in Baroque architecture, here act as a tremulous variation on the lengthy, sustained tones of the falak. Just as the pain makes the musical intervals so small, it also makes the mere act of sustaining difficult.

Suddenly, the falak enters a fast dance, which increases in frenzy as it continues. But as my colleague put it, this is a "tragic dance," as though the grief has pointed the way towards insanity. Eventually, the ghichak begins slowing down, disappearing. A painful, accent minor second (the most dissonant interval in Western classical music) resolves to the perfect fourth formed by the two strings, before the sound returns to the void from which it came.

The sandals off his feet

At a female student's lesson, I complimented her on her henna tattoos. Afghan girls seem to love applying these temporary orange curlicues to their hands. Reluctantly, I had to ask her to refrain from applying them to her fingertips in the future, so that the dye does not rub off on the violin. She agreed, and also mastered good posture, though her wrist remains tense. My Dari is slowly improving as I find myself teaching entire lessons in it.

My next student, a boy, proved to be one of my quickest learners yet. He began by playing the theme from Love Story with some twists straight out of the Indian violin tradition. I didn't really know how to proceed from that point, so I asked if we could start from the beginning of Western music, assuring him that he would probably progress rapidly at first. He humbly agreed, and in the first lesson, he sailed through two of the pre-Twinkle songs, I taught him the difference between a 5th and an octave, and wrapped his fingers around a small yellow ball to teach him a relaxed bowhold.

If I'm pleased to be able to give what I can, I'm occasionally embarrassed by the extraordinary displays of generosity here. I used to think that the phrase "he would give you the shirt off his back" was an expression. The friendly librarian saw that my sandals were damp, and so he took off his beautiful hand-woven Afghan sandals and wanted me to take them. I refused and could not believe he was actually willing to go home barefoot for me.

What Tchaikovsky and Pakistani pop have in common

The first day of my "routine" was anything but. My first student speaks excellent English, and though he is quite proficient in South Asian classical music, he humbly asked to start at the beginning with Western music. With him as with all my students, I am using a revised version of the beginning violin curriculum created by Indiana University's Brenda Brenner for Fairview Elementary School in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

I love the philosophy of Brenda and Mimi Zweig, my former teacher, but in Kabul, it might not be a good idea for an American to ask Afghan children to imitate the Statue of Liberty, which works so well in the US to prepare kids to bring the violin into playing position. Instead, I ask them to look like the combined Arabic letter for lam and aleph. Arabic script is used to write many languages, including Dari, just as the Roman alphabet is used to write languages including English. All three of my students immediately got the concept.

Brenda and Mimi draw a "Magic X" on the thumb side of the knuckle for the left first finger in order to get kids to maintain good contact with the violin. As X is a Roman letter, I again fell back on the letter for lam and aleph, which has a convenient small loop that kids can use as the focal point of contact. I must commission a local calligrapher to create a framed lam/aleph (or "la") for display in my studio.

My first student learned so quickly that I taught him rest position ("maqiyat-e rawhat"), proper posture, tapping on the high dot, sliding on his Magic La (formerly Magic X), the Ants Song, and GDG (which became Sol-Re-Sol) with left hand pizzicato at his first lesson.

I also taught my first female student. Other than her hijab, her lack of English, and her unusually high level of intelligence and motivation, the lesson was like any other. She learned astonishingly quickly, but since my Dari is still elementary, she only got to the Ants Song.

When my Dari fails to communicate the all-important concept of relaxation, I trot out Zak (short for Zakarya), an adorable camel marionette puppet I bought on Amazon. I am already quite fond of Zak and will put on puppet shows in my studio window during breaks between classes. My students immediately see that gravity compels Zak to be relaxed at all times. If Zak can't hunch up his shoulders unnaturally, why can't they do the same? They smile and get it right.

Yesterday, I learned that I was supposed to teach ensemble, and agreed without knowing what it was. Today I found out: sitar, three guitars, violin, trumpet, and piano. "You guys are making history!" I exclaimed. "Do you realize that there has almost certainly never been an ensemble exactly like this?" I decided we would start by talking about what makes an ensemble work. We compared and contrasted a recording of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings by A Far Cry to the song Chup by the Pakistani pop duo Zeb and Haniya (I'm proud to be friends with both groups). "Why is it hard to work without a conductor?" I asked. "How do they play together without one? What role does breathing play?" The students weren't entirely sure. They kept saying that both A Far Cry and Zeb & Haniya play together because they have experience. I urged them to look deeper. "Notice how both the Tchaikovsky and the song Chup have long silences. What happens in those silences?"

After school, I tried working with a friend on the staff to adjust future parts of Brenda's curriculum for the Afghan culture, but it took me longer to explain what I was trying to do than it took my students to grasp the violin concepts, so after asking someone else how to rename the See-Saw Song ("Handal-choo" is the Afghan game closest to see-saw) I figured I'd call it a day.

A new proverb

I arrived at the studio, hoping that today the routine would finally begin. One of the teachers entered the room, bringing in a student as a translator. Despite the translation, I couldn't make head or tail of the schedule. While I was chatting with the Australian film crew that arrived soon after, an impish little girl arrived at the door. Using my limited Dari, I established that she was a violinist but had no violin.

I emphasized proper posture: "Kala bala, shana payin" (head up, shoulders down). We did the IU sign exercise (stand against a wall, form the symbol for Indiana University with your arms and body, and slowly stretch your arms upward and back). I asked her to hold a ball, then withdrew it and replaced it with a pencil, then withdrew that and replaced it with a bow. Within minutes, she had a proper bowhold and was standing correctly. Then, she seemed to say something about needing to go, and vanished. Since she was there such an odd amount of time, I wonder if someone sent her knowing that the film crew happened to be in my room.

Dr. Sarmast arrived with a copy of the timetable, neatly printed in tiny Dari on a huge sheet of paper. After a comprehensive explanation, I began to understand. Three main groups of students each have three 45-minute periods blocked off for violin on their schedule each day. In that time block, I will give them one 45-minute group class and one 45-minute private lesson per week; the rest of the time, they will practice. I'll teach an ensemble class and an orchestration class three days a week. For the latter, I immediately thought of the wonderful textbook by my former composition teacher.

For the rest of the day, I had just enough time in each class to explain my system, assign private lessons, learn all the names, establish how old everyone was, and tune and adjust the violins of those who had them. The girls impressed me with how confident they were when the boys weren't in the room.

In one class, I was concentrating intently on tuning a new A-string I had just put on, when one of the advanced students said, "Teacher, I think that is Re." Less than a second later, the string popped, slashing across my thumb and drawing a minute amount of blood, as the video camera documented my bull-headed focus.

When I had bandaged myself, I stared in amazement at the student whose words I had not heeded quickly enough. "The string came in an A-string package, yet it was clearly a D-string. How did you know?" At first, he demurred modestly, but then said, "I listened to the voice." Perhaps I should start listening as carefully as my students do. Either my students' potential or my thumb's tiny scar could teach us a new proverb: don't judge a string by its cover.

Circling Around

I had barely arrived at my studio this morning when the male students started pouring in, asking questions about everything under the sun. One of them opened his cell phone to show me a video of Anoushka Shankar playing with Joshua Bell. To an older student who wants to become a teacher, I gave a copy of the String Pedagogy DVD-ROM, which he seemed excited to explore.

I asked a student to gather the others. Soon, the boys crowded my room, so I requested that the female students be brought to the studio as well.

I worked on learning their names and had started to teach them about posture when I was called out for a faculty meeting. I quickly set up my laptop and a copy of Circling Around, a documentary about the Violin Virtuosi, a violin ensemble founded by Mimi Zweig, my former teacher and the creator of the String Pedagogy DVD which is the basis for my teaching. Starting the video, I left the room.

When I came back, all the girls were gone and all the boys were watching the documentary. Confused, I asked where the girls went. I was surprised to hear that they were taken for a class: classes have not formally started yet. Yet again, I asked for them to be summoned.

We watched a bit more before I stopped the documentary and asked for reactions. When no one spoke, I asked for each person's reaction. The responses, translated by Dr. Sarmast, were deeply moving. Showing a movie in class can be an act of laziness, but I was blown away by how much these girls and boys got out of a documentary that shows children their age perfecting their art and working together as an ensemble.

Their responses included the following: "I saw what hard work and practice can accomplish." "I saw how they moved their fingers and their bodies and I want to do that too." "I used to think that learning music meant putting the music in a corner and playing it, but now I see that is not enough. As soon as they get up in the morning, they practice. It is a part of their life. Violin needs to be more a part of my life too." "We need an ensemble like that here in Afghanistan."

I set them up in a circle to teach the name of each part of the violin and bow and how to take care of it. After making them repeat each part four times in English, I would ask them the name of that part in Dari, so learning that gushak are pegs, kharak is bridge, and desta is fingerboard. When I quizzed them individually, I addressed a girl as often as a boy, although the girls are a minority. When I asked the group in general, a girl was frequently first to answer.

After a lunch of beans and bread, I practiced a little Boulez before inviting them back. Once again, I had to invite first "the students" and then "the girl students" to come to the studio. The girls disappeared soon after arriving, and this time, a few boys left as well. I realized that only the students who could stay after the normal departure time were left in my room, desperate to learn even though our academic routine had not yet begun.

I did not want to give them too much of an advantage, but yet I could not throw water on their enthusiasm. So, I taught them the importance of stretching and relaxation before interviewing them for an upcoming radio special in the United States. I asked them why music is important, and for the second time that day, their answers to a simple question astounded me. "We can grow with music." "Music is in our human hearts." "Music is food of soul." "Music is taken from nature." Music takes us to "another place, another globe."

Equally astonishing was their mastery of South Asian classical violin. Two students played for me in this style, and I confessed that I cannot do it and cannot possibly teach them in a style in which their knowledge far exceeds my own. They hastened to assure me that they want to learn Western music. I'll have to learn your music, I responded.

Students will teach, teacher will learn. Like the title of the documentary, like Mimi Zweig students from Joshua Bell to Sarah Kapustin who have returned to work with her students, I am circling around.

Babur Gardens

For half a millennium, Kabul's families have flocked to the Babur Gardens to picnic. Entering through the heavily secured lower wall, the scope of Babur's vision takes your breath away.

Who was this man? History books in American high schools barely mention him, if at all. I certainly don't remember learning about him. Reading Rory Stewart's The Places in Between, in which Mr. Stewart describes his daring 2002 walk across Afghanistan using Babur's memoirs as a guide, gives you an appreciation of the unusual humanity of the founder of the great Mughal empire. E. M. Forster wrote: "What a happiness to have known Babur! He had all that one seeks in a friend. His energy and ambition were touched with sensitiveness; he could act, observe, and remember; though not critical of his senses, he was aware of their workings, thus fulfilling the whole nature of man."

His gardens must be his greatest monument. Carved into the side of one of the mountains surrounding Kabul, they gradually ascend through a series of grassy terraces. Spring is still stretching its legs at this point in the year, but rose bushes indicated the promise of a glorious May, and trees burst with purple flowers. The central water channel anchors the symmetry.

Though not as crowded as it was on Nawruz, the many terraces still teemed with families toting thermoses, portable grills, and rugs. Little boys giggled happily as they slid down the short, steep hills dividing one terrace from the next. Gangs of young men strolled around aimlessly. Occasionally, one of them would get out a wooden flute and play it.

Babur saved the most stunning view for himself. His tomb at the very top of the many series of terraces looks down at the gardens he laid out, past the wall and over the city he made great, and over at the mountains through which he walked, alone and unsupported, to found an empire. Seldom is the effect of awe realized as fully as it was intended.

After leaving the gardens, we drove to the kharabat. Ever since I read that Kabul has a quarter that historically belonged to musicians and dancers, I was excited about my first visit. We turned off the main road beneath the Bala Hissar, the ancient fortress overlooking the city. The car carefully straddled either side of an open sewer as it inched up the narrow street. Kids quickly surrounded the car, waving cheerfully. Some were dressed in colorful, sparkly outfits; other wore tattered clothes.

We reached a point where the car could go no further, so we walked towards an ancient shrine. In the eighteenth century, the first musicians formally invited to the city camped out there, and the kharabat quarter grew up around the shrine. Bearded, turbaned old men smiled and welcomed us into the dimly lit interior, where intricately worked timber lined the walls. In the center, beautifully ornate wood in a lattice pattern completely surrounded the graves of three small children descended from the Prophet. As one of the old men kindly unlocked the wood surrounding the graves and showed us the three painfully tiny stone markers, I felt a sense of reverence overpower me, knowing that I stood at a place sacred to both musicians and Afghan Muslims.

Back in the car, we drove past the Bala Hissar to the graveyard. The Bala Hissar stood more or less intact from the time it was built in the fifth century until 1992. Now, its hilltop ruins eerily crown Kabul's skyline. Thousands of feet in the air above us, a security blimp cast a wary eye over the city. The graveyard air sizzled with smoke as families who had come to pay their respects cooked a light meal.

We had come to visit the grave site of Ahmad Zahir, the Afghan Elvis. On his death anniversary, the site is mobbed by his female fans, though today, just a few young men were hanging out. We took a picture and left for a restaurant guarded by two ANA soldiers with machine guns. The shrine and the grave showed what Kabul was, the restaurant showed what it is, but old as they are, Babur's gardens point the way toward the future. As the sunlight glints off the marble walkways and families picnic in the shade of purple-flowered trees and the great emperor magnanimously watches over all, nothing else but beauty can be imagined for this country.

Lucky studio

Today I began moving into my studio. Though the school's renovation is still in progress, I found a corner room finished with plush brown carpet and gorgeous wood paneling. I began tacking up posters of great composers, a large advertisement for a concert I did in Germany a couple weeks ago with The Arcos Orchestra, and a violin poster.

The fellow who gave such a moving performance on Tuesday poked his head in the door. He recognized Tchaikovsky from one of my posters but hadn't heard of Debussy; as I unpacked my CDs, he had heard of Zeb and Haniya and was impressed that Cultures in Harmony worked with them in Pakistan.

He is motivated to the point of downloading videos of violin performances onto his cell phone. Before long, my violin was out and I was teaching him Yost shifting exercises.

Nonetheless, I realized I would need to start from the beginning. Yost proved challenging, since his bowhold still needs work. Also, as other boys gathered to watch, I realized I would have to make a supreme effort to ensure the girls were always included.

I apologetically asked the piano and guitar students to leave, and told them to tell all the violinists to come to my new studio, especially the girls. The girls arrived in a bunch, and after initial shyness, I realized they might actually be more confident than the boys. Still, the boys and the girls all act like the other group is not actually in the room.

A faculty member summoned me to meet some prestigious visitors: one of the three judges from Afghan Star and a maker of sarangis, ghichaks, and rubabs whose family has been making these instruments for 300 years. The latter fellow and I agreed that we will give him one of the bows to see how good of a job he does rehairing it. He normally rehairs sarangi bows, which are rather different, but hopefully he can figure out how to handle violin bows, so that the students can maintain their instruments in good condition.

At one point during a lull in their tour, I offered to play for both gentlemen. I confess to feeling a bit nervous during the Bach as I wondered which of his American Idol counterparts the Afghan Star judge would more closely resemble: Paula Abdul or Simon Cowell. Fortunately, his comments were very kind.

Soon, another group of visitors arrived from the US Embassy. I was thrilled to see fellow Americans, and they seemed much more likable and engaging than some State Department people I have dealt with. I hope that my Embassy will remain a strong supporter of my school.

One woman from the Embassy had kindly agreed to help me ship items here, so after they left, I unpacked the boxes I had sent about a month ago. My studio still needs a desk, but as I looked at my music, teaching materials, and the camel marionette studio mascot neatly stacked against the brand-new wall, I had a good feeling about this. And why wouldn't I?

The studio I chose is number 13.

The violins in the shipping container

A couple friends from the Ministry of Education took me around the city to take care of various tasks. The radio kicked it Pashto style as we threaded our way through the thick of downtown. Along one of the nicer sections of the Kabul River, fathers in suits held their small sons by the hand, women in burqas headed on errands, and an old man struggled to push a huge cart topped with towers of toilet paper rolls. A staircase in the sidewalk led down to the zerzameni, where people walk underground to avoid the traffic and dust of the street.

We spent a lot of time waiting in small offices before hurrying through the halls to get someone else's signature on yet another form. My experience of Afghan bureaucracy was no different than American bureaucracy, with a pleasant exception: the Afghans serve tea.

Banks in the US have security, but my new bank has them beat: towers of sandbags, concrete barriers, soldiers with their fingers just near the triggers of automatic rifles, and every man gets a full body pat-down. The main room overflowed with people waiting, so I stepped outside so that I could play with the little boys of an Afghan customer who was also applying for an account.

After one of my Ministry friends kindly treated me to a lunch of kebab and bread, I headed back to Dr. Sarmast. I was thrilled to learn that a German shipment of new violins will soon arrive for the students, yet I thought I should see what they had been playing on.

A few employees of the school guided me toward the back of the campus, past the table from which cooks serve a simple lunch to the students. They opened the lock of an old shipping container, and the door creaked.



Sticks of bows lay like twigs on the bottom of the container, wisps of horsehair wrapped around them like gossamer shrouds. The broken-down cases were coffins holding what once were violins. Many had no pegs, strings, tailpieces, or bridges. I jiggled one, hearing the soundpost rattle around. I shook it some more in disbelief, until a short, kindly fellow who had helped me began to dance along with a gleam in his eye. He was right: this object's only future in music was as a toy percussion instrument. He proceeded to help me inspect all the instruments in the container.



In the cabinet up at the school, I found one out of 37 that did not need to be thrown out. I also found one so marred by dirt and scars that I held it up to my growing beard and mimed shaving for some male students, who grinned: the surface of the violin was just about rough enough to take care of my emerging stubble. By the time I got to the bow held together with tape, I was getting discouraged, so once again, my short friend cheered me up by pretending to play the violin with the stout, fuzzy, and misshapen bridge with the taped bow. I borrowed them and got in on the act.



Really, I should not have been sad. These children will soon get the beautiful new violins they deserve. But at no point should a violin look like these did. Any well-maintained violin, no matter how cheap, would never get to this point: I know what the topic of my first group class will be.

It is wonderful that these children will soon get good violins, but tragic that it took one of the longest wars of recent history (and the astonishing toil and commitment of Dr. Sarmast), to get the funding to give these children the instruments they deserve.

Menuhin

I needed to fill out some paperwork this morning, so went to someone's office. After two hours of waiting while studying Dari, reading a magazine, and going over the music curriculum, I decided to walk to the music school.

It was a glorious, sunny day in Kabul. A couple boys kicked a soccer ball around the ridges in the dirt road before rinsing it off from a hose. The friendly librarian ushered me onto the campus. Though classes had not started yet, the students had shown up in droves. Within seconds, a mob of curious boys surrounded me. One by one, I asked "Nam-e chist?" and they told me their names. It may take a few more times before I remember, but each fellow beamed when he told me his name.

I found Dr. Sarmast and asked his permission to play for the students in the yard. I hopped in a car with the school principal, grabbed my violin, and returned to find the boys waiting. I set my violin case on top of a rusted oil drum that served as a trash can, got out my violin, and handed my camera to one of the students. I am making a video to promote the school, raise funds for a Cultures in Harmony project to help the students, and close the Paganini Caprice Challenge.

The performance conditions for Paganini's 24th were less than ideal. The sun baked me in my suit, I had not warmed up at all, and my future students crowded around, staring at me intently. Sweat began to trickle down my face as variation followed variation, and when I finished, they burst into smiles and applause. "Who wants to play?" I said, holding up my violin.

A young man about 17 or 18 stepped forward. With a gentle vibrato that caressed each note, he began to play an aching, mournful tune from an Iranian film. It traces out the minor mode before a two-note rocking motive slowly sinks to earth. The melody arced over the dusty, unfinished ground, over the barbed-wire-topped walls, past broken down bombed out buildings, and beyond the sympathetic mountains, yearning for a place of peace. The sincerity of his music making stopped time. This was a moment when the pain of loss cut through the clutter of our daily experiences. Though I will begin teaching this fellow in the next couple days, his performance was unquestionably the performance of the day.

By this time, Dr. Sarmast had finished his work, and pointed out that beyond the huddle of boys, a small group of hijab-clad girls had just arrived. No one had noticed them. Apologetically, I repeated the last variation of the Paganini and then played the Afghan tune "Let's Go To Mazar." I'll have to work hard in the future to make sure that the female students are not neglected.

As I prepared to leave, a boy shyly asked me, "Didn't Yehudi Menuhin play that piece you played?" I started. "Why, yes, he probably did." The boy smiled and opened his cell phone. "Is that the composer of the piece?" To my delight, he had a portrait of Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) as the wallpaper on his cell phone. "Yes, it is. Soon we will begin lessons, and if you work hard, eventually you might play some Paganini." He beamed.

During lunch, I learned that some students might not be able to practice at home, since some of their relatives are unaware that they study music. Music still carries the stigma of immorality in Afghan culture, and we will need to formulate ways to convince people that one can be simultaneously good, decent, Muslim, Afghan, and a musician.

On the way home, I stopped by a guardhouse. Since my arrival, I have tried to develop friendly relations with the Afghan police and soldiers who are increasingly responsible for the security. Their job is difficult, and they keep me safe. Yesterday, I stopped for a cup of tea and limited conversation in Dari at one guardhouse. At another, a policeman jovially demanded that I take a picture with him.

Today, they were delighted to see my violin, so I immediately got it out and played the traditional song "Pistachio Seller." The guard with a beard called the younger one over, and they both listened as I played the lilting, seven-beat love song that compares the lover's lips to the pistachio nut as it is opened. The older guard closed his eyes and nodded his head to the music, transported to another world.

Back home, I sat outside and read the book "Music of Man" by Menuhin as the birds and wind made sonorous the stillness of the trees. Juilliard students might be quick to disparage Menuhin for not retaining his adolescent brilliance, but I was not surprised that if one of my students knew of a Western musician, it was Menuhin. For children like these, he is the great Western performer. Who else but Menuhin had genuine empathy for the non-Western experience? He loved exploring the meaning of music at the most profound level, whether he discussed the music of Greece, Syria, India, China, Nepal, or Gambia. In his words, music becomes the essence of the human experience. This book, his love of humanity, and his faith in music will be guiding lights for our school in Kabul.

Over dinner, I learned from a fellow expatriate about the gemstone problems here. For 7,000 years, a mine in Afghanistan has continuously provided the world with lapis lazuli for everything from King Tut's death mask to contemporary jewelry. Yet today, rudimentary explosives have replaced the techniques that worked until modern times. This means that workers light a fuse and have forty seconds to run. Many have needlessly died, and over seventy percent of the gem deposits are destroyed. Adopting even slightly more sophisticated techniques (or even going back to the old ones) would yield three times the amount, and this exceptionally rare and beautiful stone is lost daily.

American Idol and pizza

Last night, I caught the season finale of American Idol...I mean, Afghan Star. Similar idea: occasionally caustic judges, amateur singers, voting by elimination, and a large audience which displays all the same enthusiasm but contains more hijab-clad women waving glowsticks. I liked the first fellow I saw, but the second one sang really out of tune and took himself way too seriously, so, feeling a bit of jet lag, I went to bed.

This morning I took care of some bureaucratic business before heading to the school to check out the library. International donors have really come through, though occasionally they may have overestimated our needs: our library has a copy of The Romantic Generation by Charles Rosen. I knew people in the Master's of Music program at Juilliard who would have a tough time with this extraordinary, cerebral writer. I was also disturbed by a book haughtily titled "A History of World Music" which featured exactly one chapter about ancient music of China before proceeding to devote the rest of the voluminous tome about classical music from Germany, France, Italy, and a few other European countries.

Slowly I realized that we will need to reinvent music education from the ground up. In music theory, our children will need to make the connection between Afghan and Western modes, learning more thoroughly than most children that minor and major are just two of the old church modes, many of which resembled Afghan modes still in use. They will learn that the violin is a cousin of the rubab. They will learn the Western folk tunes and easy classical pieces I played at a young age alongside selections from the large body of Afghan folk music, which I will need to arrange in order of difficulty.

Browsing in the library is a pleasure. The walls are lined with beautiful wood cabinets many American homeowners would envy. The librarian takes his job seriously, carefully making a note of all the books I borrowed. He treated me with such respect that I felt embarrassed: when he saw me browsing, he quickly grabbed a chair and dusted it off, ashamed that he had done something wrong by not offering me a seat.

Yet I felt that only today did I glimpse how very high the mountain is, and understand so completely that I am at the very bottom. To steel myself for the metaphorical climb ahead, I ordered a pizza. It arrived on time in 20 minutes as promised, and was delicious.

Nawruz

Due to an optical illusion, the wingtip of any plane approaching Kabul appears to clip one of the snow-covered mountains that paternally cradle the city. Both the majesty of the surroundings and the pilot's skill inspire an awe that quickly translates into nervous excitement as the plane touches down and you realize: I'm in Afghanistan.

My amiable, highly energetic, and intelligent new boss, Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, picked me up at the airport. Dr. Sarmast is the first Afghan with a doctorate in music and is the founder and director of the school where I will teach, Afghanistan National Institute of Music, conveniently known as ANIM.

Our driver whisked us through streets that laugh at the very idea of traffic laws. Cars careen along an invisible slalom course along both sides of the road, while cars going in the opposite direction compete with donkey carts and ambling pedestrians for the center. At a roundabout, three money changers ran like madmen towards our car, which gave us the opportunity to change my dollars to afghanis at a good rate.

My tour of ANIM was inspiring and motivating. The campus is a secluded island of peace, and though the renovation is not finished, I could easily imagine Dr. Sarmast's vision as he enthusiastically described it. He gestured towards an empty patch of dust: here is where the dining hall will be. The sections of ANIM that are finished impressed me tremendously. Many music schools in the world would be lucky to have the beautiful wood paneling and soundproofed doors that ANIM already boasts.

Next, we checked me into the guesthouse that will be my home in Afghanistan. It is a lovely place, blending modern conveniences like WiFi and a superb DVD collection with Afghan carpets and cabinetry. I enjoyed a refreshingly familiar breakfast: peanut butter and jelly, yogurt, cheese, dried fruit, nuts, a chocolate croissant, coffee, and a banana. The only nod to our location was a compote made of seven fruits in celebration of Nawruz, the Afghan new year, which is always the first day of spring.

Since I had happened to arrive on the biggest holiday of the Afghan calendar, Dr. Sarmast invited me to join him and Hank, an affable, urbane European friend of his, for a day on the town. We bounced slowly along dusty roads scarred with potholes, passing crumbling buildings that gaped with dead space where bombs had fallen at some point over the past thirty years.

As we neared our intended destination, the famed Babur gardens, the streets teemed with Kabuli families heading there to picnic. The road began to resemble a parking lot as cars ground to a halt, surrounded by hundreds of people pressing forward. A young girl giggled as she adjusted a special headscarf, covered with bangles for the occasion, over her long black braid. Colorful henna tattoos snaked up the arms of teenage girls, while their older sisters wore glittery black abayas that failed to hide their eye make-up. Women in burqas held the hands of little boys in adorable embroidered vests. Fathers threw open the trunks of station wagons, making sure that someone was carrying the rug, the food, and the baby. Large groups of teenage boys sauntered along, showing more physical affection towards each other than young men in America: they walked with their arms around each other, held hands, or engaged in playful fistfights that ended in hugs. As this mass of humanity surged towards the gates of the gardens Emperor Babur laid out half a millennium ago, the Afghan National Army skillfully maintained order and vendors hopefully hawked balloons, inflatable yellow bears, and orange popsicles.

Dr. Sarmast decided that it was just too crowded, so we left for a high hill topped by the old campus of the Kabul Polytechnic Institute. Built by the Soviets, it has long since been thoroughly destroyed. Bullet holes riddled the walls of what had been classrooms, and an empty swimming pool was filled with rubble and trash. A short distance away, an old tank used during the 1990s civil war rotted away. I scrambled on top and posed for a picture with the entire city yawning beneath me.



Next, we drove over a road riddled with bomb craters towards a palace built by King Amanullah in the 1920s. He tried to achieve equal rights for women, most dramatically when his wife appeared in public with bare shoulders. He was deposed soon after. Just enough of the palace is left to impress the tourist with its former opulence, but so much has been bombed to smithereens that the overall impression is wrenching and eerie.

We gladly tore ourselves away from these specters from Kabul's recent past to lunch at a fine hotel, approachable only through multiple security checkpoints. Their buffet of Afghan food was superb: three different kinds of aromatic rice, one flavored with carrots, raisins, and almonds; the next with oranges; the third with tomatoes and butter. The lamb, veal, vegetable soup, and dumplings were excellent. An apple, an orange, fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, and cardamom tea rounded it off nicely.

We ascended a nearby hill to take in yet another spectacular view of the city. Given the security at the hotel, the hill was nearly deserted. A girl's long hair streamed behind her as she laughed and chased her little brother around the hill. The calm air bore joyous sounds of the holiday from a nearby park: children screaming in delight, men whooping, drums beating out the infectious seven-beat mughuli rhythm. As we circled the top of the hill, peach trees softly shed their white translucent petals on the stone path, each one fluttering down to the stone path like something out of a dream.

"This is what Afghanistan needs," Hank observed. "A reason to celebrate."

The day before Afghanistan

I asked the driver if this was the bus to the NH Airport Hotel. It was not, he responded in an officious manner. As he looked at my shalwar kameez, an outfit commonly worn in Central Southern Asia, he lit up, his professional veneer melting like winter's last snow. "Where are you going today?" he asked hopefully. "Afghanistan," I responded. He beamed, "I am from there!"

I was at the airport in Frankfurt after the conclusion of The Arcos Orchestra's whirlwind concert tour of Germany. Each day had been a variation on a theme: hotel breakfast, long bus ride, rehearsal, concert, dinner if we could afford it, sleep if we had time. Now that the tour had ended, I wanted to go to the magnificent restaurant created by celebrity chef Ferran Adria for the NH Airport Hotel for one last gourmet meal before I moved to Afghanistan to teach violin to children. I needed time to reflect.

The Afghan driver talked to me while I waited, telling me to be sure to learn about a genre of music he particularly loves. When the bus I needed arrived, I chased after it. "I was waiting back there," this new driver irritably exclaimed. He refused to help move my luggage.

Unfamiliarity bred silence. After I heard the driver chatting on the phone in a language that sounded like Dari, I asked him tentatively, "Afghanistan?" He nodded. "Man ba Kabul emruz mi rawam," I said tentatively. Today I am going to Kabul.

The second Afghan bus driver I had met in five minutes suddenly smiled. I tried out what little Dari I could manage as he recommended foods to try. "Kabul is safe now," he said, but added with concern, "Is someone picking you up at the airport?" When we got to the NH Hotel, he walked in with me and pulled my luggage to the front desk, urging them to take care of it while I ate lunch.

Ferran Adria is a genius who compels us to consider familiar foods in unfamiliar contexts. Remembering my mother's constant admonition to eat more vegetables, I ordered the salad. The absence of dressing was surprising and refreshing, as it forced me to taste, as though for the first time, the crisp bitter lettuce, the meaty nuts, the succulent berries, and the harsh parmesan cheese.

Similarly, the knowledge that I am moving to a nation ripped apart by thirty years of war has forced me to experience the past few months with heightened sensitivity. Walking down the streets of New York last month or in a variety of tiny German towns this month, I savored the freedom to meander as I chose with no thought to the security implications. Last night, as an unusually enthusiastic audience in Munich prompted us to offer Sibelius' bittersweet Impromptu for Strings as an encore, I held back tears as the violins and violas etched out his spare, mournful lines that sift through the shadows of memory. "Thank you for the Sibelius," I told our beloved conductor, John-Edward Kelly, as I gave him a hug. "It will be the last time I make music like that for a while."

For a main course, I selected a lightly breaded chicken stuffed with ham and cheese with a side of braised tomatoes. Adria re-imagined what could have been a pedestrian dish as a brilliant triple pun. It most closely resembled the Chicken Cordon Bleu of classic French gastronomy, but the Spanish cheese and ham evoked the nation of his birth. Yet the chicken was pounded so flat that it looked exactly like the schnitzels that are popular here in Germany. Like so many of us in a world of shifting borders, this rooted yet rootless dish hardly seemed to know where it belonged.

I have been teasingly accused of the same. "Are you going native?" my Arcos colleagues asked when I mentioned my plans to grow a beard, learn Dari, and wear mostly the shalwar kameez. "Will you forget who you are?" was the implied question.

Perhaps I am going to unusual lengths to demonstrate my respect for my soon-to-be adopted culture. However, I will never forget my dedication to peace. I will never cease striving to overcome my personal limitations. I will always do my best to help build a world where cultures and nations never resort to violence to resolve their conflicts.

Even many of us who are secure in our renunciation of violence are as unwilling to assert a heritage as my lunch entree. I have always vacillated between my brother's principled opposition to multiculturalism and my liberal friends' unquestioning adherence to political correctness and their eagerness to denigrate everything the West has done while celebrating everyone else.

I am aware of the awkwardness lurking just beneath my chance encounter with that first Afghan bus driver. Had I been wearing a suit, he would have had no idea where I was going, yet because I wore a shalwar kameez, he correctly suspected that I was headed to his part of our planet. My culture's ideas, language, and clothing have come to dominate the globe, not his, and while Jared Diamond offers excellent reasons for this in his masterpiece, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he cannot provide us with a roadmap out of the thicket of resentment, arrogance, insecurity, and hostility created by such disparities of cultural influence.

When I started Cultures in Harmony in 2005, I was aware that the organization would be at once part of the problem and part of the solution. Our musicians have access to the donors who could send them around the globe; musicians in Zimbabwe do not. Our projects exist to facilitate a mutual understanding sorely needed between citizens of the most powerful nation and everyone else, yet the need to build that trust is not as urgent for every nation. No one in Moldova hates people from Suriname; the exigency of Americans traveling on missions of cultural diplomacy stems from the disproportionate and frequently devastating scope of our power. Finally, since my colleagues and I are trained in Western classical music, unfortunate echoes of music's historical role in colonialism might follow us.

My upcoming work in Afghanistan suffers from the same problems. I go to Afghanistan as an American man playing Western music and teaching Afghan girls and boys. Just like the suit I chose not to wear today, my culture's music is what other cultures end up importing, even when they have a choice. I come to Kabul at the invitation of the Afghan government, just as non-European governments have eagerly supported the founding of symphony orchestras while their young people listen to Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson. My intention to publicly learn from and perform with experts in traditional Afghan music becomes vital in this context, so much so that one might wonder why I agreed to teach Western music in Kabul, given my awareness of the way such an act may be perceived.

Yet I cling tenaciously to my middle path. I respect all cultures, but see no insult in preferring my own. I love many kinds of music, but remain proud to belong to the tradition of Bach and Beethoven. I understand the tragic consequences of America's military and corporate imperialism, but I am a patriotic American who loves my country in spite of its flaws. I respect many paths towards peace, but remain convinced that music most easily reminds us of our common humanity. I see no problem in Americans learning Afghan music in Kabul while teaching Western music, just as there should be no problem in Afghans coming to New York to do the reverse.

Perhaps the only qualifier my chicken dish needs is "delicious." I claim the identities of man, musician, and American, while knowing that my most important identity is that of someone who seeks to improve both himself and the world around him.

After this meal, I chose an espresso for its Janus-like ability to prepare us for what lies ahead while catalyzing memory. We order it in the morning in the hopes that the caffeine will kick-start our day; we ask for it after dinner in order to reflect. I ordered mine without milk and sugar: bitter, like the fleeting island of time in which I find myself—-between America and Afghanistan, between free-lancing in New York and teaching in Kabul, between liberty and tradition, secularism and Islam, security and war, comfort and suffering.

People who meet me recently and have never heard of Cultures in Harmony ask why I am going to Kabul. The espresso reminds me of the coin in my violin case, the coin that I showed to John-Edward Kelly before last night's Munich concert, saying "This is my most valuable possession."

I received that coin on September 16, 2001, when I performed for members of the Fighting Sixty-Ninth Regiment as they returned from a long day of rescue and clean-up work at Ground Zero. That experience showed me that great music deserves more than being a nice entertainment for the wealthy. It is a reason to live, a force to propel society towards truth and love. I started Cultures in Harmony in 2005 with the goal of promoting cultural understanding through music. Since then, we have done 19 projects in 11 countries. The director of another cultural diplomacy organization, American Voices, recommended me for the job in Kabul, and on America's 233rd birthday (July 4, 2009), I received my formal job offer.

As the espresso reminds me of the past, it reminds of what I will miss. Moments shared with friends in the US come to mind, as well as moments with my father, mother, and brother. I also think of the moment that makes me most patriotic: my first visit to Washington DC in December 2006. In spite of the cold, I thrilled to see the flags snapping in the sharp wind around the Washington Monument, and I cried at the Lincoln Memorial as I read a book about Marian Anderson's famous performance there, a book which enabled me to reflect on the enormous obstacles which we Americans have overcome and must still overcome on our march to the promise implied by our founding ideals.

The espresso effortlessly glides my focus towards what awaits me in Kabul, for my lack of concern for the cold in Washington reminds me of others who do not notice the cold: my students in Kabul. In a meeting at the State Department last month, a bureaucrat told me that he met some student musicians during his brief visit to Kabul. One impression stayed with him: "The building where those students practiced was so cold, you needed to go outside to warm up. Only their love of music kept them warm."

Right now, 35 young people in Kabul await the arrival of the first violin teacher to nurture new generation of Afghan violinists in 30 years. Perhaps they are practicing as I type. I dare not speculate too much about them, but I know this: my dedication to music, and that of everyone I've met, pales next to that of those who risked their life to be musicians. Their zeal will humble me, and I hope they will learn as much from me as I will learn from them.

I finish my espresso. In 12 hours, I will be in another world. Spring is coming to the US, Germany, and Afghanistan: today was the first day I walked without a winter coat, enjoying the comfort of my shalwar kameez in the crisp air outside the airport. Yet even when a chill returns, I will remember how I didn't feel the cold during that DC visit in 2006, and how my students ignore a far more severe cold when they are making music. Whatever the winds of weather or war may attempt, they cannot chill the fingers, still the voices, or numb the hearts of those of us who seek to live together in peace. We will always draw warmth from the dream of peace, liberty, and understanding.

A common greeting in Afghanistan is "Chetor hasti ba hawa?" which loosely translates as, "How do you feel about the weather?" I suspect that for me, the standard response will be sincere: "Khub, tashakor."

Fine, thanks.

ICD, museum, and visa services

On Monday in Berlin with The Arcos Orchestra, I met with Mark Donfried, Founder and Director of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. Touring their elegant, cavernous, modern offices, filled with staff working on projects, I was blown away by their achievements since Mark started ICD in 1999. They do everything from connecting young German and Turkish people to bringing current and former world leaders to their headquarters for public forums. It was exciting to see that cultural diplomacy can consistently attract support from donors, and I was inspired to observe the prestige which ICD has acquired. Hopefully, ICD and Cultures in Harmony will be able to collaborate more in the future.

Yesterday, I toured the Pergamon Museum. The depictions of musicians from throughout history moved me deeply. I saw friezes depicting musicians from 4,000 years ago in Babylonia; another frieze showing Assyrian musicians following soldiers from 2700 years ago; Mughal paintings of musicians at a Muslim court from 300 years ago; and an 800-year-old ceramic plate showing a rubab player in Iran. This last was particularly affecting, as the rubab is still played in Iran and Afghanistan. If anyone in Afghanistan says "Muslims don't play music," I can show them the picture I took of that plate.

While checking email here in Braunschweig, I read this article about the important work done by Tamizdat in bringing musicians to the United States for cultural exchange. Thanks are due to Tamizdat for helping foreign artists navigate the labyrinthine US visa requirements.

Article re-posted

Hello from Oberhausen, Germany! I am pleased to report that Foreign Policy in Focus has re-posted my article about Cultures in Harmony that originally appeared in The Mantle.

Mailing address and tour

1. Cultures in Harmony now has a mailing address! Tax-deductible donations and other materials may now reach us at P.O. Box 1244, New York, NY 10163.

2. I am on tour playing concerts with the Arcos Orchestra and am writing from Epinal, France. After the tour, I will move to Afghanistan to teach violin at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music.