Music Echoes Off Walls Once Silenced by Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan June 20, 2009— -- The girl in the pink pashmina scratches out scales on a battered violin. The screeching careens off the walls of the darkened classroom, but Ahmad Sarmast gushes with pride.

"She's very advanced for having picked up a bow only three weeks ago," he says from his seat in the corner.

He's referring to Frishta. A month ago she was selling plastic bags on Kabul's streets, soupy with diesel fumes. She brought home $25 a month. Her parents claim she is 14 years old; she looks no more than 10.

Sarmast had gone to a local charity called Oceana to select children for his rejuvenated National Institute of Music. It's Afghanistan's only high school music program, and at this point barely so. During the Taliban's reign, thugs had used the drums as planters and the school's priceless concert pianos for kindling. They tossed grenades inside them to make it easier to splinter.

The interior had been gutted, the power cables ripped out. There was neither power nor water.

"They didn't have any musical instruments, not enough learning materials, no specialist music teachers, not the facilities that the students need for a proper music education like soundproofing and rooms," he says.

Currently 35 students share a drum set, and 17 others used the same saxophone.But with an infusion of cash, Sarmast is shepherding the squat, two-story brick building, which looks more barracks than beaux art, through a massive facelift.

Sarmast likes to boast that the school will have state-of-the-art, soundproof music rooms, AV studio and double-glazed windows. But he's mum about how much he's managed to raise. "If I tell," he says, "then donors will stop giving."

Key to it all, says Sarmast, is saving street children and orphans like Frishta.

"Before coming to this school, I had a very tough life selling plastics on the streets," she says, her voice a high whisper. She begins to cry, covering her face in the pink scarf.

It has been an especially difficult day for Frishta. She had interceded in a squabble between two of her fellow violin students. She says that one of the girls "told me to 'butt out, you beggar girl.' But I was never a beggar. I SOLD plastic bags on the streets. I worked," she insists.

School Suffered During Taliban Era

Sarmast, who was translating, picks up. "And that's why I will do everything to keep her here."

He's doing it out of his own pocket. He pays Frishta's family $25 each month to allow her to attend the 12-month-a-year school. He supports another student too. His wife and daughter, who are still in Australia, support two more students as well.

Sarmast considered himself a political orphan for a time. He was an Afghan educated in the Soviet Union during the 1980s who then fled to Australia during the country's civil war as various factions began purging anyone who had benefitted from the communists. When the Taliban rolled in in their Toyota pickups bearing arms and a feverish Islamic conservatism, they imposed new rules. Women were neither allowed to work nor attend school. They were forced to wear burkhas, which covered their entire bodies and their faces.

The type of co-ed school begun by Sarmast would have been a swift cause for execution.

"I dedicated the last three years of my professional and my academic career to this project," says Sarmast. "Why? I know that I'm doing something fundamental, something fundamental to the kids of Afghanistan, and something fundamental to the music of Afghanistan."

The school's curriculum is year-round. Students spend half the day in traditional classes -- math, literature, English and science. The rest of the day is spent studying music theory and practicing. Sarmast hopes students like Frishta will form the nucleus of the first Afghan national symphony orchestra, "so that we can finally play our own national anthem abroad."

Sarmast is wooing musicians from around the world to teach here. But oddly enough, the mysterious, melancholic traditional music of Afghanistan seems to the most difficult to resurrect. Afghan music is an oral tradition that has been nearly lost, and Sarmast is struggling to find instructors.

Frishta takes us to her house, halfway up one of Kabul's many hills – a place where there are no sewers, much less street names.

"A Love Story" Played in Kabul

Winding alleys of mud brick apartments over canals of raw waste lead us to her door. She shares a room up the crooked dirt stairs with her parents and five siblings. There's no electricity or running water. A few mattresses and pillows line the floor. Her father is already out selling his tomatoes off a push cart. Her mother is ashamed that she cannot offer us tea. Her mother was married at 14 and started bearing children shortly after.

It takes Farishta an hour to get to school. She walks to a minibus near the city center. The walk to the school is then less than half a mile.

The school has no windows, its hallways are dark and cold, but it is Farishta's sanctuary. When we first arrived, "A Love Story" was lovingly being played by a a pianist and violinist duo. Under the shade of an oak outside, a dozen drummers share a single set, banging out beats. Those waiting their turn banged their drumsticks in the dirt, whipping up plumes of dust.

Frishta will be 22 years old when she graduates. She says she has no interest in marrying, much less marrying young. It's unseemly for Afghan girls to express interest in marriage. But she says she wants to pursue music, and finish high school. Sarmast hopes she could be in his symphony orchestra, or even teach music to the next generation.

She's got a long way to go. She's 14, but in the fourth grade. During her time on the streets, along with an army of Kabul urchins who begin work before they're 10, she says she rarely attended school.

Her family's consent permitting, Samarst believes she can do it. He laments the recent reversals in women's rights in Afghanistan. A bill passed in April imposes restrictions on Afghan Shiite women about leaving their homes and requirements about submitting to their husbands' sexual desires. But he marvels at the overall progress.

Samarst recalls standing before a crowd of urchins and orphans last month at the Oceana, the charity organization, scouting for potential students. He spoke to them about the school, and beauty of music and asked if anyone was interested. The shy girl in the pink pashmina was the first to raise her hand.