A free day in Kabul can be extremely boring, spend pleasantly lounging around a pool at a bar for internationals or discovering the city. The third option can only be done properly though if you're not all too important: the more important you are, the less freedom of movement you have without arranging for a motorcade and security-detail first. Since I'm just a lowly provincial rep. I can traipse around as I please and actually walk through town, for example (although we are regarded as insane for doing that by just about everybody else). I decided to spend my free day going to the National museum, until a bomb exploded at the Ministry of the Interior and a call from my security-manager decided that I wasn't going there, but the much closer by National Gallery.
Some 15 minutes later I pass the ministry of the interior anyway, but I didn't know that and as my driver keeps smiling I won't protest.
Upon arrival at the National Gallery, staff is just leaving for lunch, but the director agrees to return to his office and sell me a ticket. I'm the only visitor and two ladies who apparently aren't invited to lunch are sent off to find the English-speaking guide. The very dusty old mansion is completely dark and, naively, I think that they just turn off the lights to save energy when there are no visitors. Of course no lights are turned on: there's no electricity for them. This obviously does not facilitate my day of culture and neither does the fact that the paintings are just about everywhere, including on the floor, leaning against the wall and so high up somewhere in the dark that you can't actually make out what is supposed to be enjoyed on them. After looking at a number of quite nice paintings, I am reprimanded in the friendliest way by the 20-year old guide/art student: "you have to start upstairs".
upstairs there's more light which makes it abundantly clear that most paintings could do with a spa-treatment and some pampering. They look dirty, tired and are almost all damaged due to looting and creative carving by the Taliban who ripped apart painintgs that represented living beings. Absolutely not allowed according to their strict interpretation of Islam. Nevertheless, the room with the oldest paintings (1800-50) has some really nice Northern-European style mountainscapes in familiar style: the painter was indeed trained in Germany. On the floor some really, really nice small ones could be hung next to the Albert Cuyps in London's National Gallery: the quality isn't the same, but the style, light and atmosphere in which the cattle, little streams and lush grasslands are painted bring me home to Holland.
The love for German-Dutch-Flemish scenery in art is widespread in the Middle East (and here as well then): in Gaza I once found an embroidery 'painting' in someone's livingroom actually depicting Hanzel & Grettel: weird, but in a nice way.
Whilst the guide is doing a nice job telling me about the painters and I keep trying to find the pearls inbetween the..well..uhm..lesser stuff and things that really shouldn't be here, I ask why some really good small paintings aren't hanging, but standing on the floor. The answer is as honest as expected: eventhough some of the big ones are bad, they're still big and big is impressive.
There is a moment though when all slightly sarcastic criticism ebbs away from you: in the upstairs corridor there is a big glass box filled with ripped and ruined paintings; ripped and ruined by the Taliban and these paintings are beyond repair. At that moment I wanted to place floodlights in the museum, add a glorious description to every painting and call in any Afghan child I could find in the streets and say to them: "draw, paint, sing, dance and never ask whether you're allowed to; never ask whether it's good enough; and never apologise, because your art will always be more precious and more important than the thoughts of the man who tries to stop you."
One of the last and biggest paintings in the gallery depicts the Amsterdam flowermarket, it's potentially really good..maybe the Dutch embassy can offer to get it cleaned and repaired? A bunch a flowers and hope for a well-lit and restored gallery.
