Afghanistan
was simultaneously developing an influence from Bactria (Ancient Middle
East) and Gandhar. Gandharan, a Graeco-Buddhist style specific to the
region between Kabul and Peshawar incorporated Hellenism and traditional
Buddhist style from the Far-East. "I was named after a Kushan King,"
Huvishka says. "My father named me after King Havishnu." The
Kushan Empire, a unity of tribes centered in Central Asia, had a history
of Kings who were highly interested in the arts.
"We
used to camp out in the desert, in an area called Tapa-i-Shator, which
means 'Hill of the Camel.' That was one of my dad's biggest archaeological
sites. We would always be playing at the excavation site, where it was
pretty much just sand and these huge trenches."
Tapa-i-Shator,
a city south of the Hindu Kush, revealed the richness of Kushan art. In
the second century A.D, a greek sailor named Hippalus discovered that
he could ride the monsoon winds from the Arabias to India in just over
a month. He began to develop, through his sailings, a route between isolated
economic powers that would one day become known as the Silk Route. Afghanistan,
in the middle of all this, was able to exploit all of this commotion into
economic power. The Kushan Empire, the union of five tribes, turned that
prosperity into an artful age - one of the world's oldest collections
of fine tastes and wealth.
The Bactrian
influence; which centers around 653 AD when Arabs introduced Islam to
Afghanistan, can be seen in the highly ornamented Mosques, city centers
and coinage which Dr. Mustamandy excavated across Afghanistan.
"In
1973, a year before I was born, my dad was placed under house arrest.
A year prior to that, Zahir Shah's cousin overthrew him as king and installed
a new regime. From then on, they wanted to silence the intellectuals and
the people who were highly outspoken and internationally known. They stripped
him of his job. My uncle, a famous doctor, was taken to jail and underwent
years of torture."
"The
imprisoned were horribly tortured. They would put electric cords in the
back of their ears and shock them. They'd take knives and rip off their
nails."
Six
years later, the Soviet Union invaded. "The Soviets wanted a buffer
state, but also wanted to Have a gateway to India," Huvishka says,
"Just like Poland - a buffer state to protect the homeland."
"They
put Kabul under martial law, no one could go out at night. My mother snuck
out of the house in the middle of the night, and went to the U.S. Embassy.
Basically, she gave them a story that she was very sick and that she had
to get special medicine in Pakistan. They were only going to give her
one passport, so she made up a story about why she needed to take her
kids with her, so we finally got a passport to go to India. We ended up
in New Delhi."
"I
remember the day we left, when we were driving to the airport. The Soviets
had these big tanks and had a hundred men, women and children lined up
against the wall, spraying down on them and killing them left and right…the
day the invasion started, there were all these missiles flying over our
houses and we were just praying it wouldn't be our house that would be
hit. Our house is still standing, even after all this war."
While
the Mustamandy family and King Zahir Shah escaped for the West, Afghans
in their eternally independent-mindedness, went to the hills and engaged
the Soviets on horseback; fighting nearly insurmountable odds as the Mujahidin.
They fought for ten years against tanks and aeroplanes with guns and swords.
The U.S. began to funnel arms through Pakistan to support the Mujahidin
with anti-aircraft arms and heavy equipment. This developed several personalities;
Afghan warlords of varying beliefs and power-interests. Among them was
an exiled Saudi and an ethnic Tajik. Osama bin Laden, an Arab in an Asian
land, helped the US and the Mujahidin funnel Middle Eastern money to fight
the war against the Soviets. Ahmed Shah Massoud, a teenage Kabul gangster,
became the leading commander of the Mujahidin; practicing constantly changing
strategies to each assault; by drawing the Soviets into multi-pronged
Mujahidin tactical strikes.
After the Mujahidin conquered the puppet regime controlling Afghanistan,
the cultural heritage of the country was plundered. "My dad's last
project was to try to get all the artifacts that were looted or stolen
from the country back," Huvishka says.
"Where'd
they end up?" I asked.
)
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