The great Buddha statues were carved out of the solid sandy rock of the valley walls.
Many caves were also hollowed out, forming whole monasteries where the monks prayed and meditated.
The great Buddha statues were carved out of the solid sandy rock of the valley walls.
Many caves were also hollowed out, forming whole monasteries where the monks prayed and meditated.
The size of the statue can be appreciated from the little streets of Bamian. Tiny human figures can just be seen at the foot of the Buddha.
In happier days, the boys of Bamian were delighted to pose for a photograph and a small reward.
The village bakery under the peaceful gaze of the Buddha made bread and cakes for locals and visitors alike. Few tourists have come to Afghanistan since 1977; fourteen years of Russian bombing and violent resistance by the Afghans in defence of their homeland reduced the houses to rubble, smashed the canals and irrigation systems, filled the fields with mines and forced much of the population to flee.
Turbaned men in the Afghan dress of grey jackets and baggy trousers stride across the desolate waste.
In the days when it was safe to travel anywhere, the trucks were resplendent with rainbow colours, and piled high with anything from firewood to wolfskins. Safety was relative: the driving was fast and furious, the drivers often had cataracts in both eyes, hashish was smoked incessantly, and the burnt-out wrecks of head-on collisions were not infrequent by the roadsides.
Brass samovars glitter in an Afghan tea-shop or Chai Khana. Another world.
The schoolmaster teaches the village school under a comfortably breezy thatched shelter. He writes on a blackboard.
In the fertile valley, the villagers reap their cereals in a biblical scene, sitting with sickles and wicker baskets, gathering in the harvest.
Humped cattle tolerate the harsh conditions well, surviving on poor grazing despite wide swings in temperature.
Fuel of any sort is scarce. These donkeys may have travelled miles to fetch their loads of brushwood for use in cooking fires.
The village women, veiled according to Islamic custom, carry heavy pots of water to their homes. Their lives are as hard as those of their domestic animals.
The life of the men is appreciably more relaxed. They have time to sit around in the sunshine, drinking tea and socialising while their women work at home. The Taliban have taken this traditional patriarchy to extremes, forbidding women from almost all activity outside the home, even going to school or university, while those women who once received professional training are prevented from practising.
Amidst the drought, life is sustained by the Bamian river that meanders through its mountain valley.
The farmers have over the centuries built up an extensive irrigation system of narrow canals, sometimes stretching many miles across the mountainsides. Here a farmer irrigates his crops by hand. The Russians deliberately destroyed many of the canals in a smash-and-burn policy to deny food and shelter to the Afghan rebels.
Beyond Bamian is a high semi-desert plateau, and the forbidding mountains of the Hindu Kush ('death to the Hindus'), snowy even in summer. The shepherds stand watching their fat-tailed sheep. The men chew green snuff which they keep in small mirror-topped tins; the sheep, in every natural colour, find something to chew on the bare stony ground.
In a high valley northwest of Bamian is an astonishing spectacle, something that seems miraculous in the dry wilderness: a chain of brilliant blue and green lakes. These are the Band-i-Amir, the Jewels of the King. No Amethysts and Emeralds were ever more dazzling.
From the high rocky edge of the Band-i-Amir valley, the lakes shine preternaturally bright in the pure clear air.
The lakes lie not in hollows but atop their own natural dams, precipitated tufa from the mineral salts in the water that runs over and constantly builds up the edge.
Beautiful waterfalls stream over these dams, past little stone mill-houses whose owners have plentiful water-power in this dry land.
A farmer weeds the thistles from his field by hand, protecting himself from the sharp spines with a piece of leather,
oblivious to the rugged splendour of the surrounding landscape.
In a Kabul hotel, the guests relax and listen to the evening's musicians drumming and playing under
coloured electric lamps on rich red Afghan carpets. Incense burns; hashish and opium appear; an American guest coughs harshly as the dense narcotic smoke reaches his lungs.
In the morning the tourists have tea and cakes. There is a brightly-coloured pot for everyone. A tall Pashtun and a Punjabi negotiate some business; it takes a little while to realize the medium of commerce is English. No tourists taste tea or opium in Afghanistan today. The tea-house, if it still stands, serves Taliban men. The women stay at home, uneducated. The great Buddhas of Bamian are desecrated. Say a prayer or at least lament for
Bamian.
The Taliban were destroyed by their own stupidity, and the US air force, after its protégé Al Qaeda attacked Manhattan and Washington with airliners hijacked by suicide bombers. Afghanistan is again free, but desperately poor with everything shattered by war, and still riven by factions following rival warlords more or less along tribal lines. The military are rebuilding what they can. Opium production is back, being one of the few industries possible in that environment. It is easy to believe that people in Afghanistan could again turn to war and terrorism. When will we in the rich West ever learn?
(c) Ian Alexander 2001-5