The Lost Sons of Afghanistan

Erik Gauger

As any old man with a cane in the cobbled streets of Rome, Zahir Shah would appear anonymous. But this is no ordinary stroll, and no ordinary man, for the dethroned king of Afghanistan is pondering the call by his countrymen to help lead a nation which he lost to foreign invaders 28 years ago.

He is one of the many lost Afghan sons scattered around the world - a link to a better past, and part of an irreplaceable education for a nation's future.

I am in the passenger seat of an anonymous truck, riding across Southern California's San Fernando Valley with Mr. Huvishka Mustamandy-Khan, co-founding member of the international Committee for the Salvation of the Cultural Heritage of Afghanistan. He suggests we go for some Indian food. Mustamandy has agreed to speak to Notes from the Road about his parents' role in the archaeological excavation of Afghanistan, and about his own childhood in Kabul.

"I was born in Afghanistan," he says, "but my dad's family is immediately related to Genghis Kahn," he confides. "Our ancestors come from Mongolia, whereas my mom was directly descended from the Prophet Mohammed by blood. Both of my parents were educated up through high school in Afghanistan, and afterwards they studied abroad."

"It was considered prestigious to study abroad," he continues, "so both my parents got their masters and Ph.D.'s outside. My dad got his Ph.D. at the University of Terino in Italy, and my mom studied in the U.K. and Australia and got her masters from Syracuse."

The Mustamandys, who come from higher ranking families, are insistent on the importance of education, "It is not like the caste system in India, but education makes a big difference."

Dr. Chaibai Mustamandy, Huvishka's father and the son of the governor (president) of Afghanistan in the 1950s, was elected Director General of Afghan Institute of Archaeology in the 1960's, where the family's archaeological legacy took root.

"In those days, archaeological excavations were done mainly by the French and the Italians. My dad studied around the world, learned ten languages and could speak in any of those languages without an accent. He became the first trained Afghan archeologist," Huvishka reminisces. "He was always a very classy dresser, a ladies man. Even in Italy, he always had the nicest suits, every single day he had the button-down shirt and slacks. Just a classy guy with a sense of humor. He always had these stories. He would tell me about putting spiders in the underwear drawers in the girl's dorms."

Dr. Mustamandy was far more than a classy renaissance man. He was the pre-eminent Afghan archaeologist who spearheaded a decades long series of excavations that shed light on a vast range of Central Asian culture and history. Huvishka describes how his father unearthed artifacts of Hellenist, Buddhist, Mongol, Bactrian and Gandharan influence, tales of today's Afghanistan.

His findings revealed a country of varied ethnicities, influences, landscapes and histories that most of the world is unaware exists. In 329 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan, but was unable to subdue the Afghan spirit, which constantly rebelled against the foreign invaders by heading to the mountains and striking from a distance.

"The Greeks weren't around for very long?" I asked.

"No, but the Greeks brought a lot of technology to Afghanistan, and they left behind coins and sculptures, influence."

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