The Lost Sons of Afghanistan (con.)

Erik Gauger

Dr. Mustamandy's most famous excavations are of a Hellene depiction of Hercules and of Hellen of Troy. "This earliest influence dates back to Norway," Huvishka explains, "because the Greek style was based on the Norse."

Circa 300 AD, Buddhist influence grew in Afghanistan, which is apparent in hundreds of artifacts uncovered by Dr. Mustamandy in the 1960s and 1970s. Huvishka describes the pieces as having a distinctly Asian quality to them. The Afghan Buddhists from the seventh century spent years looking for a perfect place to build (giant statues to worship Buddha.

"At first they were looking in the Hindu Kush mountains, but just because of how quickly the climate changes, they couldn't do it. But they also needed the rock foundation. They chose this particular spot (south of the Hindu Kush) because it was warm enough."

Dr. Mustamandy led the excavation of the giant buddhist statues; cleaning, uncovering, studying what would later become one of the greatest symbols of Central Asian heritage - 50 foot statues carved from shear cliff stone. Huvishka, who was three during the excavations, says, "I was scared to be out there. There were scorpions everywhere. I still have scars on my legs from being bitten. I remember being at the Buddha statue, I was scared of that thing, it was a huge monster. I couldn't stand by it alone, because I thought it would come alive."

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. 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 archeological 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 Chinese-Mongolian tribes, turned that prosperity into an artful age - one of the world's oldest 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 Shaw's nephew overthrew him as king and installed a puppet communist 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."

Three 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."

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