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4. Afghanistan
Herat -
Kabul -
Bamiyan -
Khyber-Pass
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Khyber Pass
It was a tropical-like climate in Jalalabad and one could even find those delicious small bananas.
It went ever higher up the Hindukush. The mountain passes we had to climb became metaphors to me. On these grounds which have seen many a battle I thought about the difficulties which I already had overcome and about those which laid ahead.
I thought about my own junk-story four years ago. Two years long I was addicted to Morphine and finally I was sent to a Psychatric ward because of a falsificated prescription. Here one was more restricted than in a prison. Together in a house with sexualmurders and other more or less dangerous patients on a dry detoxication. The routine of the day was limited of waiting for the meals and two hours of television or poolbillard in the afternoon. As I once expressed the desire to paint it was rejected with the words:
"You could eat the colors!"
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"White cold walls for sweet numb sheets!
Lonely screaming halls for dazing flower treats!
Stone-cold-truth for celebrating our youth!
The gentle rain is gone -
green ice creeps all over me!
Mother! Please hush me now and tell me -
where I've gone wrong?"
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George Zoomar Gould
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"Stone-cold-truth"
Digital image by George Zoomar Gould
Poem by Adrian Ouarar
Into this Lithargie burst a congress of probation assistants. During a meeting they expressed the desire to become acquainted with some junkies. Three of us went to an aula filled with hundreds of strange people. I arrived last. I was sitting on a lonely chair in front of a great audience. To my left the leading professor sat behind a large desk. Among other things I told them of the missing possibilities of being creative. During my descriptions I was interrupted again and again by Professor Werner. But my listeners knocked on the desks and spurred me on to tell further. It seemed that the two guys before me didn't dare to tell the truth.
Two weeks later a probation assistant of Cologne came to visit me. She brought me cigarettes and a news magazine, which were thoroughly scanned beforehand.
"We noticed you and we would be glad to help you."
“Thanks. You feel so lonely here. I'm not a criminal. I only falsified a prescription. People will get out of here “clean” but most of them will be addicted again. Nobody gets out of here without damage. I would like to express my feelings. Here you don't get even a pencil or a ball-point pen. I don't want to talk about colors at all."
“I know that and I will try to find a solution. I'll come again next week.”
One week later she welcomed me smiling.
“I know a lecturer of the College of Fine Arts. Perhaps we could get a special permission for you apply for the entrance exam. Maybe you'd be allowed to paint then, but probably under supervision.”
I laughed in tears and replyed with wet eyes:
“So that I can't eat the colors.”
We had to laugh for a long while.
“That would be really super. I don't know whether I am really so good, whether I want to study at all, but only the possibility to paint sounds great. That's sheer madness.”
We embraced eachother as we said goodbye!
“If we are already in such a madhouse."
After three days she came back with acrylic colors, colored pencils, brushes, paper and primed canvases.
“Now show us what you are able to do!"
"Now it's a challenge. I won't disappoint you."
Six weeks before the examination was to start I was allowed to live out my creativity almost alone in the common room. The music was provided by my mother. She bought me a tape recorder. With my modest abilities to paint I dared myself to undertake difficult subjects such as racism and environmental pollution. The message that my trial would take place two weeks after the examination supported my motivation and my concentration. It became clear to me that a study place could bring me back my liberty. My efforts were recompenced. I passed the examination and was condemned to exactly the served five months.
Surrounded by new friends and with a new task I enjoyed gained liberty. At the end of the second term everyone selected a field of activity and had to make an application work. I chose stage design. During the last weeks I read Indian fairy tales. So I selected one of them and began to work on a model for a splitted revolving stage. On one side there was a palace built on one column (because the king feared an assassination attempt) and on the other side a jungle. I studied Indian architecture and the flora and fauna. The kings palace I manufactured from primed hard plastic which I covered with gypsum. During the work on the jungle I became acquainted with Fritz and his friends. They wanted to buy a bus in order to sell it in Afghanistan and to finance with the profit a future trip to India and were searching for another travelcompanion. Spontaneously I decided to ride along with them. We bought an old police bus on which we installed the railing of a fire-brigade car. That was the start to my first morning-land journey.
As a junkie into a Psychatric ward and thereby to art -
and through a stagedesign to India.
Now I was 'on the road' again. Shortly before India. The two Opiumpipes in Kabul were a test for me. The feeling I used to be addicted to nowadays I disliked. I passed the test as expected. Now I had it for higher consciousness levels.
further
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Adrian Ouarar
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