A Visit to the Museum

Below the now-destroyed and gutted Darulaman Palace, the former quarters of the king, one reaches the modest entrance to the National Museum of Afghanistan. Built in 1919, the overscaled but institutional building was the administrative centre for the Palace. A Louis XV dresser holds a few advertisements for internet sites and antiquated travel brochures. It hearkens to the palace or the museum’s previous sense of elegance. Classified ads for houses to rent—namely for the few visitors that come on their day off from protecting important people. Postcards crowd the dusty windows of the ticket takers that bespeak the museum’s former glories. Blurry images of Gandharan reliefs and wooden Nuristani carvings are taped haphazardly on the windows here and behind you in the “gift shop” now storage office. 50 cents admission.

The quarried stone flooring is now being replaced on the steps leading to the ground and upper halls. At the centre of the foyer, an enormous bowl limned with kufic inscriptions and instances of rough edges from recent conservation balances on a narrow brick pedestal. Only two plexiglass cases are seen on either side with exactly four sculptures: all ancient and elegant instances of a quasi-Greek/Buddhist aesthetic. The downturn of an aquiline nose, the cascade of folds in dark grey schist and sandstone are characteristics which typically herald collections of ancient materials. Here however, they idol quietly in the corner lit by the reflection of light off the slick stone floors. Background images in both cases show the pile of fragments from which these objects were extracted—and only five months ago were reconstructed.

Up the grand but utilitarian staircase to a small curtained room where the other items on display are kept: wooden images created in Nuristan province, on the border of Pakistan, by a loose society of persons typically labelled as “nonbelievers” as they did not become Muslims until 109 years ago. Aztec in profile, the carvings of ancestor figures stand in riposte to what is more commonly known in Islamic design, that being the creation of images without the human or animal figure. The complexity of defined geometries contrasts with more organic motifs that outline the periphery of the forms. But here, these sizable creations along with their counterparts that are carved as house columns, astound not for their representations but that they survived.

I am told there are numerous treasures in the basement waiting to be unveiled. A large trove of objects is being returned from safekeeping by the Swiss in June-July and still-crated objects with Amsterdam stamps line the empty hallways. A portion of an 8th century mihrab is situated in a cold alcove, its thick reliefs now shadows. But as the only framed photos in the building attest—the rocketing of the Museum by the Taliban which left the roof and portions of the building in ruin—there is still more to be done to recast these empty spaces for display into viable tributes to Afghanistan’s cultural legacy.

Perhaps this sense of emptiness is reminder enough.