Place of mourning becomes place of music
May 14 2004 at 09:00AM
Kabul - Tens of thousands of people poured into Kabul's stadium, once used by the Taliban as an execution site, on Thursday night to watch a concert by an Afghan singer who has returned home after years in exile.

The extremely popular crooner Farhad Darya, who has lived in Europe since the early 1990s, performed his first concert since he returned to Kabul earlier this year to an audience of men and women.

More than 30.000 Kabul citizens, most of whom remember the stadium as the site of public executions during the Taliban regime, attended the concert of traditional and patriotic Afghan music.

Shamsullah, a 45-year-old school teacher who was once forced to witness the Taliban chopping off the hand of a criminal at the stadium, said the show was a sign of "all these changes in our lives".

 
'People are happy, they are dancing, we have a concert'
"I can't believe it, exactly in the same place, two years ago I was witnessing a very sad incident - a man, even if he was criminal, had his hand chopped," the teacher who was accompanying two of his teenage sons said.
 
"I can't believe it, exactly in the same place, two years ago I was witnessing a very sad incident - a man, even if he was criminal, had his hand chopped," the teacher who was accompanying two of his teenage sons said.

"Look now, we have fun - people are happy, they are dancing, we have a concert," he said.

Another man, who said he witnessed the execution of a woman who murdered her husband, said: "That was the darkest period of our life under the Taliban - but now it is over, you see we have music."

"I was forced to come here to see them (Taliban) killing people - now I eagerly came to see a concert, that's fantastic," Imal Ahmad, a student at Kabul University said.

The Taliban, whose fundamentalist regime was deposed by a United States military offensive in December 2001 for harboring al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, executed people in public under extremist Islamic laws.

   
'I eagerly came to see concert, that's fantastic'
The Kabul concert is the first of a series of shows Darya will perform around the country to raise money to build a recording studio for Afghan singers. - Sapa-AFP
   
 
Home  |  Bio  |  Discography  |  Gallery  |  Tours  |  News  |  Press  |  Awards  |  Messages  |  Contact

©2002 Web Design & Maintenance by TriVision Studios. All Rights Reserved.
www.trivision.tv