Ask most #Afghans what they think of Ahmad Zahir, and they will probably tell you that he is the King of Afghan music. They will probably play you a song of his and dissect each lyric. If you looked interested enough for their approval, they might even play you three hours worth of his songs. Some even call Ahmad Zahir the “Afghan Elvis.” After all, they would say he is by far the most influential singer in Afghanistan from the 1960’s onward. To many Afghans, Ahmad Zahir was more than just a musician. He was a cultural phenomenon during his lifetime and his influence continues to be transmitted to younger generations of Afghans my age. His death was very much linked to Afghan political history, and the collective memory experienced by the first wave of Afghan diaspora who fled the country during the 1979-1986 Soviet invasion. As a second generation Afghan-American, I wanted to take the opportunity to retell the Ahmad Zahir story through the eyes of my father, who not only lived in Afghanistan when Zahir rose to prominence — starting from the late 1960s — but was also a classmate of the future king during their formative years a decade earlier. While I remember falling asleep to Ahmad Zahir music as a child, it never struck me as something I wanted to explore further. As I grow older and reach the age of when my parents left Afghanistan, however, I feel a sense of unresolved fascination with my parents’ generation, memories, and earlier lives. I hoped that this interview with my father could develop a better understanding of his adolescence, and connect me to exactly what my father saw as his “homeland,” unsure what it really meant to him, through his eyes. Although my father’s recollections of Ahmad Zahir will be used to formulate a more encompassing history, it is only one of the many perspectives that inform a collective memory of Afghanistan. Familial oral histories play an important role in the construction of identity, especially in communities that have been displaced from their former homes. The acts of recollection and transmission are a shared experience across generations and geographic locales, as my father’s memories of Afghanistan have become integral to my own understandings of the past and present. My interview with him led me to both personalize and deconstruct Ahmad Zahir’s legacy, understanding why and how my father and other Afghans his age hold onto Ahmad Zahir so dearly. Ahmad Zahir’s life – and just as important, his death – continues to play in the hearts of many in the Afghan diaspora.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 10:10:21 +0000
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