Changing the narrative around Afghanistan
Atlantic Fellow Durkhanai Ayubi, a first-generation migrant from Afghanistan with an acute awareness of her family's and her country's history, has described a sense of great devastation and collective grief for Afghans around the world following recent events in her country. Now a celebrated restaurateur living in Australia, she staged fundraising dinners for emergency relief. Here is her update. As well as raising a huge amount of money for grassroots organizations serving Afghanistan, she has started to shift the narrative, from feeling compassion for the Afghans to a conversation about accountability for this tragedy. Her events and quotes appeared in Australian media.
"As a family and through our Parwana restaurants, we held two fundraising dinners. In total, 650 people attended - a cross-section of my community, the general public, political leaders, Indigenous community, community organisations, and local and national media. We raised AUD $200,000. The money is being sent to those within Afghanistan - who face total devastation of their everyday lives, and where a country stands on the brink of the edge of collapse under extremist rule. The three NGOs we're distributing via are Mahboba's Promise, Afghan-Australian Development Organisation, and Human Appeal. We tried to select organizations that are as grassroots as possible, and which directly serve the community's needs in various parts of Afghanistan. I believe that a part of the reason why these events were so well embraced by the broader community is that they were underpinned by an engagement with the depth of the cultural history of Afghanistan, upon the memory and stories of its own people, and on utilizing the experience of being a displaced person to act as a conduit between worlds that are often presented as irreconcilable.
"The ethos behind the events is that although as a displaced person, now so far from my homeland, I could never understand the full scope of the trauma unfolding within Afghanistan presently, I can stand alongside Afghanistan and those within by being committed to shifting the global dialogue around Afghanistan back to them. I am motivated by a strong need to see immediate help, yes, but also a long-term shifting of the conversations and bringing words to the gaping silences around Afghanistan, built up through long histories of excising Afghan people from our own existence, which have brought us to this moment of travesty now. I also am moved to create the context which shares how what is happening in Afghanistan is not peripheral to the rest of the world, but a reflection of collective structures which have been normalised to the point of invisibility. The Afghan experience has global resonances, even if that is yet to be fully acknowledged. My future plans are to hold spaces from time to time that can keep holding a broad cross-section of my community while continuing to write and speak, to shift the conversation, and to keep creating the necessary context around Afghanistan, and around us all collectively."
Durkhanai is part of the Affinity Group that created the Narratives of Displacement website, which now carries a page about Afghanistan.
Click here to contact Durkhanai
