“I just started this painting of (a) beautiful girl as usual, because I love to show the beautiful sides of my people, my culture and our beautiful kids over there,” she mentioned. “I started sketching and just painting, and colored the eyes. After a couple days … they took over Kabul and I had such pain in my heart.”
Rahmani and her household got here to America 4 years in the past on Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs). Her father was working for an American firm. Now Rahmani goes to civil engineering college within the US, and enjoys artwork as a pastime.
Prior to transferring, Rahmani had additionally been taking civil engineering courses in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, the place she lived most of her life.”I’m really sorry for my college, and the girls that were working with me over there,” she mentioned. “They’re really frustrated and really in a bad situation. They don’t know what’s going to happen to their future.”
Rahmani mentioned lots of the younger ladies she went to varsity with had been working in places of work however are actually unemployed and struggling. They have instructed her they can not put on what they need and have to be escorted by a person when leaving their properties.
As Rahmani glanced at her portray, her voice was stuffed with emotion.
Sara Rahmani’s picture represents her homeland’s fall to the Taliban. Credit: sara_official_artgallery/Instagram
In the underside left of the portray she integrated the colours of Afghanistan’s nationwide flag. Two ladies are pictured carrying conventional gown, with braids and jewellery displaying the nation’s wealthy tradition, Rahmani mentioned. One is performing a conventional dance that Afghans usually carry out at particular occasions akin to weddings, whereas the opposite is writing “peace” in Farsi, utilizing the black a part of the Afghan flag as a blackboard.
Rahmani then pointed to the lady within the heart of the picture.
“This is the portrait of the girl that I started, and it really turned sad,” she mentioned. “You see the good side, when she has a splinter of light — it’s all about the good side of my Afghanistan before the Taliban took over our country. She’s a happy girl and she has dirty hands from playing with other kids.”
Pointing to the yellow flower on the prime, Rahmani mentioned: “And this is a beautiful flower that she’s getting from her grandpa.” The scarf on the lady’s head is inexperienced — the colour of peace, pleasure and happiness for Afghans, she defined. “It’s a blue sky full of peace, sunny days, happiness and the birds flying instead of army airplanes.”
Looking up from her photos, she mentioned: “To be in America, I feel better here. But at the same time it’s not your country. You feel strange. Your language is different, your culture. Everything is different, even if you have peace of mind financially … something is missing in your heart — that is your homeland. Nothing can replace that.”
Tears shaped and commenced trickling down Rahmani’s cheeks. “I want the world to know that … there are innocent people who are getting killed. They lose mothers, they lose kids … when is this going to end?”
Rahmani mentioned she now thinks of her household and mates who stay within the nation. “All these ten days, I lost count, we’re just focusing to get our families out of Afghanistan. It’s horrible over there.”