Professor Christian Reder
“The fact that the globally influential Sufi poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī (1207–1273) originated from Balkh near Mazar-e Sharif in the north of present-day Afghanistan—considered a ‘cradle of Persian culture’—early on connected the literary world with this region. It is also the place where the mythical religious founder Zoroaster (Zarathustra) and the legendary 10th-century poet Rābia Balkhī were active.”
In Western literature, it was the young Rudyard Kipling who first made the country the setting of his laconic tale The Man Who Would Be King from 1888. In it, two British adventurers penetrate the remote region of Nuristan, declare themselves gods on the strength of their modern weapons, corrupt the tribal leaders, and imagine they have created “a damned fine Nation.” From this, “an Empire” was to arise, equal in rank to Russia and the British Viceroy of India. They were convinced they could quickly civilize their subjects: “They’ve grown to be English.” Anything else was inconceivable.
When, contrary to their resolution to avoid any sexual entanglements, they begin to desire women, this destroys their reputation as supernatural beings. A revolt breaks out; one falls into a ravine, the other is crucified, survives, but dies as a deranged beggar.
The barely thirty pages of his short story were enough for Kipling to portray “nation building” and “empire” as civilizing fantasies that collapse through the madness of their own overreach. Flexible in their beliefs and pragmatic in everyday life, the indigenous people—who can only be controlled temporarily—are not deceived in the long run. The intruders abruptly lose their supposed superiority, which proves to be fictional.
Although this can be read as a bitter irony directed at versions of nation-building, Kipling (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1907) primarily saw it as an almost insoluble dilemma. His 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden” became an important guiding motif of imperialism, portraying it as the civilizing mission of the “white man.”
Robert Byron (1905–1941) took a more subtle approach after extensive travels in Central Asia in his widely acclaimed book The Road to Oxiana: Visiting Persia and Afghanistan. He described Kabul in 1934 as a pleasant, unpretentious city with wide, shaded avenues and wonderful gardens. In character, the city could just as well be located somewhere in the Balkans—in the best sense of the word. Cinemas and alcohol had only recently been banned again. However, everyone in the country seemed to take the greatest joy in roses. Traveling through Oxiana, the land along the Amu Darya, the Oxus of antiquity, from northern Afghanistan to Kabul and Peshawar, his ostentatiously art-loving gaze turns this diary account into a depiction of ruins.
He dedicates long passages to things that are decaying or already gone. Ruins, as relics of past greatness, consistently made what came later appear insignificant. Precise historical details demonstrate how much he was interested in careful research into remote or obscure subjects. His primary concern was specific objects, nature, and artificiality. People—especially locals—are for him more peripheral figures, mere custodians of this and that. In one of his few time-related statements, he assumes that Afghanistan will not submit to the pervasive nationalism spreading everywhere in such an “unworthy” way as all other countries.
“Before Afghans allowed themselves to become infected by it, they would fight, he said cryptically. In any case, they would not abandon their traditions for ‘a heap of technical stuff.’ He was impressed by their resilience. Material relics are, for him, material for refined prose. For him, who died in 1941 on a torpedoed ship, the world was a stage; its musealization was far too little advanced.”
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