Paiwand and the present and future.
The last session with Paiwand was the most successful in terms of a feeling of relaxed engagement with both the work and each other. Since we had already done one wrapping session, the request to write down and wrap three things they valued in their present life and three things they wish for for the future was more easily responded to. It was on this session that some of the boys started to really open up about their experiences. They mainly offered up activities based on places that they are connected to here (none of these related to being in the house, interestingly) and I asked them to think of objects that could symbolise these activities. For example goggles and weights, a Koran, mobile phones, a pen from college etc.
The wild card were the three objects from one boy who had been reluctant to engage but agreed to contribute if I drew a ‘royal picture’ of him. He hadn’t liked the profile portrait I had done of him the week before and wanted a better one! He offered a drawing of a helicopter, attached to a story about meeting Massoud, the Northern Alliance General . Secondly, a washing machine – initially it seemed that he just appreciated being able to wash his clothes so easily, but then a story broke out from the others that they are always saying he should be put in the washing machine because he is ill so much, to ‘clean him up’. . Quite a few of the boys have health problems, mainly stress related, due to their unstable circumstances and its lucky that Paiwand are there to monitor and make sure they get treatment. His last object was a picture of an apple tree. I particularly liked this combination of objects and am going to seek out or make miniature models of these things- a model helicopter, an model tree and a dolls house washing machine that I can wrap and add to the collection.
When it came to them thinking of three things that they would like for the future, the one was caused a lot of hilarity – ideas ranged from ‘a wife, a passport and a ferrari’ to peace, a home and becoming a mechanic.
One of them, a very reflective and melancholic young man, talked about walking to Iran from Afghanistan , it took him three days. He left with a group of other boys and was the only one to reach the Uk of that group. This person’s future object took a long time of reflection to emerge. He finally turned to me and said ‘I just need my mother’.
He chose to wrap her in silver grey because she is ‘old’. It turns out she is 37 and has had 6 children.. These are boys-turning-men who have been sent away by their families to keep them safe from conflict and hardship and live a ‘better life’ (and yes, economics is intrinsically part of this) – much like the way children were sent out of cities in World War 2. Behind all these boys is most probably the wrenching emotion that a mother /father may feel in knowing that they may never see their son again.In some cases these boys are orphans and don’t even have that. I know this happened within my own family to Iranian aunts and uncles who sent their sons and daughters to the UK, to live with us following the revolution. One of these became my sister through adoption and her mother, my aunt, died in a plane crash the following year. She had been on a plane (suspected hijack) from Mashad to Tehran to say goodbye to her older son who was to join his two siblings in the UK. He never left Tehran after that..I guess I am trying to find an emotional point of identification with this current phenomenon of young men being sent here from Afghanistan. To look at the human motivation, which is a parent’s desire for their first born to experience a better life, at the expense of not seeing them turn into men.
