"Our hope is to be able to return to Afghanistan one day and show that our music is not dead," the 19-year-old told AFP, holding his rubab, a traditional string instrument, a kind of lute, on his knees. inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Ramiz is one of 58 students at the National Institute of Music of Afghanistan (Anim), aged 13 to 21, based in the Portuguese cities of Braga and Guimaraes.
With his comrades, several teachers and part of their families, they were 273 refugees who arrived by plane in Lisbon on December 13, 2021, after leaving Afghanistan for fear of reprisals from the Taliban who banned non-music. religious.
"When the Taliban arrived at the gates of Kabul, it was clear that we had to leave," recalls Ahmad Sarmast, the director of the Anim, who did everything to evacuate the students and staff in an emergency. institute.
"The Afghan people are deprived of all access to music: the right to listen to music, to learn music, to play music", laments this 61-year-old man who lost part of his hearing in a Taliban attack in 2014.
An act of resistance
"Today, Afghanistan is a nation reduced to silence", victim of "a cultural and musical genocide", adds this specialist in Afghan music who has made it his mission to safeguard the musical heritage of his country and to revive in Portugal the school he founded in 2010.
Students from the National Institute of Music of Afghanistan with their instruments, at the Conservatory of Music in Braga, northern Portugal, March 5, 2021 © PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP/Archives
While waiting to find a place where she can be reborn, her students are welcomed to the music conservatory of Braga, where they continue to play music, as if they were performing an act of resistance.
"Every show at our school is a way of protesting against what is happening in Afghanistan", observes "Dr Sarmast", as his students call him, who performed at the beginning of March at a concert with the famous American violinist of Japanese origin Midori Goto.
"It's very good to be here because we are all together", testifies Shogufa, a 19-year-old percussionist who has shared a three-room apartment since the beginning of the year with another student in the neighborhood of the conservatory.
Thousands of kilometers from Kabul, Shogufa tries to take advantage of the freedom offered by this new life in Portugal.
In her free time, this Beethoven fan enjoys composing music, cooking, going out for a burger or working out with her classmates at a neighborhood gym.
"Continue our studies"
While women are not allowed to study in Afghanistan, in Portugal "we are lucky to go to school every day" to "continue our studies", underlines the young woman with dark hair pulled back, still traumatized by the images of musical instruments destroyed and burned by the Taliban in her music school in Kabul.
Ramiz, 19, a music student from the National Institute of Music of Afghanistan, plays the rubab, an Afghan instrument, at the Conservatory of Music in Braga, northern Portugal on March 5, 2021 © PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP/ Archives
Ramiz, the rubab player, is also grateful to be able to continue to indulge his passion, but his gaze darkens when he talks about his family back home.
"I talk to my mother every day! She needs to hear my voice every night before falling asleep," testifies the young man whose father and two brothers are also musicians.
He hopes they will soon be able to join him in Portugal because their life in Afghanistan has become "too dangerous".
Shogufa also says she is "very worried" for her parents and her six brothers and sisters living in a small village and whose daily life boils down to "staying at home... without plans for the future".
However, "being a refugee abroad is very difficult", continues the percussionist who arrived in Braga after spending more than seven months in a former military hospital in Lisbon, a stay under the sign of precariousness.
"My big dream is to go back to Afghanistan one day, she says. I'm sure things will work out... and the Taliban won't stay in power forever."
© 2023 AFP