Afghan Artist Recounts the Day Kabul Fell
ArtLords, a grassroots movement of artists in the Afghan capital created murals and other art on blast-damaged walls. Omaid Sharifi, president and co-founder of ArtLords, was creating a mural on a wall in Kabul on August 15, 2021, when word spread that the Taliban had entered the city. He shares his experience of that day.
My name is Omaid Sharifi, and I was in Kabul [on] August 15th, 2021, when the Taliban conquered Kabul city.
It was 10 a.m. in the morning when a team of us from ArtLords, as a usual thing, we went to paint one of the walls in Kabul city.
We were halfway through around 12:30. The psyche of the people, the city, it did not look like a normal Kabul day. I saw a lot of people panicking on the street.
I asked them, “What is happening?” One of them told me that the Taliban are here in Kabul.
For a moment, I did not believe it. I said, “Really? Are the Taliban here in Kabul city?”
They said, “Yes, man, they are here. They have entered Kabul. There’s no fight back. Just leave. If you can, just leave.”
So, that is the moment that it really hit me.
The city, the people, nobody smiling, everybody running around, everybody on their phones, trying to make contact with their family members. I have five beautiful sisters, and all of them were in the city at that time.
They were out about their works in the streets, in the shops. So, I started calling my sisters and my female artists first to find out where they are.
Everybody was out somewhere in the city, and I was trying to find them and tell them to go home or go somewhere safe. And it was becoming very chaotic because the phone lines were not connecting as well. I thought at that moment, everybody was calling each other, and it was very difficult to reach somebody.
And then 2:30. Around this time, I got the news that the president had escaped. That fear could not let me sleep.
So, all of us are standing guard in the doors with whatever — our parents or brothers or relatives — all of us coming together. And I think for all of us who were forced to leave, displaced from our country, from Afghanistan, processing that trauma would take a long time.
“The psyche of the people, the city, it did not look like a normal Kabul day. I saw a lot of people panicking on the street.”
Omaid Sharifi, founder of ArtLords, an artists’ collective