Fieldnotes on Humanity

Nothing compares to the happiness when you receive your first postcard from the country that you have love for. I have been to Germany a few times and upon every visit, I learned something new, something real and serious. I have heard stereotypes about Germans being austere in their mannerism. That may be true, not only about Germans but about a lot of people in the United States and around the world. But what I experienced and learned during the time I spent in different cities in Germany was unique. I found people who were serious in their promises, honest in speaking the their minds, forthcoming when asked for help, and beyond all that, sincere in their relationship. Germans also have stereotypes about Americans, and one of them is  oberflächlich, which means superficial. It might be true to some extent, but again it could be said about any people or culture anywhere that we know nothing or know very little about them. Even that little information which is usually from TVs...

The title may a little surprise you. You may ask yourself, what happened to Nasim that he ended up prison in Berlin. Maybe you will think that he is suspected of something because he comes from a country that provides 95% of opium to the world, and plus, there is a war going on. I am in Kabul now, this post had to be posted already, but it was missing somewhere my computer. I was invited by the GTZ as a photographer for a photography workshop on November 7 to 14. There were six other photographers from other countries; Jodi Bieber from South Africa, Dörthe Boxberg from Germany, Stefan Erber from Germany, Elena Koktanek from Germany, Michael Tsegaye from Ethiopia, Leonel Vasquez from Colombia and two workshop leaders: Ralf Bäcker and Jörn Neumann from Germany. Before going to the workshop in Berlin I had been in Italy where i received my freedom of expression award from Information Safety and Freedom (ISF) in Siena . The workshop subject was “Developing security and security d...

I just came back from L'Aquila , the capital of Abruzzo region. Today, there was a photo exhibition and one of my Photos was also exhibited among 50 photos from different photographers there. The association which called themselves “ the Cultural Association “L’Idea di Clèves” was born and developed in the provincial reality of L’Aquila ” organizes this competition every year. This year they had two categories, prize for online competition and the one which jury had to choose among 200 pictures. The photo which was selected by the jury was a red lip and with white face and side red colored. I didn’t understand why the jury selected this picture as the winner as I found lot of great shots there. I have doubt nepotism is so strong and influenced here in Italy. I am tired, my domain kabuli.net is expired and my kabuli.org is still not working, it was hacked before and a few days before the data moved to a new server but the DNS is not fixed I don’t know why. I wrote several times to ...

-------- I am in Kabul now. Over the last few weeks I was in Hamburg , Germany , for a Summer school on freedom and responsibilities in media. What a wonderful occasion and what wonderful people from 18 countries who I’ve met there. I miss all of them now and the only thing that remains with me are memories and pictures. If this course was held in Kabul , it might not have been so successful and interesting. In Germany I had to learn every step, I had to learn about the people, cities and culture. I came back with lots of information and memories that I am now sharing with my friends who are coming to meet me. One of the topics we had to work on was ‘dealing with the past’. Working with 8 people from different countries in one group on how we can deal with the past is not such an easy job. In most cases, it is taboo to write about the past, or it might not be so secure, or even dangerous. In a situation like Afghanistan, it is very difficult to write about criminals and the warlord...