Beauty

People often ask me which is the most beautiful country I’ve ever visited. It’s a tough question, not only because it requires a certain level of subjectivity (what is beauty anyway?) but also because the expected answer is the synthesis of various details to produce a unified, homogenous whole. If I say Thailand is the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen, then I gloss over the poverty in Sungai Kolok in the south and the disintegration of the hill tribe cultures in Chiang Rai. Or if I say Costa Rica, I exclude Pakistan – a country with breathtaking scenes. I could say Turkey, but only at the expense of Iran; or perhaps Lebanon tops the aesthetic scale but then I remember Italy and France and of course Canada. I remember one incident when I was backpacking through southern Pakistan. I was in a town called Sehwan Sharif, where Lal Shabhaz Qalandar, the great Sufi saint is buried. It was a hot morning choked with dust carried by a wind that seemed to rise up out of the fires of hell itself. I was walking around near the Indus River, with my tripod and cameras looking for a shot that would be emblematic of the kind of deep spirituality that resides in desert cultures. Walking past a meager graveyard, I noticed an old man dressed in rags sitting under a sad old Pipal tree. He was waving at me to come over, the loose skin under his arms flapping wildly. I went over to him and he said something in Sindhi, a language I didn’t understand. I tried to explain this to him in Urdu and English but he apparently spoke neither. Instead, he motioned for me to sit beside him and reached over to a kettle which he gingerly placed on what was left of his morning fire. By the looks of this little spot under the tree, the old man lived here. This was his home. There was a mat behind us, woven from straw with frayed ends and a few holes worn into it that likely served as his bed. We sat on a faded red cloth stained over years of exposure to the harsh desert climate, around the fire with a few misshapen pots and cracked dishes scattered here and there. This must have been his kitchen. So, in a sense, I’d been invited into this old man’s home and we were sitting around the kitchen table waiting for the tea to boil. When it did, he poured me a cup. Then he rose, picked up a broom that had been leaning against the Pipal tree and began sweeping the dust off the graves. It seemed to me to be a futile activity; there was so much dust blowing around that as soon as a spot was clean, more dust would immediately invade it, like flies pouncing on split milk. I drank my tea and watched this old, hunched man with creaking bones battle against the elements, at first with amusement but eventually, as the power of his determination sank in, with awe. When I felt it was time to go, I stood up, gathered up my equipment and left. Not a word was exchanged but I think their was something more meaningful that was passed on: at that moment I found the spirituality I was looking for. And even though I knew it was something that could never be captured on film, I also realized that this was its own kind of beauty.

There have been other moments of profound beauty, both physical and metaphysical, in every part of the world I’ve been: the waterfall and lagoon carved into a cliff face in Chiang Rai, the primary boreal forest on the north shore of Lake Superior in Canada, Ali’s self-sacrifice in Iraq, the old man in northern Pakistan who continued his trek up the Ultar Peak in search of the Water of Life when I was too exhausted to move. The list goes on. So in the end, I don’t think I can say any one country is the most beautiful. Every country has its share of beauty.

And its ugliness.

Afghanistan included. Afghanistan begs the world to see its beauty. ‘Here,’ its people say, ‘is where the Garden of Eden used to be. Come, see our valleys and streams, our orchards and gardens. Climb our majestic mountains and rest in our homes. We don’t have much, but what we do have we will share with you. Come, see for yourself: we are more than guns and mortars.’

Afghanistan's Winter Wonderland