AFGHANISTAN, VIA OPIUM ADDICTS

Lucy Gordon’s documentary film, "This is My Destiny", is a travelogue through northern Afghanistan, a sort of guided tour led by various opium addicts from several corners of the country.

Shot by Bahareh Hosseini, the film gets right up close to men, women and children as they smoke, inject and eat the drug, and Hosseini’s camera doesn’t flinch when these addicts run out of opium and reveal their desperation. While opium addiction in poppy-filled Afghanistan is not new news, current statistics are staggering. A United Nations report assessed that the amount of Afghan land used for opium is now larger than the corresponding total for coca cultivation in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined.

Gordon, a British director, interviews mothers in northern villages who use the drug to calm their crying, hungry babies. She also spends time with long-term addicts in Kabul who seek help from a poorly funded clinic there. One man, who suffered a face-altering gun-shot wound while working as a presidential security guard, started smoking opium when someone in the hospital room with him said it would take his pain away and help him sleep.

Gordon’s film screened recently at London’s Tricycle Theatre during The Great Game: Afghanistan, a four-day festival of plays, films, music, panel discussions and art exhibitions. During a Q&A after the film, Hosseini offered specific details about some of the remote villages they travelled to: “The only thing I saw the whole time we were there was an onion, and a few chick peas and tea. They had almost nothing.” This is one of the film's key points: opium sets its users free, temporarily, but then traps them into becoming drug-addicted, non-productive members of their respective communities, however small or remote. The drug is both relief from and the root of many of Afghanistan's problems.

Gordon documented her day-to-day experiences in Afghanistan (her husband was on assignment in Kabul for the British Embassy) on her blog, which she excerpted for the Times of London. With impressive insight, she offers a wealth of small details about what it was like roaming about a place like Kabul in 2007 and 2008. For example, after watching the finals of "Afghan Star", the country's version of "American Idol", Gordon wrote:

What an interesting juxtaposition of fledgeling popular culture only metres away from chanting mobs of protesters. Angry mullahs at the bottom of the hill, pop idols crooning at the top. Teenagers with greased-back hair, tight jeans or white suits were jostling for space in the aisles and performing on the stage. Quite a lot of the girls in the audience were wearing baseball caps on top of their headscarves.

One woman from Kandahar was knocked out in the semi-finals but allowed to sing at this event. These women risk their lives by competing on national TV. One of the Afghan Star contestants now travels everywhere with a bodyguard. The risks for ordinary Afghans trying to make it to the top far outweigh the risks for foreigners here.

The subjects of "This is My Destiny" agreed to be filmed so long as this documentary was never screened in Afghanistan, given extreme social prejudice against opium addiction. Gordon and Hosseini trained an Afghan film team to shoot their own documentary on the subject; a film that, while surely less revealing, has been screened in the country, according to Gordon.

~ GARY MOSKOWITZ

Picture credit: geishaboy500 (via Flickr)