Tonight I went to see Safar e Ghandehar, which played to a full house at the New Park – when I arrived, only four seats were left. A moving, memorable film, that really illustrates the plight of the people of Afghanistan living under the Taleban, especially the women. In particular, I found the scene where a man went to a Red Cross field centre to collect artificial legs for his wife to be particularly moving. He wouldn’t accept the first pair offered to him, and insisted on taking another pair. He’d brought along her burka, and held it over the legs before a mirror so that he could see that the legs were the right length. He also had the shoes that she had worn when they were married, and tried them on the artificial legs. It was very touching – she had lost her legs to a landmine.
The field centre itself was populated by dozens of men who had also lost their legs – and these were actually people who had lost their legs, playing themselves. The sight of them running across the sands on their crutches towards the pairs of legs being parachuted in was an amazing scene that you are unlikely to ever see in any other film.
Highly recommended.
Followed by a last orders beer in the Nags, with a sighting of Terry and a brief chat with Clare.
separating the wanted from the unwanted