An Afghan’s Life Story as Performance Art

The setting telegraphed that this was not a standard concert. A grand piano and bass drum shared the Distler Auditorium stage with a podium and a simple table draped with a black cloth, a microphone in the middle.

Sola Mahfouz strode to the podium and with a flourish began tuning the frequencies on an imaginary radio just as she had as a kid in Kandahar in the very early 2000s. 

“Salamona, da London de aw tase da BBC Pashto ta khparawani ghawaz niwali de. This is London, and you are listening to BBC Pashto,” she proclaimed. 

“No, wrong station. Wrong empire. Crackle...static....” In a different accent: “This is the Voice of America, and you are listening to our program on how to bring democracy to Afghanistan—one bomb at a time. No, still the wrong station. Crackle...static.... Ah—finally!” Mahfouz slipped into a hip DJ persona, announcing the presence of Radio Global Kandahar.

The sounds of war exploded on stage, courtesy of thunderous booms from the big bass drum, while Chloe Nemes, A26, leaned into the piano and pounded on the chords and Melinda Tian, A27, played the discordant notes of their composition “Bomb and Resonances (1)”. 

These were the opening minutes of a production, created by Mahfouz and more than a dozen collaborators, many in the Tufts Department of Music, that recounted the young woman’s life in—and journey out of—Taliban-era Afghanistan.

“When I think about Afghanistan, I think about my mother,” Sola Mahfouz said. “And as a result, my relationship with Afghanistan has changed. I don’t see it as a country. I see it as a mother who is hurting.” Photo: Andy Kwok

Largely self-educated, through persistence and luck Mahfouz escaped and got a college degree in the U.S., where she ended up doing quantum physics research at Tufts. She wrote about her early life in her 2023 memoir Defiant Dreams. 

Last winter, she was starting a novel set in her home country when she stumbled upon Time’s Echo, a book about music, war, and memory that resonated with her. She found that the author, Jeremy Eichler, was the John McCann Assistant Professor of Music at Tufts. She got in touch, and ended up sitting in on his class Sounds of War and Memory. 

That soon led to a connection with John McDonald, longtime professor of music composition, and they hatched an ambitious and radical plan: a musical performance to tell Mahfouz’s life story.

McDonald was teaching the class Composition Practicum: Event Making as Compositional Practice, and thought this would be the perfect real-world test for his students, to create an event and fill it with newly composed music. They called it “Radio Global Kandahar.”

“It’s a biography, but in the form of a radio show, in the form of a concert,” said McDonald.

That’s how Mahfouz, McDonald, and a dozen collaborators found themselves at Distler Auditorium on a Friday in late fall for the Tufts Composers New at Noon series. 

An Afghan in the Wider World

Julia Soojin Cavallaro, AG26, a composer  and classically trained singer, played Sola as a youth, questioning the meaning of existence and wondering about her chances of a different life.

At one point, as the story moved to Sola seeking a visa at the U.S. embassy in Kabul to study in the U.S., a stern man came from the back of the auditorium toward the seats, brusquely demanding to see the program held by an audience member. He glared at it, declared “Rejected!,” stamped the program in red, and moved to other audience members, who were similarly rebuffed.

Joshua Rajman tells Julia Soojin Cavallaro, playing Sola, that she is not getting a visa to travel to America. Photo: Andy Kwok

Soon Joshua Rajman, A25, performance artist and composer, was on stage, behind the desk, rapping on it with angry rhythm, repeating in powerful cadences “I-don’t-think-you-are-going-to-America-to-study!” Soojin Cavallaro played the crushed Sola, her hopes dashed.

Interspersed through the performance were recordings of Mahfouz’s grandfather reciting poetry in Pashto (recorded recently by Mahfouz’s brother-in-law). Some of the music also evoked Afghanistan, including an improvisation on the setar, a narrow, long-necked four string Persian lute, by Iranian composer/performer Yasaman Ghodsi, AG22.  

Periodically Mahfouz came back on stage in her guise as a DJ for Radio Global Kandahar, melding in and out with Soojin Cavallaro in her role as Sola, who talked about physics and soon was questioning her role in the world.

Qudrat Wasefi performs an excerpt of “Fall Days.” Photo: Andy Kwok

“I focus on storytelling and what it means to be an Afghan in the global world, and not that essentialized Afghan story, of women in burkas,” said Mahfouz later. “I also didn’t want to over-translate everything. Too often we go with the tropes. If you treat the other human who is sitting there with you as someone who is intelligent, then you can be who you are. The human heart is one.”

“When I think about Afghanistan, I think about my mother,” Mahfouz added. “And as a result, my relationship with Afghanistan has changed. I don’t see it as a country. I see it as a mother who is hurting.”

Nothing to Worship

After a guitar solo by Liam Arnold (“Improv Fantasy on Sneha’s Background Music”), Soojin Cavallaro gave an emotional speech, recounting a dream Sola has about her mother. 

“In my dreams, I see my mother hugging me back. I ask, ‘Moor, you are walking again.’ I kiss her loving hands, they are the same, the ones what would hold me as a child,” she cries. “In my dream, I know it’s a dream, but then the dream tells me it’s not a dream, that my mother is walking again…”

Mahfouz was off stage at that point, and said later the moment was so powerful she had to leave the building. “It was too emotional for me,” she said. “Even if someone else is saying it, I will be in that moment again and I don’t want to be—I had to go out.”

“I focus on storytelling and what it means to be an Afghan in the global world, and not that essentialized Afghan story, of women in burkas,” said Sola Mahfouz. Photo: Andy Kwok

Toward the end of the performance, Soojin Cavallaro recited  a moving qawwali—a type of mystical Islamic song—based on a poem by Mahfouz: “Nothing to worship, nothing to see, / And still the nothing is burning in me.”

In the performance, McDonald played piano in several interconnected works by Afghan guest composer/performer Qudrat Wasefi; conducted “I Want…(Light Passing Through Prism)” by composer Christopher Walton, AG27, with violinists/composers Hudson Fagan, A28, and Yoshene Ma, A26; and collaborated with composer/performer Griffen Collins, A27. At other times, he was at far stage right, conducting the proceedings alongside Wasefi. 

“It put me out on a limb where I liked being—I knew I could fall off, but that’s sort of where you want to be when you’re trying to make a new event that’s going to change you and that’s going to be fresh,” said McDonald. “My worries were pragmatic ones. Can we actually make it work? Even a week later, I thought: How did we do that?”