The only country in the world where music is banned: "We protest by holding concerts."

Braga (Portugal)Their country is the only one in the world where music is prohibited. Yet they play like angels. The melody of their violins, guitars, cellos, flutes, drums… fills the conservatory classroom where they rehearse thousands of miles from home. Their music is truly captivating. You could listen to them for hours. They are very young boys and girls, between 14 and 22 years old, and all have studied at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), which was previously in Kabul and has now moved to the city of Braga, in northern Portugal. How did they get there? "Our concerts are our way of protesting the Taliban," they say. Their responsibility is immense: the survival of Afghan music depends on them.

It sounds surreal, but it's true. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where listening to music, singing, dancing, or playing any instrument is prohibited, because the Taliban consider music to be anti-Islamic. However, Afghanistan, a Muslim country, has a long and rich musical tradition. Its national dance is theattan, and its list of singer-songwriters and composers is extensive. Its most iconic figure is perhaps Ahmad Zahir, known as the Elvis Presley of Afghanistan. the National Institute of Music of Afghanistan Founded in 2010 in Kabul, the institute aims to revive precisely that musical tradition. Its founder and director, Afghan-Australian ethnomusicologist Ahmad Sarmast, arguably performed a miracle: the institute became the only official music school in Afghanistan, providing opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and achieving spectacular results. The institute has several orchestras and musical groups that have performed in 47 countries, in venues as renowned as New York's Carnegie Hall.

However, the school was always a target of the Taliban. Initially, the Afghan police were in charge of guarding it, but later special forces were even deployed. When the Taliban occupied Kabul on August 15, 2021, the school was naturally one of the first outposts they raided. They destroyed instruments, furniture, and everything else in their path.

The Escape

"The teacher told us to be ordinary," recalls 21-year-old Shugofa Safi, who now lives in Portugal but was practicing at school when the Taliban arrived in the Afghan capital. She had to leave behind her notebooks and notes, and the marimba she played. It was too big to hide anywhere. She is one of the many students from disadvantaged backgrounds studying at the school. Her father had taken her to an orphanage in Kabul because he lacked resources, and it was there that the director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music offered her admission to the school. This, she says, opened up a whole new world for her. She was only 11 at the time.

"With the Taliban, all my dreams were shattered in a matter of seconds," says the young woman, visibly emotional as she recalls the radicals' invasion of Kabul. "I posted a photo of a crying girl on Facebook to express my grief, and Dr. Sarmast replied, 'There's still hope.'"

And so it was. Dr. Sarmast—as he is known worldwide, because he is the first Afghan to earn a doctorate in music—refused to throw in the towel, moving heaven and earth to find a country that would take in the institute's students. He had a special relationship with the United States, Canada, and Australia, the country where he resides and is a naturalized citizen. However, Portugal was the only one that agreed to grant asylum to the entire group: no fewer than 273 people, including students, teachers, school staff, and some of their families.

"I created a WhatsApp group and a Signal group to coordinate the students and teachers," explains Dr. Sarmast, who organized the entire evacuation operation from Australia. "It wasn't easy at all, because some students didn't have passports and many were minors. We evacuated. Of all the students, only two decided to stay."

Ramiz Safar is one of the students who went into exile. Now twenty-one, he's a friendly young man with an easy smile. He recalls that when he received Dr. Sarmast's WhatsApp message, the world opened up for him. Born into a music-loving family—his father is a singer and his two brothers also play—he began studying at the Afghan National Institute of Music when he was twelve. He specialized in the rubab, a stringed instrument similar to the lute that is traditional to Afghanistan. However, his parents initially didn't welcome his exile. He was very young: only seventeen.

The evacuation was carried out in stages over several weeks on half a dozen flights. The first took off from Kabul on October 3, 2021, more than a month after US troops had left Afghanistan. Ramiz was on the third flight. "I barely took any clothes, just a pair of pants, a sweater, and a coat, because I preferred to take the rubab," she says, although getting to the airport with the instrument wasn't easy. She camouflaged it under the hijab of her mother and aunt, who accompanied her by car. At the airport, Qatari personnel negotiated with the Taliban to allow her to travel with the rubab.

Qatar was managing Kabul airport at the time. That country was also the first destination for the students and teachers of the National Institute of Music. They had a stopover for several weeks until they completed all the bureaucratic procedures with Portugal. Finally, they landed in Lisbon on December 13, 2021. They arrived on a charter flight funded by Spotify and the Polar Music Prize (considered the Nobel Prize of music).

In the Portuguese capital, the group was housed in various locations. However, most ended up in a former military hospital, where they spent months and months without being offered an alternative. "At first, I regretted coming and cried some nights," Ramiz confesses. "In the hospital, the rooms were for ten or twelve people, and every week they gave us fish. We had never eaten fish in our lives," he recalls.

Waiting and Uncertainty

The wait and uncertainty undermined the group's morale, and many fled to other countries in search of opportunities. Thus, the number of teachers and students dwindled. "This was a problem," admits Dr. Sarmast. The consent their parents had signed in Kabul for their evacuation from Afghanistan was invalid in Portugal, and the case ended up in court. The director of the National Institute of Music had no choice but to seek the help of a legal team.

Zohra Ahmadi is one of those underage students who was evacuated to Portugal. She's now sixteen, but when she landed in Lisbon, she was eleven. But she arrived accompanied by her uncle and cousin. "If they hadn't come, I don't know what I would have done," she confesses timidly. She admits that, before arriving in Portugal, she had no idea a country called that existed. At first, it was difficult for her to adapt, but now she says she feels comfortable. What she likes most is Portugal's traditional music, fado, and that the country's people are very nice. She plays the trumpet and is part of the all-girls Zohra orchestra. "The Zohra orchestra is a symbol of women's freedom and that we can do the same things as men," she maintains.

Although the school has an all-girls orchestra, there are other mixed-gender orchestras, and it's safe to say that girls and boys interact with each other with complete complicity. In fact, at first glance, they look like local teenagers: they all dress in Western clothes. The high school, although located in Kabul, was not like other schools in Afghanistan, where the sexes are separated.

In August 2022, all the students and teachers from the high school finally moved to the city of Braga. A few weeks later, the students old enough for secondary school entered a conservatory, and the younger ones entered a primary school specializing in music, with the aim of continuing their education.

"We've rented apartments for some students. Several of them live in the same apartment," explains Dr. Sarmast, who explains that all of this, along with the students' expenses, is funded by the non-profit organization. Friends of ANIM, which was founded in 2014 precisely to ensure the school's financial viability. According to him, they have never relied on government aid, but have always been funded by private donations. He himself has also settled in Braga. "When many students and teachers left for other countries, this destabilized the group. Settling here is a way to show the students that I will continue to support them."

The institute has also opened a new location in this northern Portuguese city: a small space on the ground floor of a building, where they have set up several classrooms where students can rehearse. While they learn classical music at the conservatory and at school, they continue their training in traditional Afghan music at the institute. That's why they needed the country's traditional instruments: the rubab, the sitar, the mesa... "We brought them from Afghanistan by international courier. There are still artisans there who make them clandestinely. Of course, they are much more expensive now. If they used to cost 250 euros, now they cost 800," he explains.

A green, red, and black Afghan flag presides over the lobby of the institute's new headquarters. On the walls hang countless photographs of past concerts and also posters of some of the most recent performances the students have given after their exile. In the last two years, they have played in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United States, and even Spain. On October 14, 2023, they were at the Musikene Higher Music Center of the Basque Country, in San Sebastián.

"At first, I was worried about the language," says Jawad Mohammadi, a tall, slender young man who, when he landed in Lisbon three and a half years ago, only knew Dari, one of Afghanistan's official languages. Now he speaks Portuguese and English fluently and is a virtuoso of the rubab. He is twenty-two years old. He, too, had to Google where Portugal was. "I knew Cristiano Ronaldo, but nothing else."

Jawad began studying music purely by chance. At twelve, he was one of the many children working on the streets of Kabul to support his family. He sold eggs, fruit, and secondhand clothes. "One day, a man from [the NGO] Save the Children asked me if I was going to school and introduced me to Dr. Sarmast," he recalls. His father was not keen on him studying music because it is frowned upon in Afghan society. But since the school was completely free, he agreed to let him go.

When the Taliban arrived in Kabul, the father burned everything: his textbooks, concert photographs, even his school uniform so there would be no evidence that his son was a student there. But what hurt the most at Jawad was that he also burned his rubab, which, he says, had become an extension of his body. The young man had doubts about whether to go into exile, but now he feels privileged to be able to continue his education.

Far from family

Around six in the evening, the students at the Braga Conservatory leave class. Their parents pick them up by car or on foot. However, the Afghan students continue rehearsing in one of the school's classrooms: they play the same piece over and over again until it sounds perfect. They have no one to pick them up. Their families are in Afghanistan.

"We wanted to bring them to Portugal, and I even reached an agreement with the government in 2023 to make it a reality," says Dr. Sarmast. "But the repeated elections in the country have made that impossible. Before the elections, no one wants to commit to something like that." The last elections in Portugal were on May 18.

"When I'm sad, I play my rubab. It's the only thing I have here," says Ramiz. Jawad, Zohra, and Shugofa also acknowledge that they miss their families very much. However, they are hopeful that one day they will return to Afghanistan and that music will once again be heard in the country. "A nation is alive if its culture is alive. We are the resistance," says Dr. Sarmast. He is convinced: "Afghan music will not die."