 All right, it looks like we are live. Just double checking. Wonderful. Okay, hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, those on Zoom and in the greater internet world. My name is Nubra Nelson. I am the Director of Arts Engagement at Seattle Rep. I'll give a quick physical description of myself for blind and low vision audience members. I'm a lighter skinned brown woman. With short brown hair, wearing a multicolored shirt and on the white wall behind me are some black and white photos. I would like to begin by acknowledging that we're on the traditional land of the Coast Salish people including the Duwamish people past and present. And we honor with gratitude this land and the Duwamish tribe. We continue to work on creating relationships with our local communities. And you can learn more about that and how to support local tribes here in Seattle on the Seattle Rep website. So I'd love to just jump in and get started. Let's get started with just each of you introducing yourselves. You do so much, both in the theater as artists but also as activists outside of theater. And I'd love for you to share a little bit about what you do and who you are. And I'll just pass it to each of you. Fatima, will you start us off? Yeah, of course. Hi everyone, my name is Fatima Wardak. I am an Afghan-American first generation in my family. My parents immigrated here in the late 80s. I'm currently in Brooklyn, New York, this is where I live but I was born and raised in Seattle. I'm an actor and artist, collaborator, do a lot of like divides and original work and also lots of fun plays. And activist-wise, I tried to be a very like supportive community member. It's part of other communities that have been supportive of me. And in the most recent present, became an immigration expert in assisting people evacuating Afghanistan. So thank you. Thank you. Humaira, you're unmuted and you can stay unmuted. I'm Humaira Gilzai. I'm an Afghan-American. My family immigrated to the United States after the Russian invasion. We came and settled in the Bay Area in 1980. I'm currently on the land of Ramata Sholoni, colonially known as San Francisco. My work is mainly as a cultural producer, speaker and writer, as far as my work as a cultural producer goes. I basically have had the amazing opportunity to work at Seattle Rep and a lot of other theaters that were developing productions that were related to Afghanistan. And I brought cultural authenticity to their work by working with the playwrights and directors, actors and many, many components of a production. I also have done cultural advisory with film and television as well. As a writer, I write a blog called Afghan Culture Unveiled and I write about Afghan food, culture and most recently, all about how I write about is Afghan politics. And I speak about Afghanistan, Afghan women, the history of Afghanistan and the current situation that is ongoing. And thank you so much for having me today. Thank you for being here, Sylvia. Hi, my name is Sylvia Corey. I'm a playwright, recently a physician also. My play, Selling Cobble, will be in Seattle Rep's upcoming season. I wanna say first and foremost how honored I am to be on a panel with two, hopefully three, Afghan women, artists and activists as an outsider. I am of Turkish, Lebanese, Iraqi and North African descent. And the impetus for my play, Selling Cobble, which is the story of an Afghan SIV applicant an interpreter who was left behind by the Americans. The impetus for that was pro bono work that my husband was actually doing with his colleagues starting in 2015. And they were doing that for the International Refugee Assistance Project or IRAP, which is basically lawyers trying to use legal recourse to help people get to the United States. So I was shocked both as an American and as someone with, let's say a family whose tragedies and histories have been shaped by negligent colonial forces that such promises had been made and then broken, that was appalling. And I've been immensely fortunate to have had the privilege of speaking with a number of such interpreters and their families to guide my work on this play over the past seven years. That's really tragic to me, the state that we're in now, when that seven years is a long time and the history of our country's involvement in Afghanistan is just, so I have an upcoming production of this play at Playwrights Horizons in New York City this November and December. And I will be fundraising parallel to the production for IRAP, seeing as my entry point really was these legal recourses. I'm very interested in this organization that's working to make good on these promises through legal means. I'm also in the midst of inviting many voices, particularly Afghan voices to the conversation sparked by the play. In a lot of ways, I think my play is actually very American because it's really dealing with American culpability. And I'm really eager after this panel to connect with and amplify the voices and efforts of the Afghan women here. And thank you for having me and for including me. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing a bit about that, about the history of your play. It really leads really nicely into the conversation. But before we continue, I just wanted to also say that we have one other panelist Gazelle who is without power currently. So we're really hoping that she'll be able to jump on as we continue this conversation. But I want to make sure that y'all look into her regardless of whether she's able to join us or not. So as you kind of started us off, Sylvia, a lot of what we're here to talk about in addition to your activism and your advocacy outside of your art is how that art and activism can be connected. And obviously there are the, I love that you set up this ability to, for art to highlight a platform for greater support, for either monetary or in other ways, for an audience to better understand an issue and then connect them to resources. But I'm wondering what are other ways that y'all see art as a tool for advocacy, either a piece of art itself or the work that you each do around productions. What do you see there is the importance of that and where are you seeing that perhaps connected to some of the work that you are doing right now in regards to Afghanistan and your art in that regard. Anyone can jump in, yeah. I'll jump in. Well, as my work goes as far as the cultural advocacy work that I do is all about bringing Afghan culture in the forefront of any production that involves Afghanistan. So what I do as part of my work is to bring in the local community as well as making sure that whatever is in the script and the casting and all that reflects the Afghan culture and one of the challenges I've had is that there aren't that many Afghan actors that are trained to be in theater, present company not included. So it's very often I find that non-Afghans are cast in roles. And what happens is that the research that's done is very much what is just available online which isn't extensively, it doesn't go into the nuances of the culture and that history and why the Afghans do what they do and we're not a monolithic culture. So an Afghan who lived in Afghanistan in the 70s in Kabul is going to behave and talk in very different way than an Afghan who lives in Kabul today in let's say Herat. So those are the kinds of things that I feel that I have been doing this type of advocacy work for a long time. But as far as the past few weeks is concerned along with the video that I created a hundred year history of Afghan women five months ago anticipating that this is going to happen because the US was directly negotiating with the Taliban excluding the Afghan government and Afghan women and Afghan people. So this was bound to be an explosive situation when you go and make a deal with the enemy of a country and then you expect them to work together that's not going to work. So that video was meant to really how people understand the history of Afghan women that it was not always the Taliban it was not always the US occupation but there are many, many stories that goes with Afghan women's history. But for myself as far as my work is concerned a lot of my artists through writing and I really saw the power of storytelling in the past two weeks. I wrote about the director of our schools I'm also co-founder of Afghan Friends Network a nonprofit that I started 18 years ago we've been educating women and girls in a remote province of Afghanistan and we had to get the director of our school out and she was able to get up but without her family and I wrote her story with a call for donations so we can assist in getting her six children and her husband out of Afghanistan and it's been incredible in two weeks we've been able to raise $40,000 my goal is 57 I'm very comfortable we will reach it hopefully people will go on my blog Afghan culture unveiled and read the story of this woman that's been so brave she does not work with the US government she does not qualify for an SIV but she has done so much to help Afghan girls and women and basically work side to side with the US mission in promoting women's rights and she's basically one of the people that would have been collateral damage if we were not able to help her so I feel like strong storytelling has been my way of advocacy as well as I started a social media campaign called Action for Afghans and every day for one week we posted social media posts letting people know what is going on in Afghanistan as both an education as well as a call to action and now we do it three times a week and it's really meant to highlight the corrupt system of war that feeds the US economy and how that actually affects human lives these are 40 million Afghans we're talking about as well as the US veterans who have lost brothers, sisters and aid workers all of those lives were lost for what we don't know absolutely thank you so much for sharing all of that I'd love to hear from Fatima from especially for you're an actor and a writer and Sylvia shared a bit from a writer's point of view how telling that story, elevating that story can be a really clear way of advocacy and I wonder as an Afghan-American actor how have you found that you've brought your identity and your advocacy into your work and maybe that also connects to your writing as well? Yeah, thank you and thank you, Humaira, for that was all really wonderful to hear helpful information as well Yeah, you know, unfortunately as an actor I struggle to figure out how to bring forth my identity or really amplify the story of Afghan people a thousand splendid sons at the Rep was an incredible start for me I was really grateful to be a part of that production I never thought that I would as an actor get an opportunity to play my own ethnicity so that was huge and then coming across Selling Kabul which I'm so excited to see was another really exciting thing for me to see as an Afghan actor that our stories are being heard they're being told people want to hear them and people are taking the time to write them and produce them so I've actually been focusing a lot on writing as well because it always happens when I start looking for monologues or start looking for a new place to read and I'm like, why isn't anybody writing something that I could be in or that somebody who looks like me and shares my identity could be in and then I just thought like, well, why don't I just try to write it myself? So I've been working on a couple of different projects but the one I'm pretty excited about most recently is I started writing what I envisioned to be a TV show but who knows where it'll go that's how I'm writing it right now about like my family's experience being Afghan Americans because I'm really interested in Afghan stories that aren't from like the colonial perspective or not from the perspective of a US veteran or an American person I want to see an Afghan family deal with growing up in America because that was a huge struggle for my family and it was a hilarious struggle I mean, when you think about it like the story of an immigrant it can be very tragic and sad and full of a lot of heartache but it's also kind of a hilarious conundrum that you just appear in this land you had no intention of coming to but for whatever reason you find yourself here and now you're raising your children and they're gonna grow up in this other world that you're figuring out so there's all kinds of scenes that just bring me so much joy that I think would be really interesting for an American audience to see and one of the things that I feel like I'm working on highlighting the most in this project and in other projects is Afghan women because as an Afghan woman other Afghan women are very near and dear to my heart and it just saddens me that all the imagery we see of Afghan women is just depressing and those are certainly true stories that are happening but my experience with Afghan women my memories growing up is my mom and my aunts sitting around drinking tea laughing hysterically playing baria drums and singing old songs and I just love that and I want to see that on a stage or on a screen I want to see these women experiencing joy the way that I saw them like despite everything they went through they still got together every Friday night while all of their husbands went and played volleyball at the community center and drank tea and just laughed and I would just really love for anybody to put that on stage or on screen and so that's something I'm working towards and it's also something that I would like to act in should it ever get produced or should I ever get to shoot a web series or something so that's kind of what I'm working towards but connecting with people like Humaira who I was lucky to meet during A Thousand Spotted Suns and now with Sylvia who's I'm just so thrilled that she's interested in our people and telling our stories and connected to it as a non-Afghan this is just really exciting for me as a young artist. May I jump in there for a minute? Fatima I just want to let you know that a play I've written just got residency at Golden Thread Productions that has four Afghan character female characters. I got my name for girls so you too. I wish you were in the Bay Area because we're doing a workshop in October but if there are Afghan actresses that are watching this please let me know because I would love to cast Afghans in these four roles and it is that story that you're talking about of Afghan Americans and these four women are going on a pilgrimage to Mecca so it's a story it's a fun story lots of humor and you know secrets family secrets and lots of connections so I'm hoping at some point it'll be produced in New York and we can cast you. Well my sister lives in the Bay Area so you know it's just a flight away. We'll talk. Yeah, yeah please. Okay let me know. Is there a public presentation Humaira or is it a workshop? It's a workshop. We will do a presentation at the end of the workshop but it will not be public. It'll be invite only just because of COVID restrictions and such so yeah. But Fatima, right contact me. On it, thank you. This is so lovely. I love that this is happening right before our eyes. Women supporting women. We will be looking for a public presentation of that and for your play as well Fatima. And you brought up, everyone's been sharing so much that I wanna dig into. The question issue of representation is something I think about a lot as well as a Middle Eastern woman and artist myself. And as you said at Humaira that there's so much specificity across the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia within each of our cultures, within each of our countries even. There's so many different ethnicities, there's so many different experiences and there's also that balance of sharing all the crucial conversations and histories that are happening in our countries. But also sharing the joy and the individual and more personal experiences. And I love that you've kind of identified that we see so many narratives about, so many dark dramatic narratives especially about Middle Eastern women and especially about Afghanistan as well. And I would love to hear from Sylvia in making this place, Alen Kabul, what your process was in grappling with that representation and perhaps how advocacy might have been a part of that writing process because you were drawing from your husband's experience working directly with immigrants and refugees. How was advocacy actually perhaps a part of that writing process and how did you approach that question of representation in this particular very specific story? Yeah, so for me, the issue of representation is a big one and I kind of recognize that I had a platform and I recognized that there was a real injustice being done for a really long time that no one knew about. And that was kind of the impetus for this was really that after someone would see a reading in my play, they would go, this is happening and that was really shocking to me. So I think that was the intention behind it. And then moving forward through casting and these conversations, there's really not an easy answer. I will say, I don't think that American theater, I think we have learned a lot of the limitations of American theater in recent years, a lot of limitations of America. But I'll say there's a lot of institutional questions that get posed. And yeah, I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I think I will say that having tried very hard to cast Afghan actors in these parts, it's been difficult. And I think if I had known the extent to which Mayra can get it, I honestly didn't know the extent to which you are available to help on that level. Like if I had known that a bit earlier, which I probably could have, but I was very deep in COVID in the hospital, if I'm honest, that's what was actually happening. But I think that efforts like that are very important. And like for the production at Seattle Rep, that would be something that would be really interesting to me is like, how can we more actively engage in this, because I actually think that casting, especially now with our restrictions on everything is very difficult. And then also trying to say, no, we need Afghan actors that have these specific qualifications and these specific credits until you start casting, you can't, you'll never have those people at that level. So it's a very frustrating conversation and one that I think we're a bit stuck. I think people like Kumaira are invaluable. And honestly, I wish that I had just been more educated about that even like a year ago. It's such an ongoing process. And that's also where I know that, so many people are talking about coalition building right now that there's the newly formed Minatma, the Eastern North African Theater Makers Alliance. I believe it's Alliance that I know folks here know about or a part of. And in that, like we just saw, that in that connecting with each other, we're kind of building the tools and knowledge base and community base that we need to support greater and more accurate representation across our art. So it is absolutely a process and you really did articulate that, the nuances of that really, really well. I just wanted to add something to this, Sophia. Actually, when the play was having its world premiere at Williamstown Festival, I reached out to the producers and let them know about my work. Obviously they didn't share it with you and they said that they've got the cultural part covered. So I just thought you should know that. And I think those were the conversations. I've talked to many, many levels of people all the way to that artistic director. Yeah, the work continues. We need to keep advocating, keep pushing. And I'm seeing it improve as time goes on, as a better understanding at all levels of organizations becomes around the importance of representation. That is a huge part of this. It's every part of a theater understanding why representation is important and therefore making that effort to really understand the nuances of our cultures and put them on stage and behind the stage as well in a legitimate way. One thing to keep in mind is that one of the things I've realized that the playwrights feel that responsibility but when something gets produced, there are so many levels of decision making and budgeting and goals and interests that some things just do not really seem as important than other things. Especially around cultural authenticity and cultural advocacy and production. I feel like it's still kind of a new thing even though people know they need it but they're like, yeah, we're not gonna do the work and so it's really not, I feel like in many, many cases, place where the playwright can influence. I mean, I've worked with playwrights in developing a whole play and they wanted me to be part of the production and then the theaters couldn't come up with the budget or like he had to go scramble. So it's many levels that I think has to commit to this representation, whether it's with BIPOC, Afghan, Mina, Swana, whatever the acronym is. The predominantly white institutions really need to assess where they're going to put their efforts. I'm so glad that you brought that up. Absolutely, that it absolutely needs to be on the producers to make sure that that's happening. The playwright can not, they've already written an entire play about this. So it's like, and represented through that storytelling that a lot of that responsibility comes upon the folks who are making those greater decisions. I'm wondering for all of you, given current events in Afghanistan, I'm wondering how your work has shifted. Humaira, you talked a little bit about what you are, how you've been responding, creating that video, which I know came before our full withdrawal, but and doing of course specific fundraising campaigns around folks who you're trying to get out of the country. I'm wondering if each of you can speak to if and how your work or maybe even life has shifted since the US started withdrawing from Afghanistan. I've been hearing so much from basically like every Afghan American that I know that they're doing work, so much work on their own time to get people out of the country to write visas, to write letters, to send money, which just takes up so much time and effort. And so I'd love to hear if you're willing to share about both your work and maybe how this, these current events have shifted your personal life. And Gazelle, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, I'm so glad you're power outage delay. That is totally fine. Can you actually, you could jump in and if you can please introduce yourself and maybe talk to start this question that I know you came in the middle of, what you're doing right now when it comes to advocacy, as well as how your art is responding to current events, but please just also just introduce yourself. It's great to have you here. Okay, sure. My name is Gazelle Samezai. I'm a member of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association, also known as AWA. And I'm also a visual artist. I work in multimedia and a lot of my work deals with my Afghan American identity and being a woman in both of those spaces. And for the last month and a half or so, AWA has been helping to evacuate several artists that we have worked with in the past. So it started with just first of all, trying to get them out before that August 31st deadline, but then now has moved on to filing humanitarian parole applications to help hopefully get them out of the country. We also have a fundraiser to help with that as well. And yeah, I think that about covers it. Did you also have another question? No, that's wonderful. We'll let you get settled and continue to continue. You can respond to this question kind of when you're ready to, but I was asking how folks art has shifted or changed due to current events in Afghanistan, whether both your art, your work, but also perhaps your personal life at this time if you're willing to share that, but anyone can jump in. Sure, I would just say that I feel like this whole crisis kind of engulfed my identity. And so art was just like pushed aside. And it's only, I want to say in like the last week or two that I was kind of reminded of the value of art to like process and also like talk about issues related to Afghan identity and probably like in a year or something, I'll end up making art about all of this once I've had time to process it. That's all I was going to say exactly what you just said. Yeah, very similar. Everything was just on hold for a solid two weeks. I was participating in getting my family out. I had family who were visiting from the States and then also lots of family that live in Afghanistan. A lot of them are concentrated in Kabul because my family is from the rural parts of Afghanistan. My family is from a region called Wadadag which is near Ghazni, which you might hear in the news often. It's a prominent region. But they've all in the last few years relocated to Kabul because it's just so dangerous. The rural areas are where the war was really happening, where the drone strikes were happening. My uncle's house was getting shelled every day and he had to abandon his apple orchard, which was his livelihood. So I had been working, I basically had two full-time jobs for two weeks. And then with the time difference, communicating with my family in Afghanistan, I was up almost every night until four or five in the morning and then getting up in a couple of hours to go to work. So it was incredibly overwhelming. It's not over yet. I was luckily, thank God, able to get six members of my family out. But I had six others that qualified for evacuation that for some reason got turned away at the gate after their third attempt at the airport. It was just kind of at the discretion of whoever was working the gate that day. And those family members actually have visa petitions because it's my uncle who was a US citizen. It's his wife and children that he had applied for a while ago and they had their final interview scheduled at the embassy on September 13th. And of course, all of that just disappeared. So what I've been doing is I had to transfer all their paperwork to Qatar because that's where the US is doing their operations now that there is no embassy in Kabul. So that work continues for sure. And major shout out to Care Washington and specifically Breonna Frey, who's an incredible attorney who was doing all this volunteer work, helping hundreds. And I think even thousands of people try to evacuate. So Care was an incredible organization that did so much volunteer work. And, but unfortunately in my many calls with Breonna, she was working with so many families and my family was one of the only ones that got out and it wasn't even everyone that we were trying to get out. But anyway, all of that is to say that art has definitely been on hold. Now that my family got out and we're kind of in this limbo period with the other folks were trying to get out, I have had a moment to breathe. I binge read like four plays because I just needed to focus on anything else, which was really nice. And reminded me that as difficult as this time has been that I should probably remember it. So I've been trying to like journal and kind of just write down whatever thoughts have been coming into my head. Because yeah, similar to Razzal, I feel like this is something maybe in a year or two, I want to explore more, but right now it's so fresh, so traumatic. So just exhausting. And I'm just one of so many people in the diaspora who are helping thousands of people try to escape. And like I have Afghans who found my website and just were sending me emails like, hi, I have this connection, can you help me? Like just because I'm American and there's nothing I can do for them. And so the work definitely continues, but for now it's these moments like this really make me pause and reevaluate like, okay, what am I doing with my time? Like it's that immigrant guilt of like, oh, being an artist is like a selfish endeavor. When it's not, it's so essential to my culture and being on stage and having people see people who look like me or helping other people who look like me get on stage or on screen is important. But I do, I definitely have that survivor's guilt for sure. And it always makes me reevaluate like, what am I doing and kind of recommit myself to my artistic mission and just making sure that I'm working in equitable spaces. I'm working to amplify voices and not just my own, yeah, scattered thoughts. It's been a crazy few weeks, but conversations like this give me a hope and make me really grateful. Well, I'm just going to say everything Fatma said applies to me as well. I'm actually wearing a very fancy Afghan dress. This is not my normal Friday night garb. I'm amplifying Afghan women's voices through a social media campaign called Don't Touch My Clothes, hashtag Don't Touch My Clothes. And basically Afghan women are going on social media in traditional or non-traditional Afghan attire and showcasing how Afghan women dress to counter the propaganda that Taliban are putting out there with putting out these women. I heard that half of them were men dressed in these Darth Vader-like robes from head to toe and black gloves is just laughable. So one of the things that I have found myself doing is being on social media a lot. I am not a Twitter fan and I'm a Twitter all the time. The first week I was messaging using my computer, being on WhatsApp that I had carpal tunnel. I mean, both my arms like they hurt so bad. So I started using voice messaging. I have not been on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as much as I have in the past three weeks. And I feel that I have a privilege, I have the privilege to be here talking to all of you about art while today we heard that the Taliban have banned girls from, sorry, this is very emotional for me, continuing school beyond secondary school. I spent 18 years in the province of Dasni next to Wardak where Fatima's family is working with educators there. We have supported girls that became midwives, doctors, actually one of the women who was the head of Ministry of Women's Affairs, which also got shut down, is a graduate of our schools. So this to me is really a stab in the heart. And I would say the first couple of days I think I cried a lot, but then I was inundated with a lot of press inquiries as well as people asking for help and such. And you feel, aside from survivors guilt, I had tremendous amount of PTSD because my family was in Afghanistan when the Russians invaded and I was 11 years old. So I remember the panic and the fear that my parents had at that time as to what is going to happen to us, we can't live in this country. So seeing the people trying to leave and talk about what pictures can do, the people trying to hold onto the airplanes and such, it was really terrible. I'm a really good sleeper and I couldn't sleep at all. So aside from all that, I would say that the one thing that really saved me along with helping our director of our school get out and sending some funding to our teachers because there's so much inflation right now, this action for Afghan social media campaign that I basically met a graphic artist who works in tech and she's like 22 or something incredibly young. And she and I work really close together to put this campaign together. And it's all basically very intricate messaging that she's put together to these beautiful graphics and music that we keep sharing. And I feel like that really saved me on the first week because I really got immersed into, first of all, doing something that was completely foreign to me. Like I said, social media is not my strength to put this messaging together. What is it we want to say? What is it that we want the world to know? Yeah, there are the 200,000 that had to get out but then there's 40 million people who are left behind and what did we leave them? And what is the legacy of our country? So that has really saved me. And then of course, two weeks into it, I got the good news of being accepted for this residency. So that's been wonderful, but I have to say like my brain is completely clogged. I can't write. I'm hoping that it'll come back. But I can see how cultures can get destroyed during war because if you are in this kind of situation where you're in this fight and flight mode, you're in the survival mode, how can you create? How can you think in a creative way? How can you see the joys and beauty of life that you could express in your art? And that is one of the things that really scares me about the future of Afghanistan and what will happen to the artists. So I'm really happy to hear that Gazelle's organizations getting people out, but then there will be musicians that are left behind. All kind of visual artists, writers, and that makes me very, very sad. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. You really have kind of articulated some of that feeling of overwhelm that the current events news right now is and I, as a non-Afghan, I feel overwhelmed. And so I can't imagine how you all are feeling as well. You know, you each have kind of shared specific ways that folks can support right now and we'll share out those links and everything that you've been mentioning throughout this conversation. But also, as you said, Homeira, as people leave and as the current regime, everything kind of settles in and it starts to inevitably, as it kind of heartbreakingly does, leave the news and leave the front of what we're seeing, there are still people that will be there left in Afghanistan, there will still be artists there, there will still be women and girls living there and needing support. And so I wonder how can non-Afghans or folks in the United States support Afan people in an ongoing way? What should we be keeping in mind or committing to now that can continue that support after it starts to fade from the front page of the newspaper, which it inevitably will, which is again, always just heartbreaking because it never fades from the front page of our lives. But what can we do now? What can we commit to now that will be an ongoing support? I think it's just always, first and foremost, so important to amplify Afghans. We have so many experts in our community in the diaspora and in Afghanistan and other places that are professors, historians, scholars, artists. There's so many people, activists who are working on the ground working to get people out, working to assist people. And I've met so many folks I believe they have nothing but good intentions in their heart who are American or especially white who set up these organizations or donations or something to assist. And they have like these really great intentions but it's always about saving Afghan women instead of supporting Afghan women or supporting Afghan orphans or supporting Afghan people. And I think we really need to let go of that like colonial white savior mindset and really direct that energy towards the Afghans who are doing the work on the ground because there are so many of them. You don't have to look far to find someone who is truly an expert and doing some really incredible work. So I mean, that's just always kind of what I go to first is just finding those Afghan voices and supporting them and supporting the work that they do. I'll add that I think that when I think about what Americans can do, I think very much about how they can influence American policy and American conceptions of Afghanistan. And I think Fatima's suggestion of listening to the voices there is very important in understanding the complexity of what's going on there. I also think at least in the context of this immigration crisis, American citizens can be pressuring their representatives to change the laws around immigration. For example, with the humanitarian parole and a lot of the visa applications, they expect Afghans to go to a third country before their paperwork can be processed. So imagine you're in a country where all the borders are closed, you don't have money because you're not being paid anymore. And you can't leave the country without a visa and yet you're being told in order to get a visa you have to leave. It's like completely insane. So I know like some of the lawyers that I've been working with with the humanitarian parole, they're trying to like pressure US senators to change that rule because it's completely in my mind inhumane. I think a second thing that American citizens can do is to really be mindful of the rhetoric that's being shared about what it is to be Afghan or Muslim. For example, someone on Twitter in Missoula, Montana said, oh, 74 Afghans are coming and they're not welcome here. There's a lot of people who are gonna be coming in and we already saw a lot of anti-Muslim, anti-Afghan, et cetera sentiment after 9-11. And there could be another backlash again. So I think to Fatima's point of understanding like the complexity of stories, we just like those who are interested in helping need to continue to like keep the conversation alive and like educate their fellow friends on these people and like humanizing them in their situation. Not to speak twice, but I just wanna add to what Fazel said because it's really important, specifically with that humanitarian parole, one of the biggest things in addition to having them change the rules about going to a third-party country because this is exactly the problem that my family is in right now where they're somehow have to get to Qatar. Don't know how that's gonna happen. But also the US government created this problem of refugees and is now charging each individual refugee $575 to apply for humanitarian parole per person. $575. So there's also an effort to pressure representatives to waive that fee as well, which is really, really important. So that's another cause that you can get politically active or in your local community and pressure your representatives to do something about that because it is completely inhumane as well. I can jump in. On my website, hamyragilzai.com, I have a section called Action for Afghans and it has, I have around like 15 easy things that you can do, whether it's to contact your representatives or to volunteer to welcome refugees to update Afghan voices. And I keep updating that with more information as it comes. So that's one way to engage short term. But I also think that the Americans have the right to know why was the US and Afghanistan? What happened in all these years and why did our government lie to us? And now I'm talking from an American perspective, I am an American who lives in and there's currently a book that's just published called Afghan Papers. I think it should be reading material for every single person in the United States over the age of 35. So you can better understand how we go in other countries and we topple their governments and we change things up and we push our own agenda. And then when it's time to leave, we just dump them and move on to the next place. And then once again, we do the same thing. And this has got to be stopped. We need to move as a country from an economy of war to an economy of support, doing good in the world, saving the planet. And unfortunately, this is something that is very hidden in plain sight to be, I mean, you don't have to dig very far to actually get to this point. If you look at who benefited out of the two and a half billion dollars that the US spent on Afghanistan, it's six major US government and the military contractors who benefited the most. So this is something that seems complex, but it isn't. And I'm really tired of Afghan politicians, I'm sorry, American politicians shifting the blame on the Afghans saying there's corruption and infighting. Yes, those things are true, but there's a lot of corruption and infighting in our country as well. And what we do is export a lot of that into other countries and we destroy their systems and we make promises and then we don't deliver. And to me, we have got to stop this because this is not a sustainable way for our economy to thrive or people to thrive because war is basically cancer that's on earth and it's going to eventually affect all of us. So if you were to really be interested in engaging with Afghanistan, first we need to understand what the culpability of our country, our politicians and I'm talking about George Bush, President Obama, Trump and Joe Biden, they're all involved in this. So it's not Republicans slash or Democrat. So get a copy of Afghanistan people, please read that. That's going to give you a shocking insight as to what a mess we have made in Afghanistan. We could have gotten out of there within five years but we didn't. And it's not because the Afghans asked us to stay. Real quick, while we're still on the subject of things people can do and good things to know, we're talking a lot about Afghan women as three of us are Afghan women and the US has really used and weaponized Afghan women in their mission and going into Afghanistan saying that they need to save us or that our rights are being violated. And while that was occurring under the Taliban rule for sure, I just really want people to make this distinction or to note when talking about Afghan women, when supporting incoming refugees, to really pause and ask yourself if what you're about to say or what you're about to write on your protest sign is Islamophobic because that is rhetoric that has really been poisoning the dialogue around Afghan women. Certainly I 100% agree that nobody, no government, no group should ever enforce rules upon what women can do, how they can move, how they can operate and especially what they can wear. But it is important to remember that some women choose to wear burqas, some women choose to wear a bias, Afghan and elsewhere. So I just really hope that people take that into consideration when talking about Afghan women and when they are wanting to do something to support us is leaving the Islamophobia at the door because that is a problem in the web, I'm sure. Thanks. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Everyone has shared so much that's so powerful. I think a lot of what y'all brought up bring me back to that importance of arts and humanities in regards to humanizing in regards to sharing a variety of perspectives and art being not only theater, of course, but also writing to check out the Afghan American Writers Association to find videos or writing or testimonials from Afghan women, Afghan people in Afghanistan that can better inform advocates as to how to advocate, how to change culture, how to change their own opinions and how to best support. And I love that you bring up culture change, Humayor as well, both political culture change but also across the United States and across the world when it comes to what our priorities are and how we welcome other cultures. This is all incredibly important. And so I hope that that helps for attendees to better shape how they're advocating and kind of take this overwhelming situation and begin to approach it again through those personal stories and through better understanding, understanding the culture, understanding current events, understanding our history and each person's personal role in especially as Americans in this history. I would love to end, we only have a couple of minutes but I would love to end on your, I guess a glimmer of hope or a glimmer of joy asking you each what you love about Afghan art and what parts of your own culture inspire you? I can say one thing I love so much about Afghan art and our culture in general is the use of poetry and word play just in a conversation with my mom. I can't have a conversation with my mom without a proverb or three being slipped in. And I love that, that that's just built into our language that we speak in this really poetic in both Pashto and Farsi. That's something that's really important to me and also the oral storytelling. That's another thing that I'm really trying to like focus my artistic mind towards because my mom and my grandparents, they are the best storytellers I know. It's such a big part of our culture. Like my aunt told me that when she was a kid my mom was their television. They would sit around her after dinner and she would tell these epic tales like equivalent to like Lord of the Rings where it would take her months to tell a whole story every night and there were songs and all of this stuff added to it. And that she's forgotten so much of that just because the trauma that she experienced during the Soviets and immigrating here her brain could only hold so much. And I really want to find that again. I really want to recapture that. I want to try and document those stories and create new ones and really lean into that tradition of poetic oral storytelling. So that's one thing I love about Afghan culture and art. I'll jump in. I love Afghan carpets. They're gorgeous and I have some of them at home and I really love walking on them, looking at them but my real love of Afghan culture is Afghan food. Of course I write about Afghan food on my blog, Afghan culture unveiled. But I don't think you can really understand the essence of people without eating the food. And that's one of the things that any production I've worked on. I'm like, we got to go eat some Afghan food. These artists have to absorb Afghan culture through their stomach. So yeah, so I hope you all get to either supported Afghan restaurant or cooks of Afghan food at home with my recipes or whatever. Yeah, and I'll add that I'm really drawn to embroidery work in textiles in Afghan culture. And another glimmer of hope is that I think that we're in an unprecedented time of activism and organizing in the Afghan American community. And also non-Afghan Americans organizing on behalf of Afghans. And I think that that's really powerful. And I hope that we can continue that momentum to create more change and better policies in the future. Nubra, you're muted. Okay, hello. Okay, great. Sorry. I'm just so incredibly thankful that you all take the time to be here to share your own stories, to share your work with us, to share your advocacy, we'll make sure to get that information, those links and everything out to folks. And we'll be looking out for your stories. Humayun and Fatima will be looking out for these stories that you shared with us, the world today that should definitely be out there to share a different perspective. And I'm just so, so, so grateful and pleased to everyone who's watching. As we've said, you know, as Gazelle really, in a lovely way kind of ended us with that this is an unprecedented time for advocacy for Afghanistan and let's never let that end. Let that's, you know, establish now that kind of advocacy that can sustain for each and every person watching here. Find that way that you can sustain that for yourself. And thank you all so, so much for joining us. Have a lovely evening. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Thank you, I was trying to unmute. Thank you.