Yellow Submarine to Taliwood: 27/09/21

Hellen Rose and George Gittoes established the Yellow House Jalalabad – a community centre for production and education around art, film, performance, music and dance – over twenty years ago. They have since contributed to a vibrant art-making scene in Afghanistan over their decades in the country, working at a grassroots level to share knowledge and culture with and amongst the local community.

In a series of diary entries, here, the pair document their return to the Peshawar region after the Taliban assumption of power in Afghanistan earlier this year.

The great 115-year-old Sufi Mystic Sayed Baba Gee who was featured in Miscreants of Taliwood, 2009, died in 2012. His father was a famous Sufi poet and the date of the birth of his son was recorded in history. I promised that whenever I was back I would go and teach his students new and old.

Hellen [Rose], Waqar, Ashid and I returned there today and I gave lessons as two brothers sang the mystical songs of the great Pashto poet Abdul Rahman [Rahman Baba]. The harmonies were beautiful, reminding me of other brothers like the Bee Gees and Everly Brothers.  

Usually the saints like Baba Gee are enshrined in a marble-and-tile mausoleum but Baba G wanted to be in his old bedroom, next to the main class room, where he could always hear the  lessons of children and watch over them. Very humble in comparison to the large shrine of Abdul Rahman.  We said a prayer for him and put flowers over the glass case which contains his turban.

I sat where I drew him back in 2007, and drew the brothers singing. A small white and green butterfly hovered, continually, in the space between us. Baba G was there and I will keep my promise to keep coming back.

The brothers said “Now we have sung for you, please read something for us from your Blood Mystic book” [Pan Macmillan, 2016].  I read them “Transitory States” from page 299 with my painting of the old Sufi Baba Saied from the Yellow House in Jalalabad.

7:19 pm 

These two brothers [pictured] are the sons of the new Baba who has taken the role of teacher sage after the death of the very old Sufi Sayed Baba G who lived to 122 years. The brothers sing mystical poems by Abdul Rahman Baba (17th Century Mystic Poet who wrote in Pashto) and they are in perfect harmony like the Bee Gees and Everyly Brothers. Sitting in the garden listening was a great joy – especially Hellen. 

We plan to get them into a studio for the sound track to the films we are working on. There is no other way anyone outside the Sufi community would hear their almost divine voices.

G