A few words about my motivations to this work 

"I read and heard all these years about the war in Afghanistan. For 20 years there has been only war. I thought of the people of Afghanistan and especially of the women, widows and children, who for all those years, suffered extreme hardship. With my artwork, my Monotypes and Monoprints and the Poems by Bahar Sayed Elhan, an Afghan poet living in California, I want to express my thoughts about those Afghan women and I want to draw the attention to their hardship. My works show the women in their veils. What colors are under these veils! With colors I do not think first of clothes, but rather of the colorfulness of their culture, their wishes, their hopes and their personalities the whole woman. I wish to all Afghan women Peace and Love, Dignity and Courage, Respect and Self-Respect, Happiness and Colorfulness and that their Wishes will come true."

Colorful Wishes I with "The Veil"
Monotypes and Monoprint
56 x 76 cm and 56 x 38 cm

The Veil

by Bahar Sayed Elhan
(Translated into English by Leila Enayat-Seraj)

Grisly veil dare not censure me from sight
Nor, my bare face, my nakedness expose;
Sun-like I transcend the darkness and shine.

No blackness, however dense,
Can forge the mask of confinement.

Isn’t your flawed morality, Believer,
To banish me thus behind the veil.
You devout Visitor
from the cities of pious way,
A speck of doubt ought lead you thus astray?

Let no warped preacher, advocate,
Bend my proud head, so low,
To where your footsteps mislead.

I see no fairness in such wisdom:
For others’ moral frailness,
I must reside in hell.

Conjuror of morality!
Why conjure up such devious device;
To conceal from sight my unblemished face,
Design instead, an opaque veil to hide
from innocent views your impure gaze.

Introduction by Leila Enayat-Seraj

I had several messages on my answering machine in the early days of 1999 from a Swiss artist asking me if I could translate some Darí poems written by an Afghan woman poet into English, which she would use in her paintings dedicated to Afghan women. This is how I got to know Susi Hochstrasser. I translated the poems by Saïd Bahar „Elhan“ and other Afghan poets whose poems I had just received. Then Susi and I arranged for an exhibit of her work and recital of the translated poems during the inauguration of the Afghan Museum in Bubendorf/Liestal, where I recited the poems both in English for the swiss audience and the original Darí for the Afghan audience with a backdrop of Susi‘s paintings. It was well received. Another trip took us to The Hague where we both attended the last major conference of the 20th century, “The Hague Appeal for Peace”. I appreciate Susi’s work and her dedication to Afghan women, the unfortunate victims of the war of attrition in the face of the total indifference by the entire world! Thank you, Susi.

Leila Enayat-Seraj