by Leanne Ogasawara
There was recently mention in the media of a religious extremist in Egypt calling for the destruction of the pyramids. I first heard talk of this last summer– around the time that the shrines in Timbuktu were destroyed.
Holy hoax or not, I could not help but think of Bamiyan.
I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I learned that the Taliban had blown up the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan.
Sitting in the backseat of a car in Los Angeles in 2001, we were stopped at a traffic light. The radio news mentioned it, but conversation in the car continued on– I don't think anyone noticed or was really listening.
Despite the fact that they had been firing rockets at the statues for months, still it was a shock to hear that the statues had been completely destroyed– and that these 1400 year old statues no longer existed.
How could they actually have gone through with it? I thought.
Although their destruction came as a shock, in fact the two statues had been practically tortured to death after months of rocket fire, canon fire, machine gun volleys and weeks of dynamiting.
The Japanese had been working furiously behind the scenes when the Taliban first made their intentions known to the world. Working with UNESCO and several Islamic governments, even their concentrated efforts could not stop what was to be. Years later, my Japanese friends still bring it up.
You see, the Japanese are sometimes called the world's great antiquarians. And they can trace their own tradition of Buddhist sculpture back to Bamiyan. So they –like many people– find it nearly impossible to grasp why anyone would have wanted to destroy those precious 55 meter and 38 meter-tall statues, which for so long had towered up against the sandstone cliffs in what is called one of the world's most beautiful high-altitude valleys.