Afghan refugees share culture, food
Afghan culture and cuisine will come to life in a two-program event called Khuraki, which means eat in the Afghan language of Dari.
Actor and playwright Molly Rice conceived the program with Afghan refugee women after serving a two-year artist-in-residence program with a refugee resettlement agency through the Pittsburgh Arts Council’s Office of Public Art.
She accompanied resettlement specialists as they picked refugees up at the airport, did home visits and completed paperwork with the families they served. In time, they started a sewing group to help Afghan women form connections with one another and learn skills like how to use public transportation.
As Ms. Rice met with the women, she began asking questions about how they would like to present their culture to Americans. She says she thought that the sewing group would suggest an idea that was more visual-arts oriented.
“I’m a playwright and theater artist,” she laughed. “I suck at sewing.”
But the women didn’t want to use sewing to tell their stories. Nor did they want to tell their refugee stories — they felt Americans associate Afghanistan only with war. They instead wanted to highlight food because there is no Afghan restaurant or store here and they wanted to focus on the beautiful aspects of their country.
Their corollary goal is to raise funds to help them work together to start an Afghan food business of some sort. They have been attending workshops at La Dorita’s community kitchen in Sharpsburg and learning about what would be needed to start such a business.
In the meantime, the Khuraki programs will combine food tastings with interactive theater presentations aimed at showing Pittsburghers slices of Afghan life.
The first program, focusing on Afghan New Year celebrations, will be held at two locations so it can reach different neighborhoods. People can choose between shows at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Millvale Moose or April 6 at the Union Project in East Liberty.
The second program will focus on ways Afghans mark life changes such as birth, death, coming of age and marriage. It will be held at 7 p.m. April 22 at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh in Oakland and on May 6 at Alphabet City on the North Side.
Tickets for the programs are free, but a $20 donation is suggested; 75 percent of the proceeds will go toward the women’s food business. For tickets, e-mail realtimeinterventions@gmail.com with “Neighborhood Tickets” as the subject line.
Each evening will be capped at 50 audience members. For the first program, the audience members will be divided into groups of 10 who will visit spaces set up to resemble Afghan homes. Ms. Rice held an audition event where the refugee women watched 15 local actresses tell stories from their own lives, and then each woman selected an actress she connected with to portray her during the performances.
The “real” Afghan women will cook the food for the evening while five actresses tell the women’s stories for the small groups of audience members in the spaces resembling Afghan homes.
For the first program, the women will prepare two dishes that are commonly served at their New Year celebrations: sabzi chalaw, a rice and spinach dish, and haft mewa, a fruit salad. They also will serve kofta (meatballs), bolani (stuffed flatbread with vegetarian filling), ay khanum (rose-shaped dumplings filled with beans, onions and potatoes), Kishmish Paneer (raisins with homemade fresh cheese), saffron tea, pistachios and dried fruits from the Afghan city of Herat.
The women came to the United States because their husbands worked with the U.S. military in some way, such as serving as translators, construction assistants or journalists. In their home country, the women often weren’t allowed to leave home without the company of a man. Their isolation has made American life challenging, Ms. Rice said, and the eventual food business is intended to help promote their sense of community as well as independent living in the new country.
The programs are being presented by RealTime Interventions and directed by Rusty Thelin. The cast includes Tressa Glover, Alex Manalo, Krystal Rivera, Kelly Trumbull and Ashley Loren Williams.