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Meet Khorshid, Eeza, Nawab, and Parwana of Skateistan

Ben McKelvey

by Ben McKelvey

14 Sep 06:00am

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Filed under: Afghanistan, Kabul, Skating, Suicide Bomber, Terror, War

21 comments

Skateistan is possibly the most surprising NGO to come out of the war on terror.

Visit http://www.skateistan.org/blog/tragic-loss to learn about these amazing kids.

The facility, sitting on the southeast corner of Kabul next to Ghazi Stadium, is essentially a giant bunker, with a domed roof that’s painted in the Afghan black, red and green.

Inside there are a few classrooms, a kitchen and meeting area, some offices and a cavernous hall, where skate ramps, kickers and rails are usually peppered with Afghan boys and girls of all ages wearing an amusing mix of Afghan garb and skate gear, and a few Aussie and international adult skaters with a heightened sense of civic duty giving tips in freshly-minted Dari.

Skateistan was born out of the morphine dream of Melbourne man Oliver Percovich, 37, who devised a community-building skateboarding project after crashing his motorbike a few years after the invasion of Afghanistan. With no external funds, Oliver moved to Kabul in 2007 and started skating Kabul, with any Afghans he could find who wanted to ride one of his 10 skateboards.

Soon, informal classes started at the Russian Fountain, a large, empty concave concrete bowl, sitting out the front of the most utilitarian of apartment blocks, built during the Soviet occupation. A little more equipment started coming in, then a trickling of money.

Interest grew and Oliver and some friends started trying to get the money together for a permanent facility, with the Norwegian and German governments eventually contributing.

Inside Skateistan, there are the kids who drop in, taking the hour of required classes before getting out on the skate area, and there are the kids that seemed to live there, like Murza, the self-proclaimed ‘star’ of Skateistan - and Nawab.

I met Nawab in 2010, a shy kid whose voice was so quiet, it could barely be discerned in a recording against the background noise, but I remember him well. While Oliver and I chatted, Nawab tried to learn a new trick over a kicker in the middle of the park. Up he went, and down in a clatter of a board and pads. Up and clatter, up and clatter. 

That evening, Oliver, Murza, Nawab and a few of the older boys took me to the Russian Fountain and they skated and clowned around until dark. I’m not a skater myself, but I could tell that both Nawab and Murza would elicit awe at the Bondi Bowl. The scene at the fountain reminded me of those days I spent with my friends down on Cottesloe Beach playing volleyball. Heaven.

Yesterday I saw a tweet from the Skateistan feed that read: “It’s important to put names and faces to tragedies like this. Memories and photos posted of kids we lost on Saturday.” There was a link, and there were pictures of four Skateistan regulars, two little girls, Parwana, 8, and Korshid, 14, and two boys Mohammed Essa, 13 and Nawab, who has now died at age 17. 

A report on the BBC website said that the four were killed out the front of NATO headquarters, when a boy about Mohammed Essa’s age rode his bike up to the front of the security cordon on the street and detonated a suicide bomb.

Along with the Skateistan dead, two more Afghans were killed, including the boy who was made to detonate the bomb. Navid, a 14-year-old Skateistan instructor was seriously injured. No NATO soldiers were injured.

The argument for Australia fighting in a country like Afghanistan seems to be dwindling over time, but we should remember the good that’s being done. There isn’t a lot of joy in Kabul, but there was a lot at Skateistan, which was possible because of the efforts of ISAF, including the Australians fighting in Uruzgan, who helped make Kabul as relatively safe as it is.

Sadly, only relatively safe.

If you’d like to know more about Nawab, Parwana, Korshid and Mohammed Essa, or contribute to Skateistan, visit the website here.

Comments on this post will close at 8pm AEST.

Most commented

21 comments

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    • NESLIHAN KUROSAWA says:

      07:04am | 14/09/12

      Hi Ben,

      This article puts a real human face on this human tragedy we tend to call a war, with little children paying the highest price as usual. Most definitely Afghanistan right now happens to be a miserable place for a child as well as being one of the least safe places in our world. But do we need more articles like this to remind us that some of these children were not even born when the war in Afghanistan began?  Yes we most certainly do, because this isn’t exactly the future we must have planned for our children.

      I was very touched by your story and look forward to more articles like this to shed some kind of light in to the dark areas of Afghanistan or anywhere else!  Because put simply these kids dying from no fault of their own, is heart braking to say the least.  Just like everywhere else in the world our children are our most prized human connections to this world!  And for their innocence alone it is worth trying to change the world for the better so that there will not be any more Vietnam, Cambodia and Afghanistan with little children suffering the most and dying senselessly! Kind regards.

      Reply

    • L. says:

      07:46am | 14/09/12

      “Most definitely Afghanistan right now happens to be a miserable place..”

      Right now..?

      You mean at some point it was a lovely place to be a child..or adult for that matter?

    • Bill says:

      08:11am | 14/09/12

      There was a time. If you look at the misery of Afghanistan, it probably peaked in the civil wars of the eighties and nineties, but things were pretty decent for a third world country in the seventies, livable under Taliban rule and also now in places like Kabul, under ISAF auspices.

      What comes next though, that’s the big one.

    • NESLIHAN KUROSAWA says:

      08:34am | 14/09/12

      Hi L,

      I truly can’t tell for certain since I haven’t been to Afghanistan ever!  I am only guessing that you have been and seem to have a lot more knowledge in this field.  Why don’t you enlighten us with your views and expertise? 

      I just wanted to highlight the misery of a war scenario!  Next time I really look forward to you sharing your personal experiences of PEACE & WAR.  I am sure that we can all learn a great deal from you!  Could you kindly manage more than a few sentences you can actually call your own, without any jokes? Kind regards.

    • Gregg says:

      12:42pm | 14/09/12

      @Neshlihan,
      ” I just wanted to highlight the misery of a war scenario!  “
      You probably do not want to come across as ghoulish but it does not take too much viewing of news and current affairs programs to see plenty of people in many different places dealing with abject misery, it already being highlighted very often.

      The history of Afghanistan will show you that there has been hostilities over many centuries just like the several other zones of the middle east and even right through Europe and into what were referred to as new world countries when they were being settled by Europeans during the last five centuries or so.

      If you need reminding of misery, you do not need Ben to do that.

    • Gregg says:

      07:17am | 14/09/12

      It’s certainly not a good place Ben where kids can be killed for just wanting to have fun.

      There are lots of places around the planet where fun is not so easy to be had relative to countries like Australia and we are still to wonder at what the answers might be or in fact if there any as sad as it is for those kids like the ones that died.

      I suppose the best we can say is that they smiled for some times in their short lives.
      RIP Kids and all kids that it becomes applicable to.

      Reply

    • VJR says:

      08:04am | 14/09/12

      The value of life especially young people seems not to count for much in Afghanistan.  The country needs all its young boys and girls to be the future.  The Taliban don’t see the future as we do and never will. So we pull out in 2014 and have we made any real difference to the lives of those young people I hope so for the sake of the Australians who have died trying to provide them a that future.

      Reply

    • egg says:

      02:59pm | 14/09/12

      “... have we made any real difference to the lives of those young people I hope so for the sake of the Australians who have died trying to provide them a that future.”

      Good to know that you hope for change for dead Australians troops, not the living people in Afghanistan. That’s a charming attitude.

    • Queensland Observer says:

      08:06am | 14/09/12

      So who was it that induced a thirteen year old boy to ride his bike and become a human bomb?

      Even in the worst of times, in the worst of places, thirteen year old children (I would hope) think about life, about laughing, about having fun, and not about death, or causing the deaths of others. The adults who brainwashed this child into doing something that they themselves could not do, should be utterly condemned. Cowards all to use a child for their dark, evil purposes. It is one thing for adults to kill adults (for at least you’d think they’d have an understanding of what it was they did) - it is another thing entirely to use an innocent child as their unwitting tool.

      Reply

    • chuck says:

      08:19am | 14/09/12

      How long will it take before they too will become indoctrinated or killed for being different ? No doubt the fundamentalists are already looking at this mode of transport as a means for bombings!

      Reply

    • Ben says:

      08:49am | 14/09/12

      There seems to be an acceptance of what’s happening at Skateistan, and the kids on skateboards . Oliver was at the Russian Fountain at the same time, week in, week out for years and was never bothered or attacked by the more radical men in the city.

      The kids weren’t attacked deliberately, they just happened to be in front of the wrong building.

    • Mahhrat says:

      08:43am | 14/09/12

      The biggest problem we face is empowering the people to take matters into their own hands.  They have to want to change.  We’ve been there ten years, still the change isn’t occurring.

      We cannot govern for them; they have to want to govern themselves.  I see it here with people suffering addiction issues; they have to want to change, even the best psychologists can only give them the tools.

      We’ve spent ten years and more there trying to give them the tools to stand on their own, and it just doesn’t seem to be happening.

      These sorts of tragedies are sickening, but how do you get the populace to fight for themselves?

      Reply

    • I, Claudia says:

      09:35am | 14/09/12

      What is done to children, they will do to society.

      Reply

    • Ben says:

      09:56am | 14/09/12

      Centres of community, outside of just church and family, I think are important when looking at empowerment. If there’s something to fight for against those who want church and family to be the only aspects of life, then maybe people will empower themselves.

      A great failing for the longest time in Iraq was that, when the coalition held ground, they did nothing more than just hold it. Then, with the surge, they would hold ground and bring in engineers and NGO’s for community projects. There aren’t a lot of examples of that in Kabul, and certainly not elsewhere in the country.

      Perhaps it would have been a good idea to fund a project that was similar to the US Peace Corp, so that when areas in Afghanistan, people like Oliver and the like, from other countries involved in the combat in Afghanistan, could set up their own community projects.

      Skateistan was set up, I think, for less $250,000 and it’s had literally thousands of kids learn and skate there.

      Reply

    • colin says:

      10:48am | 14/09/12

      And when Afghanistan returns to Taliban rule, you think that these children will continue to be allowed to ride these Western-devil devices..? Hardly; the Taliban rule with an Iron Fist.

      Reply

    • It's good night from him says:

      11:20am | 14/09/12

      I’ve got a zanny idea, let’s butt the hell out of these countries and stop ramming our righteous wanker westerner beliefs down their third world throats.

      Nothing is going to change, how long is it going to take us dickheads to work this out!!

      ....ah the children, wont somebody please think of the poor children, the animals sending these kids out with bombs to blow themselves up were once children too, eh????

      Leave em’ to it I say, and get the hell out of these mental countries, let’s worry about our own dung heap.

      Reply

    • Ben says:

      11:49am | 14/09/12

      And once we’ve invaded and displaced an unpalatable but stable government for our own strategic reasons, we just leave and let them go about the business of civil warring themselves into misery?

      Reply

    • Bho Ghan-Pryde says:

      12:30pm | 14/09/12

      Whatever good has been done will be undone in a flash. These are backward patriarchal cesspits of misogamy, child abuse and cult religion. Nothing can change in places like Afghanistan – to many men’s minds are controlled by the Islamic cult. No science or reason flourishes where that has control. The West had wars over this centuries ago but Islam is still hundreds of years behind and scared because it has seen what the enlightenment did to religion in Europe and does not want the same fate. Hence the freaky reaction across the Islamic world in the last few to a poorly made clip of a movie that no-one had heard of.

      Reply

    • DG says:

      07:54pm | 14/09/12

      Islamic cult? Islam still hundreds of years behind? How dumb and bigotted can you be?! This has nothing to do with Islam, it has to do with extremism! But then a bigot like you would be an expert in extremidm, seeing as you are one yourself!!!!

    • Bee says:

      03:37pm | 14/09/12

      Thanks for this article. God, so sad. And what a decent, inspiring person is Oliver Percovich

      Reply

    • just shut up says:

      07:41pm | 14/09/12

      I cannot comment
      I cannot skate !

      Reply
 
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