In his native Afghanistan, Hamid Hemat built a career in the art world that spanned preserving archeological treasures to working with artisans in villages to use their traditional crafts in viable small businesses.
Hemat had a good-paying job, a wife and two young sons, and a nice home. He never thought he would move to the United States.
But in 2021, Hemat and his family were forced to flee the capital city of Kabul amid the turmoil of the withdrawal of the U.S. military and the crumbling of the government. Their flight set into motion a nine-month odyssey of almost 13,000 miles with an unforeseen new chapter in Hartford.
CT museum’s new exhibition brings back memories of harrowing flight from
Now, Hemat, exhibitions manager at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, is curating his first exhibition focusing on the museum’s small, but rarely seen, collection of Islamic art. The exhibition includes a leaf from what is believed to be among the oldest copies of the Quran in the United States.
The exhibition, “Divine Geometry,” which opens Nov. 27, examines floral motifs, geometric patterns and calligraphy, and their place in Islamic art and culture.
While the exhibition explores the broader subject of Islamic art, Hemat said some of the works remind him of his life in the Afghan capital of Kabul before his flight from the country.
The exhibition includes the Wadsworth’s recent acquisition of a wooden, Jaali screen carved with geometric patterns that are common in the older neighborhoods of Kabul. Some cafes — places for conversations with friends and strangers alike — have screens that are hundreds of years old.
“When I’m seeing Jaali screen, it gives me lots of those memories, the culture, those friendly moments,” Hemat said.
Hemat, who is 36, said he knows how fortunate he and his family are to have escaped Afghanistan.
Under the repressive rule of the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group that took back power in 2021 after two decades of fighting with the previous government, the rights of girls and women have been severely curtailed. They no longer have legal access to a secondary or a college-level education, and their right to move freely in public is heavily restricted.
Hemat has been in contact with a former colleague, a woman who had a college degree and was heavily involved with major archeological work.
She can no longer live alone under new rules that require women to have male support, Hemat said. She was forced to return to the village where she grew up.
He recalled one conversation that was particularly devastating.
“She said, ‘You know Hamid, I’m back doing the same work that my mother and grandmother were doing. I’m just milking the animals and living a very, 16th-century life. I don’t have a life anymore. There is no difference between me and my grandmother.”
Hemat said such communications are difficult, evidence of how human rights in Afghanistan, especially for women, have been rolled back, erasing 20 years of progress.
He’s been forced to reconcile his decision — and ability — to leave Afghanistan and his success in rebuilding his life in Connecticut with those who are back home experiencing the fallout from the regressive regime of the Taliban.
“Sometimes you feel so guilty that you don’t have any kind of solution for that,” Hemat said. “I feel so sad and disappointed.”
Reason to be worried
On the morning of Aug. 15, 2021, Hemat was sitting with his laptop working in his apartment in downtown Kabul.
His employer, Turquoise Mountain — an international nonprofit working to protect heritage and support communities with jobs and education — told Hemat it was too risky to venture into the field with the Taliban taking control of an increasing number of provinces.
“In front of my window was a busy street, and I saw the group of Taliban entering the streets of Kabul,” Hemat said. “That was the first time I saw Taliban coming into my city, and I feel so desperate at that moment.”
Hemat had good reason to be worried.
Turquoise Mountain aimed to bring more progressive ideas to Afghanistan to improve lives, often in close collaboration with the government. Hemat was used to the security that was necessary to visit villages in more remote regions of the country. Workers for nonprofits had been killed by the Taliban for introducing more Western ways of thinking to the country.
The sight of the Taliban in Kabul was unnerving.
“They were taking all the national army’s vehicles — you see the logos — but with their turbans and their guns, they just took the vehicles and came into the city,” Hemat said. “That was so scary for me. And I was thinking, probably they will come and arrest me.”
At that moment, a text from the nonprofit’s chief executive urged Hemat and his family to get out of their house, as the organization contacted different embassies in an attempt to get the Hemats out of Afghanistan.
Thoughts churned in Hemat’s mind.
“It was so tragic not just for me, but for everyone,” Hemat said. “I was thinking about my country, about my life, about my future. I don’t know where I’m going. Am I going to a good country? Am I going to work in a really bad situation? Am I getting back my life the way I lived in Afghanistan? Those dreams that I have for my country and the younger generation, what will happen?”
With just the clothes they were wearing and backpacks hastily stuffed with diapers and powdered milk for their 1-year-old, they drove to Hemat’s family farm outside Kabul and later, stayed with his mother in the city. The time was the beginning of an excruciating nine days of uncertainty.
‘Like it’s judgment day’
A text arrived on Aug. 24 from Hermat’s boss at Turquois Mountain that broke the wait.
Qatar’s embassy had arranged to fly Hemat and his family to that country by virtue of its international relationship with Turquois Mountain. It was only through that connection that Hemat was able to leave the country.
“Otherwise, myself, I couldn’t come,” Hemat said.
Hemat’s ride to the airport, in a vehicle with bulletproof glass, is etched deeply in memory.
“The tragic moment was when we reached the airport,” Hemat said. “I saw more than 10,000. I don’t know how many. It was not our Afghans. People were showing us their passports. They just attached themselves to the car, like maybe we could help them. But nobody could help them.”
The extent of the desperation to escape the country was captured in news footage showing people unable to gain entry to a plane clinging to its wings even as the aircraft was taking off.
Hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane, some climbing on the plane, as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug.16. 2021.
Hemat said the wait for the cargo plane felt almost apocalyptic.
“You feel like it’s judgment day, and you are in trouble, and the angels will come and say, ‘OK,’ ” Hemat said. “Then, because everyone was jumping to the airplane, you feel you have no control over your fate.”
The family’s fate wouldn’t become clear for five months, with stays in both Qatar and the Republic of North Macedonia, near Greece. They waited to see if they would be accepted into the United States on a humanitarian visa.
Word came in March, and the family flew into Virginia. A month later, they were settling in West Hartford, with help from an assistance organization. They are among 1,700 Afghans that have resettled in Connecticut since 2021, according to state figures.
Hemat chose Connecticut because his former boss came from the state and suggested the weather was similar to Kabul.
After working two months at a packaging design firm in East Hartford, Hemat learned online about a position as a fellow at the Wadsworth.
‘Everything has changed’
The Wadsworth was able to hire Hemat in September 2022 with the help of a $60,000 grant from Hartford HealthCare, the parent of Hartford Hospital.
The grant provided “critical financial support that enabled us to create a three-year fellowship position to explore lesser-known segments of the collection like our Islamic art holdings,” Jeffrey N. Brown, the Wadsworth’s president and chief executive, said.
In a statement, Hartford HealthCare said it helped fund a position at the Wadsworth in the past and saw the fellowship as critical to expanding the breadth of the museum’s offerings.
“We want a vibrant Wadsworth Atheneum — it’s a tremendous resource to the community and helps us all attract, recruit and retain remarkable talent,” the health care system said.
“Divine Geometry,” which runs through April 13, traces a millennium of Islamic creativity, from the Quran leaf — donated to the Wadsworth more than a century ago — to animated projections that detail the progressions of geometric shapes.
The Wadsworth said it hopes to work with the Islamic community in Hartford and elsewhere in the state for a larger exhibition in 2026 that could include live artisan demonstrations of Islamic calligraphy and ceramic-making.
Hemat said he has been asked by friends if he would return to Afghanistan.
“I really like my country, my heritage, the history of Afghanistan, the people, the villages,” Hemat said. “But the question is: Am I getting the same kind of feeling that I had in 2020? No, everything has changed. But the other question is: As long as I am staying in this country, I feel much more of a connection, it makes it hard for me to go back to Afghanistan.”
Hemat does miss the sound of his native Farsi language and his sons, Omar, 9 and Amir, 4, no longer speak it, save for a few words. At home, Hemat and his wife, Mursal, most often speak English.
Still, his thoughts are often abroad, particularly with his mother, a widow, and his sister.
They recently moved from Kabul to Islamabad, the capital of neighboring Pakistan. In Pakistan, women cannot work, so he and his brothers send them money to support them.
Hemat said he hopes that they will one day be able to move so he will be closer to them.
“They are better than if they were in Kabul,” Hemat said. “It is very difficult for a woman in Afghanistan without any male support.”
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected].
