With music now forbidden across Afghanistan, young members of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) fled to Portugal, where they found new problems

With a plane passing over­head every five minutes or so, 18-year-old Sevinch Majidi was constantly reminded that her three brothers, sister and parents were thousands of kilometres from the former military hospital near Lisbon’s international airport that became her home when she arrived in Portugal in December 2021.

The squat, hillside hospital and its surroundings provide breathtaking views of the Tagus River, but the property had been poorly maintained and its long corridors and big, empty rooms felt cold, until the rhythms of a tabla or the drone of a dambura warmed the space. The hallways were decorated with students’ drawings: a piano, a trumpet, a few heart shapes, a girl with her hair waving in the wind and a Portuguese flag.

Fleeing the Taliban takeover of Kabul in the summer of 2021, Majidi was one of 273 members of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) who were evacuated from Kabul to Doha, in Qatar, in late 2021, before being eventually flown to the Iberian Peninsula, where they were welcomed by the Portuguese government.

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