The Victor Weeps
In 1996, Fazal Sheikh traveled to the birthplace of his grandfather, who had been born in northern India (now Pakistan). When he arrived at the border with Afghanistan, he found hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees who had been living in camps in north Pakistan since the Soviet invasion, twenty years before.
Over the next two years he traveled back and forth to the camps, spending months at a time making portraits of the people and listening to their stories, which he recorded: about the invasion, about their leaders, about their husbands and brothers and sons who had died fighting the Soviets, about their villages back home, to which they hoped one day to return. What struck him, in talking to the Afghans, was how often they communicated with those they had lost through their dreams, and what comfort those dreams brought them. These, too, he recorded.
The result was a complex layering of landscapes, portraits, found photographs, children’s drawings, personal testimonies and Sheikh’s own written narrative, published as The Victor Weeps (Scalo 1998).
Publication
Scalo Publishers (Zurich – New York – Berlin)
With text by Fazal Sheikh
Design: Hans Werner Holzwarth
248 pages, 152 duotone images
23.5 x 28.5 cm
Hardcover with dust jacket
ISBN 3-931141-95-0
Publication date: 1998
Currently out of print
When two bulls fight, the leg of the calf is broken
International Human Rights Series
16 pp, 12 duotone images
23 x 25.5 cm
Publication date: October 8, 2001
Softcover pamphlet
On October 8, 2001, the day the United States began its bombing campaign on Afghanistan, 70,000 copies of When two bulls fight… were printed and distributed through a wide network of humanitarian organizations, cultural institutions, and the media. During the first week of the war, 20,000 copies were distributed at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In the subsequent months, as the campaign continued, the pamphlet was reprinted to provide a voice to counter the prevailing mood of repression and aggression.
The Victor Weeps DVD
International Human Rights Series
Running time: 30 minutes
PAL and NTSC versions
Publication date: 2002
This project was produced as part of the International Human Rights Series, to be distributed to institutions, schools and colleges, and made available to as wide a public as possible, at a time when the US-led invasion had made Afghanistan, once again the focus of an international power struggle. The portraits and narratives of The Victor Weeps convey the tragedy of Afghan refugees exiled by a former war. They illustrate that faith can create conflict as well as offer comfort, but that justice can only be served if peace is the ultimate goal.
Online Edition
In order to bring his projects and the issues involved in them to a wide international audience, Fazal Sheikh has made his publications available on line.
Viewable in the following languages: