Afghan American Filmmaker Leaves Eloquent Legacy
Afghan Journal, Zohra Saed, Posted: Feb 11, 2003 // 
Born in Kabul, Jawed Wassel’s favorite pastime was sneaking into the Park Cinema where he devoured the images on the screen.
He spent his high school years on the streets of Kabul with fellow film-buff friends making short films. His destiny as a poetic and poignant filmmaker was determined in these creative early years.
When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Jawed Wassel was separated from his family and went on a 10-day journey on foot with a guide to get to Pakistan. He was only nineteen years old at the time. From that time on, he became a nomad, a young refugee like millions of Afghan people. He traveled back and forth between Germany and France attempting to obtain permanent residency in one of these countries.
Despite the upheaval and uncertainty, he continued to write scripts and direct short films. Most notably, he directed two films in French, A Croire Sans Preuve (Take it on Faith) and Que Les Hommes Choissent (Human Choices), which were highly praised shorts produced by Yann Charbonnier in France. In 1985, Jawed was sponsored by a church and finally arrived in America where he was granted asylum. He worked odd jobs to put himself through school. He attended Hunter College and obtained his BA in Film and Romance Languages.
The inspiration for the film Fire Dancer came from his trip to Kabul in 1995. He revisited the monuments of his youth and particularly his beloved Park Cinema, which was now in ruins. When he returned to New York City, he wrote feverishly until he finished with a 700 page novel titled, Fire Dancer. He recast this autobiographical novel into a film script and began work on shooting the film, which took seven years to complete.
On October 3rd, 2001 the Daily News ran an article pronouncing Jawed as the next genius director, a new talent bringing the story of Afghans to film. Jawed did not live to reap his rewards. He was murdered on the afternoon that the article appeared by his American business associate and then producer Nathan Chandler Powell. It was a shocking act of brutality in a city that once offered him peace and safe haven to create his art.
Powell murdered Jawed during a dispute about the film finances. Powell’s defense that he suffered from post-traumatic stress as a result of 9/11 came only after he hired a lawyer. His claim that an artist such as Jawed Wassel was considered a threat, simply because he was Afghan, also came with the hiring of this lawyer.
Much of his defense depends on feeding off the heartache that New Yorkers faced after 9/11 and on the fears that Americans have of Afghans. The defense is suffused in racism and stereotypes of Afghans. The defense is also an insult to the people who witnessed the catastrophe or suffered the loss of loved ones in the World Trade Towers collapse.
Despite the tragic loss of Jawed Wassel and the pending trial, set for April, his friends have continued working on the film. Vida Zaher Khadem, the associate director of the film, stepped up and completed a rough cut of the film which premiered in Kabul the first week of September of last year. The premier was meant to honor Jawed’s memory and bring his vision to Afghanistan. Afghans warmly welcomed the film, despite some rumbles over how much of a woman’s body should be shown on-screen.
The screenings at Park Cinema, Bakhtar Cinema and finally at Ghazi stadium were quite a success, not only entertaining Afghans recovering from war traumas but also honoring Jawed Wassel’s memory.
I was able to see Fire Dancer at a private screening in New York City before the premier in Kabul. I wept through most of the film because there are parts where I felt like it was holding up a mirror to my life.
The film reminded me of all the knots that my family was either ignoring or trying to untie, similar to the knots that thousands of other Afghan American families were struggling with. The film is dipped in grief and struggle but it is also humorous and weaves in Jawed’s vision of love and compassion bridging the distance between our memories and our present lives, between homeland and here, between parents and children, between those left behind and those struggling to get by in new worlds.
The film is the Afghan and Afghan American universe in a nutshell. Jawed Wassel revealed astutely the Afghan diaspora consciousness. It was after viewing the film that his death left a deep imprint in me. After losing countless artists and poets in the wars in Afghanistan, losing an Afghan artist in a land where he sought refuge is a terrible loss to fathom.
Last Dec. 3, Fire Dancer was announced as the first film from Afghanistan to ever be selected by the Oscars to compete in the Best Foreign Films category. Jawed Wassel’s vision had finally reached a mainstream audience. On this day, Vida Zaher Khadem visited my class at Hunter College as a guest lecturer and screened excerpts of the film to my students. This was a West Asian American Film and Literature class, and we had already been studying Afghan American literature and films. As Hunter College students, they felt close to the story of Jawed Wassel’s death and were moved by the excerpts. 
It was an oddly cosmic moment watching the film in a classroom on the day the film had received such recognition. My students of various ethnic and racial backgrounds were touched by the film because it was a universal story of survival and perseverance, a story many immigrants could relate to and understand deeply.
Fire Dancer provides a catharsis particularly for Afghans because it is about our survival as a people and about the wounds that are still healing. It is about the bridges we create and the bridges we burn. Fire Dancer is about the worlds we must dance between to survive.
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