Methods of Recording: the Visual VS the Aural

Vision in Kandahar is most often than not presented as partial. There is, of course, the burqa that physically constrains the sight of the wearer and in turn makes her own body invisible to the world. There is the curtain between the doctor and the patient - with only a hole allowing only the scope of vision that is deemed necessary. There is also Nafas' own search for the 'way to Kandahar' which manifests itself into a search which is very much optic. When Nafas loses her guide-boy, Khak, she desperately paces around the desert ''looking'' for him - (interestingly, she finds him by a skeleton - this unpleasant sight is perhaps a consequence of the fact that she has ''looked'' too much - that she has transverses the limitations of visibility). Nafas has to deal with the limitations of this partial visual outlook - and what is of utmost importance to the point I am trying to make is that she chooses the voice recorder rather than the camera or the video camera to tell her story. The only time a camera features is when she is forced to take a photograph with her 'fake family' for the sake of record. The photograph, much like the broader ability to see, is presented as distorted. It does not tell the complete truth - and in the case of the photograph, it is an obvious falsification. Hence, the visual form somewhat fails and requires Nafas to undertake the oral/aural form to tell her story.

What further makes this point of view complicated is the idea of the film itself, Kandahar, as a record of Nafas' personal journey. Central to this concept is - who is presenting the film to us? Are we meant to see it as a personal, auto-biographical re-telling of one's own journey? Or is it a third-person account of Nafas' journey that uses her voice-tapes as narrative? If it is the former, then Nafas' seems to have adopted the very form she rejects earlier - perhaps when she has returned back to Canada where the use of such a form cannot be hindered. If we take the later position, then we can come to the conclusion that the film itself is a visual interpretation of the oral/aural form adopted by Nafas. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note how personal experiences are recorded; and if the aversion to visual recording is an extension of the partiality of vision in Kandahar as a whole.