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‘The Taliban tried to silence us’: the musicians who escaped to Portugal

With music now a crime in Afghanistan, Braga has become one of the few places where the practice is being preserved

A stone’s throw from Portugal’s oldest cathedral and buzzing bakeries serving up pastéis de nata, the complex notes of a sitar fill the ground floor of an unassuming building in the northern city of Braga. Photograph: Gonçalo Fonseca/The GuardianThe young musicians, most of whom had been evacuated without their families, reeled from homesickness and culture shock as Portuguese courts wrangled with the question of how best to handle the unaccompanied minors. The mention evokes a bittersweet smile from Sarmast, who points out that the last time they performed in those halls was in 2013, heralding an Afghanistan where hope, freedom and women’s rights were beginning to make headway.

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