Amulet case, Teke Turkmen, Afghanistan, mid-20th century (TRC 2024.0352).Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, 4 February 2024
Over the last few years, Willem and I have regularly been travelling to Nice in southern France to talk with May and Rolando Schinasi, a lovely elderly couple with a fascinating history. He is an Italian born in Egypt before the Second World War (he remembers the battle of El Alamein!), she is French and they met in Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1960s. This was before the Hippy Trail and there were very few foreigners visiting Afghanistan, let alone living there. They left the country after the Russian invasion at Christmas 1979.
The Schinasi’s and Willem have spent many years in Afghanistan, albeit at different times, and love the country as it used to be and its ancient historical roots.
Because of this bond the TRC had already become the home to part of May and Rolando's Afghan and Uzbek clothing and textile collection and the inspiration behind an exhibition of Afghan dress held at the TRC in 2010-2011 (still to be seen in the form of an online exhibition).
Our latest visit to see May and Ronaldo, late January, was a little fraught, as we were caught up in the ripples of the French farmers' closure of many main roads, as well as that of Belgian farmers' actions around Brussels.
The car trip took twice as much time as normal. Coming back was even longer and more complex, driving at night along provincial routes, but we have seen, albeit in the dark, some medieval towns in France we would never have visited otherwise!