He says that even the most hardened civil war fighters would watch in a state of helpless rapture.īut when the Taliban took control of the country in 1992, Kamal's master was forced to flee with his family to India. Kamal was not invited to come along.Īnd like that, it was over-the parties, the dancing lessons, the stand-in family. Like many boys who 'age out' of their enslavement, Kamal found he had nowhere to turn, and no marketable skills but one: his dancing. Prostitution, a common fallback for many abused boys, did not appeal to him.īut with the rise of the ultra-Islamic Taliban, music, dancing and even the practice of bacha bazi all went underground.
'A part of me had to die so that I would not feel pain.' 'I had to become a new person, someone who wouldn't attract attention,' he says.
