Steve Morison ’88 first experienced the Afghani countryside while perched on the top of a rickety bus careening through the mountains.

Speaking on Tuesday as a guest of the History Department, Morison talked about his travels to Afghanistan, beginning with a story from a 1989 trip. Clinging to the roof of the vehicle, he met a group of teenagers who discussed with him everything from belly dancers to their aspirations to own Kalashnikov assault rifles. He showed pictures of a longer-haired, tighter-jeaned version of himself surrounded by the beaming Afghani boys. Fifteen years later, Morison returned to a more dangerous Afghanistan. His goal was to meet with artists in Kabul in an effort to represent a different side of Afghanistan than is portrayed by the American media.

Now a teacher at the Pomfret School in Connecticut, Morrison majored in History and English at the University, where Professor Bruce Masters inspired his interest in the Middle East. After he graduated he took a trip around the world and concentrated heavily on Middle Eastern countries. His decision to return to Afghanistan was driven by curiosity, family connections, and a promise by “Poets and Writers Magazine” to publish an article on his experience.

A brief stay in Kabul afforded Morison interviews with a cross-section of Afghani artists, including two poets, a filmmaker, two cartoonists, and a comedian. Each of them portrayed facets of Afghani culture that are rarely seen by Americans.

Ghalam Haidar-Haidari Woojadi, a Sufi poet who writes in Persian, shared poems that were not about war and violence, but about love.

“I didn’t want to go there and say, ‘You’ve been in the midst of a war for 30 years, give me some war poems,” Morison said.

Instead, he asked the poet to pick a work to share. Woojadi read a gazal (a poetic form in couplets) about passion and infatuation that spoke to universal human desires.

Morison became especially animated when describing his encounter with Asif Jalili, a comedian on Afghani television. Jalili is most famous for his theatrical impersonations of people. He showed off his skills in a short video clip in which he did an impression of Indian singers, distorting his face and warbling his voice as a classical singer would do.

The idea of national television in a war-torn country such as Afghanistan was hard to grasp for certain members of the audience.

“Is there enough mass media in Afghanistan for [Jalili’s TV show] to matter?” Annie Fox ’07 asked. “My vision of Afghanistan is that most people don’t have television.”

Eager to dispel American stereotypes of Afghanistan, Morison provided his firsthand account.

“Most people do have television,” he said. “In fact, on one visit to a small town, I was asked by a local man, ‘Predator or Rambo?’”

Morison was initially confused by the question, but understood when the man pulled out copies of the Schwarzenneger and Stallone films, popular even in a small village.

The artists interviewed by Morison often worked with the knowledge that their profession could be life-threatening under the current regime. This was especially true for the political cartoonists interviewed by Morison. Mohammad Zia Koshun has illegally printed his cartoons and commentaries for years. One of this artist’s more controversial cartoons depicted a burka (a full-body cloak worn by many Muslim women) with jail bars in the space where the face should have been. Koshun faced the prospect of finding himself in a real jail for drawing such a cartoon.

Despite the risks of the profession, Morison emphasized that all of the artists were passionate about their work. When asked why he decided to become a comedian, Asif Jalili gave an insightful justification for his profession.

“Steve,” he said, “In Afghanistan when I walk down the street and people see me, they smile. You have no idea what it’s like to see people smiling on the streets of Kabul.”