Portrait of an Immigrant as a Struggling Artist

When Alexandria gallery director Marga Fripp was choosing a signature work for her new show of female artists, she settled quickly on "Waiting," a haunting, gray-washed watercolor of an Afghan woman sitting alone and looking out an open door.

Although the work was inspired by the struggle of many immigrant women, its title has deep meaning for the artist. Throughout her turbulent life, Afghan immigrant Fatana Baktash Arifi has been waiting, in one way or another.

Waiting with her family to flee the violence of her homeland, riven by the Soviet occupation and years of civil war. Waiting to restart her life as an artist, first as a refugee in Pakistan and, later, escaping oppression by religious extremists by fleeing to United States.

Resurrecting her art career in the United States over the past seven years has proved difficult, although in recent months Arifi, who lives in Springfield, has achieved some success.

She has paintings in "Citizen Artist: Local and Global Perspectives in the Art of Immigrant, Refugee and American Women" showing through July 22 in A Woman's Story Gallery in Old Town Alexandria. She's teaching drawing and painting at a crafts store in Springfield. And she penned a book on the history of Afghan art, which was recently published by the country's ministry of culture.

"The war situation was very hard for refugees," Arifi said, sitting down for an interview at the gallery. "I had to struggle to rebuild my career again."

She opened her slick black portfolio and began flipping through her work -- painting after painting, in oil, watercolor, pen and ink -- that, as she narrated, became a kind of portrait history of her ruined homeland. There is her watercolor of the famous stone Buddhas of Bamian, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. There is a famous tower in Kabul, also gone. There's a pen-and-ink drawing of one of the old-fashioned robed magicians who roamed the streets and bazaars of the once-thriving city.

Arifi, who prefers not to give her age, grew up in a Kabul that was vastly different from the war-torn capital that suffered under an oppressive Islamic regime. In the 1970s, the city was a cosmopolitan metropolis with bustling cafes and lush gardens. Many women eschewed the restrictive burqa, moving around the city bare-headed.

Arifi's father, Mohammad, was an animal-skin trader and progressive thinker who encouraged all his six children to attend school. He especially nurtured their artistic talents, providing Arifi with rolls of paper and other art supplies.

Then came the Soviet invasion in 1979.

"The tragedy begins from there," Arifi recalled. "For three nights there were helicopters and planes, strange noises in the sky."

She said she will never forget the look on her neighbors' faces. "It was like somebody had died," Arifi said. "All the happiness gone from their mouths."