His nimble fingers stroked the tabla, a percussion instrument, but the chords struck deep in his heart as he remembered Kabul.
War and famine have destroyed his homeland but 14-year-old Qaisuddin Khan tried to forget it all.
"There is lot of vo..lence (violence) there," he said in a mix of chaste Urdu and Queen"s English. Qaisuddin and his family moved from Kabul to Pakistan in 1993 and arrived in the United States late last year.
"We reached here on September 26 last year. We expected to be here on September 12, but our flights were delayed because of the terrorist attacks," his brother, 16-year-old Fardeen Khan, said.
Qaisuddin and Fardeen were top stars at an Afghan celebration Saturday night at the Memorial Union's cinema hall. The small Valley Afghan community were celebrating the formation of an interim government in Afghanistan.
Dressed in traditional Afghan attire, children played with each other as elders warmly embraced friends and acquintances. To celebrate, they had Fardeen and Qaisuddin take them back to their roots.
On the back side of the small stage, a banner read: "On the occasion of the victory on terrorism and the establishment of a National Interim Government in Afghanistan."
For those in the audience who could not grasp this, Valley Afghan elder Abdulrahim Elham explained: "This concert is convened to celebrate the victory on terrorism."
Meanwhile, getting ready for the show, Fardeen spoke about the formal music training he received in Islamabad, Pakistan. He started learning music under Ustad (master) Mashar and later trained under Ustad Mohamed Yusuf of the Patiala gharana (home). They taught him how to sing ghazals (collection of a poem of two lines), classical songs and poems.
However, he prefers studying here to be an engineer or a doctor. "I don't think music will be a full-time profession for me," he said.
Fardeen is a tenth grade student at Central High School in Phoenix.
He was pleased to see some of his teachers attend the show. "They are all here," he said, happily introducing one of his teacher's to his mother.
Like his brother, Qaisuddin also has no firm plans to keep music as a full-time profession. He too wants to be either an engineer or a doctor.
"After school I do my homework and play around," the ninth grader said. He learned tabla under Ustad Arif in Islamabad and knows how to play the instrument in tune with his brother's songs.
Fardeen and Qaisuddin - like many Afghans - belong to large, extended families. Including his parents, four sisters and two brothers, they are a family of ten. Their father, Samandar Khan, is now looking for a job to support the family.
Asked what he misses most in America, Qaisuddin had an obvious answer. "They don't play cricket here, do they?" he quipped.
The evening's function was jointly organized by the Arizona Chapter of the Afghan Artists Union, part of an international organization promoting Afghan culture and Desi Bunch, a campus-based organization promoting culture from the sub-continent.
