Kat Rae, 45, served in the Australian Army for 20 years, including two tours of Afghanistan. Mursal Azizi, 33, came to Australia as an Afghan refugee after fleeing Kabul when the Taliban came to power in 2021. The pair met at a cafe in North Fitzroy in February 2025 through a mutual friend and connected as artists and as people with a link to Afghanistan.
Rae, whose husband died by suicide in 2017, said Azizi told her she felt lonely, a feeling Rae recognised as a widow. Azizi wanted to find a way to help women still in Afghanistan, and the two began working together.
Sparks in the Dark features 260 handkerchiefs embroidered by women living in Afghanistan, one for each week since the Taliban took Kabul. At its opening, Rae recited the lines "They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old" from Laurence Binyon's For The Fallen. She said Afghan attendees were crying, their grief raw, and that Azizi hugged her and called the words perfect.
Rae said she had wondered whether Afghans would be angry at her, feeling Australia had let them down, but Azizi was grateful. "The Afghans I've met understand loss and know we feel it, too," Rae said.
Rae reflected on the Afghan word hamdard, which means shared grief, a shoulder-to-shoulder connectedness. "Australians aren't very good at expressing grief," she said. "But there's something beautiful about expressing grief together and trying to do some good with it."