BOOKPATHS

Afghanistan

The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart (Orlando, FL: Harvest Books, 2006)

The Places in Between is Rory Stewart’s account of his walk across Afghanistan just four months after 9/11.  His descriptions of people and place during his frigid mid-winter journey are enlightening, allowing readers a glimpse into this war torn country.  One emerges from the book hoping, more than ever, for a wise ending to the violence and turmoil.

Just before Christmas 2001, I reached a town in eastern Nepal and heard that the Taliban had fallen.  I decided to return by vehicle to Afghanistan and walk from Heart to Kabul and thus connect my walk in Iran with my walk in Pakistan.  I chose to walk from Herat to Kabul in a straight line through the central mountains.  The normal dogleg through Kandahar was flatter, easier, and free of snow.  But it was also longer and controlled in parts by the Taliban.

The country had been at war for twenty-five years; the new government had been in place for only two weeks; there was no electricity between Herat and Kabul, no television and no T-shirts.  Villages combined medieval etiquette with new political ideologies.  In many houses the only piece of foreign technology was a Kalashnikov, and the only global brand was Islam.  All that had made Afghanistan seem backward, peripheral, and irrelevant now made it the center of the world’s attention.  – from “Preface,” The Places in Between, by Rory Stewart

Related Websites

Rory Stewart Website

Publisher’s Website

Afghanistan

Poet and translator Coleman Barks talks about the “Afghan-born 13th century Sufi mystic poet Jalaluddin Rumi…the national poet of Afghanistan, as well as a much-loved poet in America.”

COLEMAN BARKS: What the Afghans love about the poetry of Rumi, and that the American public, too, loves, is that all of those deep human emotions, all these religions, all this singing is one song.

Both cultures love the same poet. The Afghans love it that Rumi is so popular in the United States. They're proud of us for that, and we're proud to be connected with them in that way. – from The News Hour Website

Russia; Afghanistan

Gregory Feifer, NPRs Moscow correspondent, talks about The Great Gamble, his “new history of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.”

‘The common view of the war was that it was a Soviet territorial grab. But the truth was much more confused,’ Feifer tells Renee Montagne. – from NPR Website

Afghanistan

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (New York: Riverhead, 2007)

Khaled Hosseini transports readers into the culture and history of Afghanistan, beginning in 1959 and ending in 2003, through the stories of two women, Mariam and Laila.  Brought together by “war…loss…and fate,” their lives weave together the turmoil, fear, despair, hope, and courage of all Afghan women.

The Bamiyan Valley below was carpeted by lush farming fields.  Babi said they were green winter wheat and alfalfa, potatoes too.  The fields were bordered by poplars and crisscrossed by streams and irrigation ditches, on the banks of which tiny female figures squatted and washed clothes.  Babi pointed to rice paddies and barley fields draping the slopes.  It was autumn, and Laila could make out people in bright tunics on the roofs of mud brick dwellings laying out the harvest to dry.  The main road going through the town was poplar-lined too.  There were small shops and teahouses and street-side barbers on either side of it.  Beyond the village, beyond the river and the streams, Laila saw foothills, bare and dusty brown, and, beyond those, as beyond everything else in Afghanistan, the snowcapped Hindu Kush.

The sky above all of this was an immaculate, spotless blue.

‘It’s so quiet,’ Laila breathed.  She could see tiny sheep and horses but couldn’t hear their bleating and whinnying.

‘It’s what I always remember about being up here,’ Babi said.  ‘The silence.  The peace of it.  I wanted you to experience it.  But I also wanted you to see your country’s heritage, children, to learn of its rich past.  You see, some things I can teach you.  Some you learn from books.  But there are things that, well, you just have to ‘see’ and ‘feel.’ – from A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

Khaled Hosseini’s Website (includes information on “What You Can Do to Help Afghanistan”)

Afghanistan; California

Penny Wark talks with Khaled Hosseini about his “incredible journey” from Kabul to California.

“The eldest child of a diplomat and a school vice-principal, both highly educated, respected and liberal in their instincts, he was born in 1965 when Kabul was peaceful. He attended the French Lycée and remembers that the tanks in the military barracks - near his parents' comfortable home - hadn't moved in 20 years. Socially, life was rich, full of conversation and gossip: ‘You know, I don't recall ever eating dinner alone.’ In the winters he flew kites every day with his brother and cousins. He has an almost overwhelming sense of family, I comment. ‘There's no such thing as not having a close family in Afghanistan,’ he replies. ‘That's the unit of life.’” – from “From Kabul to California: the Incredible Journey lf Khaled Hosseini,” by Penny Wark, The Times

Afghanistan

James Meek, author of the successful The People’s Act of Love, talks about his new novel, We Are Now Beginning Our Descent, with Ed Wood.

“By the time he was grown up, Meek decided he needed a real career. Journalism beckoned, but not for any glorious reasons. ‘I needed to eat,’ he explains matter of factly. ‘More than that though – I didn't want to be poor.’ He stills wonders, he says, whether such a demanding career delayed his writing success – but then without its experiences, perhaps his writing would lack its stirring worldliness."– from “James Meek: the War Reporter Fumbles Toward a Romance in the Rubble of Afghanistan,” by Ed Wood, The Independent

Afghanistan

Khaled Hosseini talks about his new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, with Josh Getlin of the Los Angeles Times.

“’I saw these women trailed by their children, and I wondered who they were underneath those garments, what they had been through during the last 30 years,’ Hosseini said. ‘That's when I got the idea of writing a novel about their lives. My first book focused on fathers and sons, but this would be a story about mothers and daughters. And it was an important story to tell the world, because women in Afghanistan have suffered so greatly.’” – from Khaled Hosseini’s Mission Transcends the Page, by Khaled Hosseini, Los Angeles Times

Afghanistan

Khalid Hosseini talks about his new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

“His new novel is A Thousand Splendid Suns, a title that comes from a 17th-century poem — an ode to the city of Kabul. In it, Hosseini tells the story of two girls who grow close as women — unlikely friends who are brought together in the chaos of war.” – NPR Website

BOOKPATH: Afghanistan

Kabul, by M. E. Hirsh (New York : St. Martin's Griffin, 2002; first edition published by Atheneum in 1986)

Like Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Kabul, by M. E. Hirsh, pushes readers into Afghanistan's recent history. As we follow the prominent Anwari family, we begin to understand the complexity and turmoil of Afghanistan's politics between the 1973 coup against King Mohammad Zahir Shah and the 1979 Soviet invasion. It's a novel about family, ties to homeland, and the pull of East and West. As each family member -- Omar, Catherine, Mangal, Roshana, Saira, Tor -- make decisions, not only is the family impacted, but Afghanistan as well. Kabul not only helps readers understand the sequence of historical events, it personalizes that history, creating empathy that lingers for people and place.

Leaning back, he covered his face with his hands. 'My God, haven't I taught my children anything? I don't understand what any of you are doing, playing games, but that's alright, as long as you're enjoying yourselves. When I was your age I didn't know the meaning of the word. Mangal sits in the President's Office talking about the people, Tor's majoring in theft and bribery, and you write books and have a doorman. Fine. Afghanistan may be falling apart, but why should that concern the Anwaris? We've all skimmed cream off the top. -- from Kabul, by M. E. Hirsh