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Sewing Circles of Herat contained a lot of interesting information. There were also a lot of names that were very hard to keep track of. My problem with this book was wading thru all the information to get anything from it. There was a lot of jumping from what was 'present day' to a 5 page history lesson and back. If you can get thru all of this and pull out the information you should take from it. When starting this book, I knew very little about Afghanistan, and I learned what a beautiful country it was in the past and how things changed within the past 20 years and are changing even more in recent days.
She details her experiences with people she has interviewed and come to know in Afghanistan and what she has come to witness in her years there. And why are radical feminists in the West so silent about atrocities against women in Islamic states, by the same Islamists these Western radicals are so quick to champion. Music was banned, laughing in public was baned, chess was banned, card were banned, flying kites were banned, keeping any pets including birds was banned. Afghanistan was plunged into the hell of the Soviet holocaust and then Islamist tyranny from 1978 when the Communists were foisted by the Soviets like a bacillus onto Afghanistan. We learn that most of the Taliban were not Afghans at all but Arabs and Pakistani Islamo-Nazis barging into a county were they found it easy to wage their nihilist jihad and foist Islamo-Nazism on a hapless population. The author explores the totalitarian and insane laws forced on the people by the Taliban in Afghanistan during the Taliban reign of terror, there, such as forcing women to be covered by a burka, to be not allowed out unless accompanied by a male relative, any woman who had her nails painted was to have her fingers cut off, and any woman who showed her ankles was to be whipped. In these memoirs the author writes about her experiences in Afghanistan, a country with which she has come to care deeply about and to explore intimately. Zahir Shah had spilled no blood and allowed a peaceful and enlightened country to flourish in which women enjoyed full rights.
Young women could wear lipstick and trousers and enjoy a full range of freedoms under the presidency of Hamid Karzai. We also learn how the Afghans yearned for the peace and claim of the reign of the enlightened King Zahir Shah before 1973. But still that country struggles under the terror of Islamist terrorism and the fear that the Taliban and Al Qaeda may regain control and reinstall their regime of terror. The people of Afghanistan wanted to be free, even if the likes of Noam Chomsky and the Satanic Stalinist Workers World Party in America or George Galloway's 'Respect' did not. Through the book she shapes a history of Afghnanistan, a rich land of many nations which has been invaded by many from the armies of Alexander the Great, the Persians and Mongols, the British and Russians/Soviets and most recently the Arab and Pakistani Islamists. A very colourful, highly readable and exciting window into the tragedy of Afghanistan and it's liberation.
Of course the people of Afghanistan welcomed the American liberation of that country from the Taliban hell, even if Islamic jihadis and left wing fanatics around the world did not. The author highlights memoirs of the holocaust perpetrated by the Soviets on the Afghan people, Isn't it ironic that the same Communist rabble around the world that supported Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan should be the same ones who loudly join in the hyena chorus against the USA for liberating Afghanistan from Taliban terror. It was beautiful to read of the freedom enjoyed by women and girls after the Taliban were forced to flee.
Under the sewing materials were their forbidden books. Each book that I have read on Afghanistan takes a slightly different tact. These were interesting books for general knowledge. They were under the guise of women getting together to sew. She went on missions with the Mujahideen when the fought the soviets, went to the madrasses in Pakistan that produced Omar (the leader of the Taliban), met with senior Taliban officials, Zahir Shah (the former king of Afghanistan), the head of the Pakistani ISI that masterminded the mujahideen fight, Hamid Karzai and countless other figures.Christina Lamb frankly admits that what she saw was just a small piece of the conflicts that she covered and yet it can not diminish the amazing breadth of stories. Then there books like The Places in Between and Christina Lamb's book The Sewing Circles of Herat.
One of the most poignant is of Abdullah, the last person executed by the Taliban. I read many that focused on the military and political history. But the title story is just one of many similar stories. Christina Lamb was a foreign correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph who wrote about Afghanistan during both the Mujahideen war with the soviet and immediately after the fall of the Taliban.Like all books about Afghanistan there are stories of immense sadness and death but also of immense kindness and determination. The title of the book comes from a professor who held secret classes for women in Herat during the rule of the Taliban. He risked his life to gather information on the atrocities of the Taliban and to call in bomber strikes as US and coalition forces fought the Taliban in Kandahar.Like her modern countryman Rory Stewart and countless British participants in the "great game" she shows an amazing courage to go to any lengths to tell stories of Afghanistan.
If one wants to get a sense of what Afghanistan is today and how it got there, they could do no better than to read this book.
I like narrative non-fiction. Lamb's description is spot on and she does a good job enticing the reader along on her journey where most women (and men for that matter) don't have the courage to go. It takes me to places I haven't been and if the story is written well I feel like I'm there-sounds, smells and all. I read this before deploying to Afghanistan to get a feel for the land and the complex tribal makeup of the country and found it very useful. I especially appreciated her insight into the early days of the Taliban and Hamid Karzzai's involvement with them. Though the book wanders off subject a few times, it's still a good read for anyone wanting to understand such a backward culture.
But I think it's ultimately an optimistic book, grounded in a love of the country and its people despite the horrors that insiders and outsiders have inflicted upon it. As a middle-class Brit, you'd expect Lamb to be highly critical - - and she is, in a way, but she prefers to take on the role of a reporter with many Afghan friends and a lot of sympathy for the people of the country.Some people will find these stories depressing, and of course many of them are.
She is clearly an adventurous type, and ended up hiding in ditches with mujaheddin under fire, among other things. Some of her friends ended up in the Taliban, while another (Hamid Karzai) is now the post-Taliban president of the country.The book combines stories from both periods, as well as stories from friends about life under the Taliban.
Christina Lamb is a journalist who spent several years in Afghanistan in the 1980s and then returned after the US-led invasion in 2001. Violence and brutality begin in the household and continues into public spaces and up into the political system.
You'll meet a torturer for the Taliban, women who organized secret schools, mullahs who use motorbikes to scoot around the country because Soviet soldiers can't spot bikes easily, and a lot of Afghans trying to live their lives in a war-torn country. Lamb's experiences in the country over several decades make this book stand out among the many other Western accounts.No matter how many books about Afghanistan I read, I continue to be amazed by how violent this society is, especially Pashtun society.
Some stories will be hard for people to read. Highly recommended.
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