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The Sewing Circles of Herat : A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan
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Binding: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2004-01-31
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Editorial Reviews:
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A gold-inscribed invitation to a wedding in a foreign land led Christina Lamb at the age of twenty-one to leave suburban England for Peshawar on the frontier of the Afghan war. Like the Englishmen in the Great Game of the nineteenth century, she was captivated by the Afghans she met. For two years she tracked the final stages of the mujaheddin victory over the Soviets as Afghan friends smuggled her in and out of their country in a variety of guises -- from burqa-clad wife to Kandahari boy -- travelling by foot, on donkeys or hidden under the floor of an ambulance. Among those friends was Abdul Haq, the recently executed Kabul commander, and Hamid Karzai, the new president of Afghanistan, who took Lamb to his hometown of Kandahar, where they rode around on the backs of motorbikes belonging to a group of fighters known as the Mullahs Front. It was these figures who went on to become founding members of the Taliban. Long haunted by her experiences in Afghanistan, Lamb returned there after the attacks on the World Trade Center to find out what had become of the people and places that had marked her life as a young graduate, and to report for Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper. She was now seeing the land anew, through the eyes of a mother and an experienced foreign correspondent who has lived in Africa, South America, Portugal and the United States. Lamb's journey brought her in touch with the people no one else has written about: the abandoned victims of almost a quarter century of war. Among them are the brave women writers of Herat who risked their lives to carry on the literary tradition of this ancient Persian city under the guise of sewing circles; the princess whose palace was surrounded by tanks on the eve of her wedding; the artist who painted out all the people in his works to prevent their being destroyed by the Taliban; and Khalil Ahmed Hassani, a former Taliban torturer who admits to breaking the spines of men then making them stand on their heads. Christina Lamb's evocative reporting brings to life these stories. Her unique perspective on Afghanistan and deep passion for the people she writes about makes this the definitive account of the tragic plight of a proud nation.
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A woman's love affair with a tortured land
Comment: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
We also learn how the Afghans yearned for the peace and claim of the reign of the enlightened King Zahir Shah before 1973.
Zahir Shah had spilled no blood and allowed a peaceful and enlightened country to flourish in which women enjoyed full rights.
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.
A very colourful, highly readable and exciting window into the tragedy of Afghanistan and it's liberation.
It was beautiful to read of the freedom enjoyed by women and girls after the Taliban were forced to flee.
Young women could wear lipstick and trousers and enjoy a full range of freedoms under the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Stories of people who have shaped Afghanistan
Comment: Each book that I have read on Afghanistan takes a slightly different tact. I read many that focused on the military and political history. These were interesting books for general knowledge. Then there books like The Places in Between and Christina Lamb's book The Sewing Circles of Herat. 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. They were under the guise of women getting together to sew. Under the sewing materials were their forbidden books. But the title story is just one of many similar stories. One of the most poignant is of Abdullah, the last person executed by 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. 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. 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.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A chick with balls
Comment: I like narrative non-fiction. 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. 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. 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.
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Summary: Great reporting from someone who knows Afghanistan
Comment: Christina Lamb is a journalist who spent several years in Afghanistan in the 1980s and then returned after the US-led invasion in 2001. 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. 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. Violence and brutality begin in the household and continues into public spaces and up into the political system. 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. Some stories will be hard for people to read. 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.
Highly recommended.
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Summary: Superb Journalism
Comment: The author repeatedly traveled to Afghanistan (as well as to other, adjacent nations) in the course of recording her impressions and tying them together in a story of the Afghani peoples and nation. As with all best reportage of this sort, her narrative is constructed of direct observations, conversation, and interviews, both formal and informal. The suffering of the Afghanis is as undeniable as it is appalling--but the strength of her narrative rests upon the history and details she effortlessly weaves together. You can't read this book and remain unaffected, whatever your view about the current military conflict going on in that part of the world. It is appropriate that Ms. Lamb won the highest award available from those who know her craft best, her fellow journalists. She is a compassionate and honest human being; were it only the case we could say that of all, a story such as she tells would never have been formed.
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