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The Sewing Circles of Herat: My Afghan Years
Christina Lamb
In 1992 Christina Lamb reported on the war the Afghan people were fighting against the Soviet Union. Now, back in Afghanistan, she has written an extraordinary memoir of her love affair with the country and its people.Long haunted by her experiences in Afghanistan, Lamb returned there after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre to find out what had become of the people and places that had marked her life as a young graduate. This time seeing the land through the eyes of a mother and experienced foreign correspondent, Lamb's journey brings her in touch with the people no one else is writing about: the abandoned victims of almost a quarter century of war.‘Of all books about Afghanistan, Christina Lamb’s is the most revealing and rewarding…a personal, perceptive and moving account of bravery in the face of staggering difficulties.’ Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times‘As an account of how Afghanistan got into its present state, and of the making of the grotesque regime of the Taliban, this book could not possibly be bettered. Brilliant.’ Matthew Leeming, Spectator‘Lamb’s book combines a love of Afghanistan with a fearless search for the human stories behind the past twenty-three years of war…Her book is not only a necessary education for the Western reader in the political warring that generated the torture, murder and poverty, but also a stirring lament for the country of ruins that was once better known for its poetry and mosques.’ James Hopkin, The Times
The Sewing Circles of Herat
MY AFGHAN YEARS
CHRISTINA LAMB
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_11d150b2-47df-554a-b4a9-3df8f895e392)
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Published by Flamingo 2003
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2002
Copyright © Christina Lamb 2002
Christina Lamb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007142521
Ebook Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780007374083
Version: 2017-01-16
PRAISE (#ulink_f68e5ac3-b14e-5266-b665-157e1cf13b2d)
From the reviews:
‘Award-winning foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has written an inspiring and moving account of Afghanistan’s plight … Lamb shows that, despite attempts to destroy the country and its culture, its soul remains uncrushed.’
MARIANNE BRACE, Independent on Sunday
‘Deeply penetrating, informative and always engaging … Through the dispiriting events under which Afghanistan continues to be submerged, Lamb continually finds delightful people who have latched on to the fact that Faith is an ecclesiastical word for credulity, and offer some hope for the country’s future.’
CAL MCCRYSTAL, Financial Times
‘Lamb has a curiosity that demands she listen to anyone – warlord, reluctant torturer, Pakistani intelligence officer, family of the last man hanged … And beyond the door of the “Golden Needle Ladies’ Sewing Classes” in Herat, Lamb is awed by that cultured city’s resistance … which, as [she] understands, matters more than pages of guns and rubble.’
VERONICA HOWELL, Guardian
‘A remarkable blend of outrage, compassion and hope, Christina Lamb’s book is an alternately horrifying and uplifting insight into the Taliban regime.’
JUSTIN MAROZZI, Evening Standard
‘This book is in the best tradition of classics by British adventurers such as Robert Byron, Peter Levi and Eric Newby. In fact, Lamb’s empathy for the people she meets is such that her writing outdoes that of her stuffier male forebears. For Lamb, the country is more than just magnificent landscape and proud history. She has a long perspective from which to observe what she sees, having made a trip into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan at the end of the 1980s with a young Hamid Karzai, now the country’s dapper president … Her book boasts genuine journalistic exposés as well: she tracks down a Taliban torturer and discovers the Herat literary classes which, masquerading as sewing circles, concealed their activities from the religious police. After receiving a series of heartfelt letters about life in Kabul under the Taliban, she hunts for the young woman who wrote them.’
MARCUS WARREN, Daily Telegraph
DEDICATION (#ulink_da1ccaec-9ef0-5921-9dd0-546797de5413)
This book is dedicated to Lourenço
who thinks Mummy lives on a plane
and the fond memory of Abdul Haq who told me
‘You’re a girl. You can’t go to war in Afghanistan.’
EPIGRAPH (#ulink_cbfa9a6e-4dbc-536b-a72a-ce52a9848803)
If you should ask me where I’ve been all this time I have to say ‘Things happen’.
PABLO NERUDA, No Hay Olvido, There’s No Forgetting
Peace is not sold anywhere in the world, Otherwise I would have bought it for my country.
GIRL IN AFGHANISTAN, ‘Lost Chances’ UNICEF Report, 2001
CONTENTS
COVER (#u2cd2ac1b-a894-54cf-a279-bbadc63e8152)
TITLE PAGE (#u49b6ff18-bcb6-56ad-bb05-490c99ff15da)
COPYRIGHT (#u01bc1c56-be2f-51d3-a47e-287aa2fdeafc)
PRAISE (#u077e2f86-08ca-5c3b-b0f4-b0fca5a31f2f)
DEDICATION (#u5e1770b2-3839-5509-98ab-61cffc0377f0)
EPIGRAPH (#ub95b23dc-189a-50df-ad8c-af6443079040)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#ub45b7915-7dc1-5071-acca-746d2fef2382)
MAP (#u690dfc5c-256f-5455-8087-b0223a680148)
FAMILY TREE (#udc209215-0ae6-56b7-b219-be39c31c6daf)
Beginnings (#uae001bef-cb4f-5cb3-b228-d870f3c306b9)
The Taliban Torturer (#u60ac0ba8-b9a6-558d-913e-05596d5e5596)
Mullahs on Motorbikes (#u60b6b83a-f2ec-5e58-bb60-e6c8e48aaf19)
Inside the House of Knowledge (#u213e21f2-16d7-5bbb-a265-b8c2f6db8136)
The Royal Court in Exile (#litres_trial_promo)
The Sewing Circles of Herat (#litres_trial_promo)
The Secret of Glass (#litres_trial_promo)
Unpainting the Peacocks (#litres_trial_promo)
The Story of Abdullah (#litres_trial_promo)
Face to Face with the Taliban (#litres_trial_promo)
A Letter from Kabul (#litres_trial_promo)
KEEP READING (#litres_trial_promo)
BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)
INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#ulink_d2ff6485-183a-57f7-852a-9e9e32b07788)
Illustrations in the text:
Bird of Peace, from UNICEF report, 2001. (#ulink_c4360e7f-c7da-5d32-ab0f-71c983b052c7)
Mullah Khalil Ahmed Hassani, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#ulink_6fd36c23-9afb-54d6-a359-67b3e90347fe)
Kandahar desert turned into battlefield, photographed by the author, 1988. (#ulink_7c997847-923d-5706-a593-cbdae66f6884)
Hamid Karzai, 1988. (#ulink_77b4493a-012d-52e6-a79e-2a64b66b3085)
A child’s charcoal drawing. (#ulink_d09346b5-20df-5ef1-97bb-bd2b0903ba04)
The author on a Soviet tank, 1988. (#ulink_16aac64c-c1de-55a5-8619-27240019430d)
Students in a madrassa. (#ulink_9c4575f0-0eea-5414-83c2-41b35f228f7e)
Afghan training camp. (#ulink_717029ad-63c7-5281-a197-3cc438e4e05a)
Motorcycling mullahs. (#ulink_92b541e4-11ee-516c-a558-c236a92f5e37)
Abdul Wasei. (#ulink_310510b1-700b-5e54-82ec-0e0344fbc8a0)
Ratmullah. (#ulink_2b920613-70ed-50ee-b02b-6e0cf65f549a)
Eating mud crabs. (#ulink_2d2774c6-ae4c-50ca-8b76-5afddf4cc15f)
Ration book belonging to a dead soldier, Jelalabad 1989. (#ulink_f10ae30d-340b-5b32-961d-4ba35e12de75)
Sami-ul-Haq next to his garden wall, Islamabad 2001. (#litres_trial_promo)
The Haqqania prospectus. (#litres_trial_promo)
Sami-ul-Haq in Islamabad, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
Princess Homaira © Julian Simmonds. (#litres_trial_promo)
King Zahir Shah with President John F. Kennedy © Julian Simmonds. (#litres_trial_promo)
King Habibullah © Julian Simmonds. (#litres_trial_promo)
Letter to Bhoutros Bhoutros Gali. (#litres_trial_promo)
King Zahir Shah and Queen Homaira in London, 1971 © Julian Simmonds. (#litres_trial_promo)
Herat in ruins. (#litres_trial_promo)
Ayubi, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
Begging for nan, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
Entrance to the Golden Needle, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
Literary circle President Ahmed Said Haghighi in the classroom of the Golden Needle, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
Zena and Leyla, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
The poet Khafash © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
Child’s drawing, from ‘Lost Chances’ UNICEF report on Afghanistan, 2001. (#litres_trial_promo)
Egg game, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe. (#litres_trial_promo)
