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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
Information/content wise? Great. Writing style? Not so much. It was all over the place and I felt like I was reading through her trying to figure out her life. Better editing could have made it a lot more interesting.
Fascinating read. The more I read memoirs and personnel histories of Middle Asia the more I see what a pack of lies Washington has told us since the Regan era. Saira Shahs' book is remarkable. She tell of the beauty of her homeland and how different it was/is from her home in Kent. She tells of towering mountains, beautiful valleys, rushing rivers, and the brutality of war: shelling's mortar attacks, refugees, wounded with no medical care, hospitals with hundreds in wards just waiting to die and all the other detritus of conflict. She also talks about what Washington wishes she wouldn't: the corruption that we encouraged, the sale of Stinger missiles to Iran that were supposed to be used by the Mhajadeen(SP), the illiteracy of the new ruling class after Russia evacuated, the Taliban. One pointed sentence tells all. She is in Kandahar province and is asked to debate with the local Mullah the finer points of the Koran. She starts in Persian, which he speaks, but then speaks in Arabic which he can not understand. She switches back to Persian saying they should conduct the debate in Persian so she can work on her Persian. This saves the illiterate Mullahs' ego and they talk. This guy became a Taliban leader. He can't speak Arabic and is a leading Religious Scholar? back in 92 when I was talking with the Turkish AF Mullah at Incirlick he told me that "You can't really understand the Koran when it is translated into English. It MUST be read in Arabic and chanted in Arabic and discussed in Arabic." And I've heard this from almost every Koranic Scholar that I have read or listened to. I repeat this Kandahar Mullah could not speak or read Arabic and was one of the leaders of the Taliban. Some reality here. The U.S. is spending 100 dead and a 1000 critically wounded a year to fight of bunch of illiterate religious
fanatics. And were loosing> Isn't it about time we come up with a new strategy? Maybe people like Ms. Shah or Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of tea, could help us work a new plan. People who aren't trying to sell more weapons systems to the U.S. Government and instead want to find peace with out religious tyranny for Afghanistan and also the rest of SW Asia that the U.S. has screwed up in the past 26 years.
Back to the book, if you are tired of continual news reports that come from Pentagon briefings about how well were doing but our troops, my Comrades in Arms, can't come home yet, If you want to arm your self with some reality of what is and was happening on the ground in SW Asia, this is a must read. It's also a quick read and worth the few hours.
fanatics. And were loosing> Isn't it about time we come up with a new strategy? Maybe people like Ms. Shah or Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of tea, could help us work a new plan. People who aren't trying to sell more weapons systems to the U.S. Government and instead want to find peace with out religious tyranny for Afghanistan and also the rest of SW Asia that the U.S. has screwed up in the past 26 years.
Back to the book, if you are tired of continual news reports that come from Pentagon briefings about how well were doing but our troops, my Comrades in Arms, can't come home yet, If you want to arm your self with some reality of what is and was happening on the ground in SW Asia, this is a must read. It's also a quick read and worth the few hours.
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
The more I think about it, the more I see how hard of a book this would be to write well, but it is written well and honestly. I thought I was reading a book about identity first, and then history second, but they really are woven together, and I learned valuable context at the same time the author, Saira Shah, learns it in her narrative. Did you know, for example, that Afghan refugees were *required* to choose a mujahid group to affiliate with by the aid agencies there to serve them in Pakistan *in order to receive aid??* There was and is a lot more diversity to the ordinary people as well as those with group agendas than we are given information about. I really feel heartsick that Afghan women are being enclosed in a system that doesn’t want to hear their voices, and I feel we are responsible for not listening in the first place. I will say I was surprised and upset when the author colluded at times with oppression, such as telling a woman host that the birth control pill is a myth. There were other unflattering moments, but I trust the author’s information because of this honesty and these moments remind me of my own unflattering and/or youthful moments. I thought this book would be more about the storytelling tradition and apprenticeship as a woman, because I have an interest in the traditions and mechanics of that. While my search for that information continues, I am happy I finished this book full of Shah’s people-to-people contact and context. She gave us a long view right before and at the beginning of the Afghanistan war; God help us learn from the 20 years that came since.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Sexism, Murder
Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual violence
Very beautiful writing and an interesting little mini-memoir. I admit I was a little caught off guard by this book because I thought I was reading THIS [b:The Storyteller's Daughter|106489|The Storyteller's Daughter A Retelling of "The Arabian Nights"|Cameron Dokey|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266473458s/106489.jpg|102646] so it took me a few chapters to realize that I wasn't.
To be honest, I read this accidentally. I was trying to read [b:The Storyteller's Daughter: A Retelling of the Arabian Nights|106489|The Storyteller's Daughter A Retelling of the Arabian Nights|Cameron Dokey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1474342421s/106489.jpg|102646] and instead read [b:The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland|106492|The Storyteller's Daughter One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland|Saira Shah|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347562167s/106492.jpg|102649]. This is a situation where it really pays to read past the colon haha. It actually took me about 80-100 pages to realize that this wasn't going to turn into the book I thought it was and did some googling to verify the mistake. At that point, I was too far in and it was interesting so I kept going and I ended up being happy that I made the mistake. Since I was "born into" the war, I have never really thought about the middle east in any complexity at all and I, quite literally, didn't know anything about it besides that we're at war with them (and who exactly is "them"?). This book made me realize that I have a lot more reading to do on this war, as well as pre-war Afghanistan.
This is a moving and fascinating look at Afghanistan. If you've read the Kite Runner, give this non-fictional story a try and see the country from a different perspective.