A review by spacestationtrustfund
Load Poems Like Guns: Women's Poetry from Herat, Afghanistan by

4.0

Perhaps all the more because of their troubled history, many in Herat, especially the intellectual and highly educated community, hold tightly to the city's legacy as a cultural and literary center of Afghanistan. "A society needs poets and storytellers to reflect its pain—and joy," mused Herat University Professor Mohammad Naser Rahyab in a 2001 interview with Christina Lamb. "A society without literature is a society that is not rich and does not have a strong core. If there wasn't so much illiteracy... terrorism would never have found its cradle here." [...] The vast majority of Heratis were appalled by the Taliban and their disrespect for art, beauty, books, and learning (aside from their narrow range of acceptable subjects): essentially everything celebrated by the region's poetry-infused heritage. Ironically, the word Taliban means "students," but their arrival [in 1995] forced half of Herat's students—all females—to cease their studies or go into hiding.