Christina Lamb - The Sewing Circles of Herat - My Afghan Years

CHRISTINA LAMB

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Flamingo 2003

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Publishers 2002

Copyright © Christina Lamb 2002

Christina Lamb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007142521

Ebook Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780007374083

Version: 2017-01-16

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

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.’

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

COVER

TITLE PAGE The Sewing Circles of Herat MY AFGHAN YEARS CHRISTINA LAMB

COPYRIGHT

PRAISE

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAP

FAMILY TREE

Beginnings

The Taliban Torturer

Mullahs on Motorbikes

Inside the House of Knowledge

The Royal Court in Exile

The Sewing Circles of Herat

The Secret of Glass

Unpainting the Peacocks

The Story of Abdullah

Face to Face with the Taliban

A Letter from Kabul

KEEP READING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Illustrations in the text:

Bird of Peace, from UNICEF report, 2001.

Mullah Khalil Ahmed Hassani, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe .

Kandahar desert turned into battlefield, photographed by the author, 1988.

Hamid Karzai, 1988.

A child’s charcoal drawing.

The author on a Soviet tank, 1988.

Students in a madrassa .

Afghan training camp.

Motorcycling mullahs.

Abdul Wasei.

Ratmullah.

Eating mud crabs.

Ration book belonging to a dead soldier, Jelalabad 1989.

Sami-ul-Haq next to his garden wall, Islamabad 2001.

The Haqqania prospectus.

Sami-ul-Haq in Islamabad, 2001 © Justin Sutcliffe .

Princess Homaira © Julian Simmonds .

King Zahir Shah with President John F. Kennedy © Julian Simmonds .

King Habibullah © Julian Simmonds .

Letter to Bhoutros Bhoutros Gali.