Åsne Seierstad - The Bookseller of Kabul

Sultan had expected this. He had been selling illegal books, pictures and writings for many years. The soldiers had often menaced him, seized a few books and then left. Threats had been issued from the Taliban’s highest authority and he had even been called in to the Minister for Culture, in the Government’s attempts to try and convert the enterprising bookseller and recruit him to the Taliban cause.

Sultan Khan willingly sold some Taliban publications. He was a freethinker and of the opinion that everyone had the right to be heard. But along with their gloomy doctrines he also wanted to sell history books, scientific publications, ideological works on Islam, and not least, novels and poetry. The Taliban regarded debate as heresy and doubt as sin. Anything other than Koran-swotting was unnecessary, even dangerous. When the Taliban came to power in Kabul in the autumn of 1996 the ministries were emptied of professionals and replaced by mullahs. From the central bank to the university – the mullahs controlled everything. Their goal was to re-create a society like the one the Prophet Muhammad had lived in on the Arab peninsula in the seventh century. Even when the Taliban negotiated with foreign oil companies, ignorant mullahs sat around the negotiating table, lacking any technical expertise.

Sultan was convinced that under the Taliban the country grew increasingly poor, dismal and insular. The authorities resisted all modernisation; they had no wish to either understand or adopt ideas of progress or economic development. They shunned scientific debate, whether conducted in the West or in the Muslim world. Their manifesto was above all a few pathetic arguments about how people should dress or cover themselves, how men should respect the hour of prayer, and women be separated from the rest of society. They were not conversant with the history of Islam or of Afghanistan, and had no interest in either.

Sultan Khan sat in the car squashed between the illiterate Taliban soldiers, cursing his country for being ruled by either warriors or mullahs. He was a believer, but a moderate Muslim. He prayed to Allah every morning, but usually ignored the following four calls to prayer unless the religious police pulled him in to the nearest mosque with other men they had snatched up from the streets. He reluctantly respected the fast during Ramadan and did not eat between sunup and sundown, at least not when anyone was looking. He was faithful to his two wives, brought up his children with a firm hand and taught them to be good God-fearing Muslims. He had nothing but contempt for the Taliban whom he considered illiterate peasant priests; they originated from the poorest and most conservative part of the country, where literacy was low.

The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Extermination of Sin, better known as the Ministry of Morality, was behind his arrest. During the interrogation in the prison Sultan Khan stroked his beard. He wore it according to Taliban requirements, the length of a clenched fist. He straightened his shalwar kameez ; it too conformed to Taliban standards – tunic below the knees, trousers below the ankle. He answered proudly: ‘You can burn my books, you can embitter my life, you can even kill me, but you cannot wipe out Afghanistan ’s history.’

Books were Sultan’s life. Ever since he was given his first book at school, books and stories had captivated him. He was born to a poor family, and grew up during the fifties in the village of Deh Khudaidad outside Kabul. Neither his mother nor his father could read, but they scraped together enough money to send him to school. As the oldest son any savings were spent on him. His sister, who was born before him, never set foot inside a school and never learnt to read or write. Today she can barely tell the right time. After all, her only future was to be married off.

But Sultan, he was destined for greatness. The first hurdle was the road to school. Little Sultan refused to walk it because he had no shoes. His mother sent him packing.

‘Oh yes, you can, you just see,’ she said and gave him a blow over the head. Soon he had earned enough money to buy shoes. He worked throughout his schooling. In the mornings before class and every afternoon until dark, he fired bricks to make money for the family. Later he got a job in a shop. He told his parents that the salary was half of what it actually was. He saved the rest and bought books.

He started selling books when he was a teenager. He had been accepted as an engineering student but could not find the appropriate textbooks. During a journey with his uncle to Teheran he happened upon all the required titles in one of the town’s many book markets. He bought several sets, which he sold on to fellow students in Kabul for double the price. And so the bookseller was born; he was thrown a lifeline.

Sultan participated in the construction of only two buildings in Kabul before book mania tore him away from the world of engineering. Once again it was the book markets in Teheran that seduced him. The boy from the country wandered around among books in the Persian metropolis, surrounded by old and new, antique and modern, and came across books he had never dreamt even existed. He bought crate upon crate of Persian poetry, art books, history books, and – for the sake of his business – textbooks for engineers.

Back home in Kabul he opened his first little bookshop, amongst the spice merchants and kebab stalls in the centre of town. This was the seventies and society teetered between the modern and the traditional. Zahir Shah, the liberal and rather lazy king, ruled, and his half-hearted attempts at modernising the country provoked sharp censure from religious quarters. When a number of mullahs protested against women of the royal family exposing themselves in public without the veil, they were thrown into prison.

The number of universities and establishments of learning increased, followed closely by student demonstrations. These were brutally put down by the authorities and many students were killed. A profusion of parties and political groups mushroomed – although free elections were never held – from radical left wing to religious fundamentalism. The groups fought amongst themselves and the unstable atmosphere in the country spread. The economy stagnated following three years of drought, and during a catastrophic famine in 1973, while Zahir Shah was consulting a doctor in Italy, his cousin Daoud seized power in a coup and abolished the monarchy.

President Daoud’s regime was more oppressive than that of his cousin. But Sultan’s bookshop flourished. He sold books and periodicals published by the various political groups, from Marxist to fundamentalist. He lived at home in the village with his parents and cycled in to the stall in Kabul every morning and back every evening. His only problem was his mother’s constant nagging about finding a wife. She constantly introduced new candidates – a cousin or the girl next door. Sultan was not ready to start a family. He had several irons in the fire and was in no hurry. He wanted freedom to travel and often visited Teheran, Tashkent and Moscow. In Moscow he had a Russian sweetheart – Ludmila.

A few months before the Soviet Union invaded the country in December 1979, he made his first mistake. The unyielding Communist Nur Mohammad Taraki ruled the country. The entire presidential family, from Daoud down to the youngest baby, had been killed in a coup. The prisons were overflowing, and tens of thousands of political opponents were arrested, tortured and executed.

The Communists wanted to consolidate their control of the whole country and tried to suppress Islamic groups. The holy warriors, the Mujahedeen, took up arms against the regime, a conflict that later turned into a merciless guerrilla war against the Soviet Union.