The Bookseller of Kabul
Åsne Seierstad
The Bookseller of Kabul
ASNE SEIERSTAD
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Table of Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
The Proposal
Burning Books
Crime and Punishment
Suicide and Song
The Business Trip
Do You Want My Unhappiness?
No Admission to Heaven
Billowing, Fluttering, Winding
A Third-rate Wedding
The Matriarch
Temptations
The Call from Ali
The Smell of Dust
An Attempt
Can God Die?
The Dreary Room
The Carpenter
My Mother Osama
A Broken Heart
Epilogue
Åsne Seierstad was born in 1970 and studied Russian, Spanish and the History of Philosophy at Oslo University. She worked as a correspondent in Russia between 1993 and 1996, and in China in 1997. Between 1998 and 2000 she reported on the war in Kosovo for Norwegian television, and in 2000 she published With Their Backs to the Wall: Portraits from Serbia. In autumn 2001 she spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting for a number of major Scandinavian newspapers. In spring 2003 she reported on the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
Åsne Seierstad has received numerous awards for her journalism. The Bookseller of Kabul is one of the bestselling Norwegian books of all time, and has been translated into many languages.
‘Honestly and intelligently written . . . offers lessons to those who choose to heed it on the folly of trying to make simple diagnoses or to apply simple remedies in Afghanistan’ Isabel Hilton, Daily Telegraph
‘A colourful portrait of people struggling to survive in the most brutal circumstances . . . bears witness to the power of literature to withstand even the most repressive regime’ Michael Arditti, Daily Mail
‘A compelling picture of a country which tragically continues to tear itself apart’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A triumph. From the terrors and complexities of courtship through the perilous cross-country pilgrimage by a guilt-addled son to the agonising fate of a thieving carpenter, these are compelling little dramas, mined from the resource of “every day life” . . . and peopled by characters who bristle with life and emotion and individuality . . .while their stories delight with the freshness of something foreign, they are both universal and intimately personal . . . [the] work’s outward simplicity is matched by a subtle and complex understanding: the quality of truth’ Scotsman
‘Magnificent . . . Beautifully written, it dares to bestride incompatible worlds. It is the best outsider tale I have read from within the bounds of Islamic life since Sarah Hobson’s Through Persia in Disguise, published twenty-nine years ago’ Scotland on Sunday
‘A unique insight into another world’ Daily Mirror
‘Moving and utterly gripping’ Big Issue in the North
‘A closely observed, affecting account . . . an admirable, revealing portrait of daily life in a country that Washington claims to have liberated but does not begin to understand’ Washington Post
‘Astounding . . . an international bestseller, it will likely stand as one of the best books of reportage of Afghan life after the fall of the Taliban’ Publishers Weekly
The Bookseller of Kabul
ASNE SEIERSTAD
Hachette Digital
www.littlebrown.co.uk
Published by Hachette Digital 2008
Copyright © Åsne Seierstad, 2002
Translation © Ingrid Christophersen, 2003
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without
the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 7481 0852 7
This ebook produced by JOUVE, FRANCE
Hachette Digital
An imprint of
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DY
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For my parents
Foreword
One of the first people I met when I arrived in Kabul in November 2001 was Sultan Khan. I had spent six weeks with the commandos of the Northern Alliance - in the desert by the Tajikistani border, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, in the Panshir Valley, and on the steppes north of Kabul. I had followed their offensive against the Taliban, I had slept on stone floors, in mud huts, and at the front, travelled on the back of lorries, in military vehicles, on horseback and on foot.
When the Taliban fell, I made for Kabul with the Northern Alliance. In a bookshop I happened upon an elegant, grey-haired man. Having spent weeks amongst gunpowder and rubble, where conversations centred on the tactics of war and military advance, it was refreshing to leaf through books and talk about literature and history. Sultan Khan’s shelves were weighed down by books in many languages; collections of poems, Afghan legends, history books, novels. He was a good salesman; when I left the shop after my first visit I was carrying seven books. I would often pop in when I had some spare time, to look at books and talk to the interesting bookseller, an Afghan patriot who felt let down by his country time and again.
‘First the Communists burnt my books, then the Mujahedeen looted and pillaged, finally the Taliban burnt them all over again,’ he told me.
I spent hours listening to the bookseller’s stories about his battles against the different regimes and their censors, how he launched his personal fight, hiding books from the police, lending them out to others - and finally going to prison for it. He was a man who had tried to save the art and literature of his country, while a string of dictators did their best to destroy them. I realized that he was himself a living piece of Afghan cultural history: a history book on two feet.
One day he invited me home for an evening meal. His family - one of his wives, his sons, sisters, brother, mother, a few cousins - was seated on the floor round a sumptuous feast.
Sultan recounted stories, the sons laughed and joked. The atmosphere was unrestrained, and a huge contrast to the simple meals with the commandos in the mountains. But I soon noticed that the women said little. Sultan’s beautiful teenage wife sat quietly by the door with the baby in her arms. His first wife was not present that evening. The other women answered questions put to them, accepted praise about the meal, but never initiated any conversation.
When I left I said to myself: ‘This is Afghanistan. How interesting it would be to write a book about this family.’
The next day I called on Sultan in his bookshop and told him my idea.
‘Thank you,’ was all he said.
‘But this means that I would have to come and live with you.’
‘You are welcome.’
‘I would have to go around with you, live the way you live. With you, your wives, sisters, sons.’
‘You are welcome,’ he repeated.
On a foggy day in February I moved in with the family. My only possessions were my computer, some notebooks and pens, a mobile phone and what I was wearing. Everything else had disappeared en route, somewhere in Uzbekistan. I was wel
comed with open arms, and gradually felt comfortable in the Afghan clothes I was lent.
I was given a mattress on the floor next to Leila, Sultan’s youngest sister, who had been assigned the task of looking after my well-being.
‘You are my little baby,’ the nineteen-year-old said the first evening. ‘I will look after you,’ she assured me and jumped to her feet every time I got up.
Sultan had ordered the family to supply me with whatever I wanted. I was later told that whoever did not comply with this demand would be punished.
All day long I was served food and tea. Slowly I was introduced into family life. They told me things when they felt like it, not when I asked. They were not necessarily in the mood to talk when my notebook was at hand, but rather during a trip to the bazaar, on a bus, or late at night on the mattress. Most of the answers came about spontaneously, answers to questions I would not have had the imagination to ask.
I have written this book in literary form, but it is based on real events or what was told me by people who took part in those events. When I describe thoughts and feelings, the point of departure is what people told me they thought or felt in any given situation. Readers have asked me: ‘How do you know what goes on inside the heads of the various family members?’ I am not, of course, an omniscient author. Internal dialogue and feelings are based entirely on what family members described to me.
I never mastered Dari, the Persian dialect spoken by the Khan family, but several family members spoke English. Unusual? Yes. But then my tale from Kabul is the tale of a most unusual Afghan family. A bookseller’s family is unusual in a country where three quarters of the population can neither read nor write.
Sultan had picked up a colourful and verbose form of English while teaching a diplomat his own Dari dialect. His young sister Leila spoke excellent English, having attended Pakistani schools when she was a refugee, and evening classes in Afghanistan. Mansur, Sultan’s oldest son, also spoke fluent English, after several years of schooling in Pakistan. He was able to tell me about his fears, loves, and his discussions with God. He described how he wanted to immerse himself in a religious cleansing process, and he allowed me to accompany him on the pilgrimage to Mazar, as an invisible fourth companion. I was included in the business trip to Peshawar and Lahore, the hunt for al-Qaida, the shopping trips in the bazaar, the hammam, the wedding and wedding preparations, visits to the school, the Ministry of Education, the police station and the prison.
I did not personally take part in Jamila’s dramatic fate or Rahimullah’s escapades. I heard about Sultan’s proposal to Sonya from those involved in the story; Sultan, Sonya, his mother, sisters, brother and Sharifa.
Sultan didn’t allow anyone else outside the family to live in his house, so he, Mansure and Leila acted as my interpreters. This of course gave them a large influence over their family story, but I double-checked the various versions and asked the same questions of all three interpreters, who between them represented the large contrasts within the family.
The whole family knew that the purpose of my stay was to write a book. If there was something they did not want me to write, they told me. Nevertheless, I have chosen to keep the Khan family and the other people I quote anonymous. No one asked me to, I just felt it was right.
My days were the family’s days. I woke at the break of day to howling children and men’s commands. I waited my turn for the bathroom, or stole in when everyone had done. On lucky days there was still some warm water left, but I soon learnt that a cup of cold water in the face could also be refreshing. For the remainder of the day I stayed at home with the women, visited relatives and went to the bazaar, or I accompanied Sultan and his sons to the shop, round town or on journeys. In the evenings I shared a meal with the family and drank green tea until bedtime.
I was a guest, but soon felt at home. I was incredibly well treated; the family was generous and open. We shared many good times, but I have rarely been as angry as I was with the Khan family, and I have rarely quarrelled so much as I did there. Nor have I had the urge to hit anyone as much as I did there. The same thing was continually provoking me: the manner in which men treated women. The belief in man’s superiority was so ingrained that it was seldom questioned.
I imagine they regarded me as some sort of ‘bi-gendered’ creature. As a westerner I could mingle with both men and women. Had I been a man I would never have been able to live so close to the women of the household, without gossip circulating. At the same time there was no obstacle to my being a woman, in a man’s world. When the feasts were split, men and women in separate rooms, I was the only one able to circulate freely between the groups.
I was spared having to adhere to the Afghan woman’s strict dress code, and I could go wherever I wanted. Nevertheless, I often dressed in the burka, simply to be left alone. A western woman in the streets of Kabul attracts a lot of unwanted attention. Beneath the burka I could gaze around to my heart’s content without being stared at in return. I could observe the other family members when we were out, without everyone’s attention being directed at me. Anonymity became a release, the only place to which I could turn; in Kabul quiet places were in short supply.
I also wore the burka to discover for myself what it is like to be an Afghan woman; what it feels like to squash into the chock-a-block back rows reserved for women, when the rest of the bus is half empty, what it feels like to squeeze into the boot of a taxi because a man is occupying the back seat, what it feels like to be stared at as a tall and attractive burka and receive your first burka-compliment from a man in the street.
How in time I started to hate it. How it pinches the head and causes headaches, how difficult it is to see anything through the grille. How enclosed it is, how little air gets in, how quickly you start to perspire, how all the time you have to be aware of where you are walking because you cannot see your feet, what a lot of dirt it picks up, how dirty it is, how much in the way. How liberated you feel when you get home and can take it off.
I also wore the burka as a matter of precaution, when I travelled with Sultan on the unsafe road to Jalalabad; when we had to spend the night in a dirty border station; when we were out late at night. Afghan women do not normally travel with a bundle of dollar bills and a computer, so highwaymen usually leave the burka-clad women alone.
It is important to emphasise that this is the story of one Afghan family. There are many millions of others. My family is not even typical. It is kind of middle-class, if one can use that expression in Afghanistan. Some of them were educated, several of them could read and write. They had enough money and never went hungry.
If I were to live in a typical Afghan family it would have been with a family in the countryside, a large family where no one could read or write, and every day was a battle for survival. I did not choose my family because I wanted it to represent all other families, but because it inspired me.
I dwelt in Kabul during the spring following the Taliban’s flight. That spring fragile expectations flickered. The Taliban’s fall was welcomed - no longer was anyone frightened of being pestered on the streets by the religious police, women could once again go to town unaccompanied, they could study, girls could go to school. But the period was also characterised by the previous decade’s disappointments. Why should anything change now?
In the course of the spring, following a period of comparative peace, a more vigorous optimism could be detected. Plans were laid, an increasing number of women left the burka at home, some took jobs, refugees returned home.
The Government vacillated - between the traditional and the modern, between warlords and local tribal chiefs. In the midst of the chaos the leader, Hamid Karzai, attempted a balancing act and tried to stake out a political course. He was popular but possessed neither army nor party - in a country awash with weapons and warring factions.
Conditions in Kabul were reasonably peaceful, in spite of the murder of two ministers and the attempted murder of another; the population continued t
o be harassed. Many put their trust in the foreign soldiers who patrolled the streets. ‘Without them civil war will start up again,’ they said.
I have written down what I saw and heard, and have tried to gather my impressions of a Kabul spring, of those who tried to throw winter off, grow and blossom, and others who felt condemned to go on ‘eating dust’, as Leila would have put it.
Åsne Seierstad
Oslo, 1 August 2002
Migozarad! (It will pass)
GRAFFITO ON THE WALLS OF A KABUL TEAHOUSE
The Proposal
When Sultan Khan thought the time had come to find himself a new wife, no one wanted to help him. First he approached his mother.
‘You will have to make do with the one you have,’ she said.
Then he went to his oldest sister. ‘I’m fond of your first wife,’ she said. His other sisters replied in the same vein.
‘It’s shaming for Sharifa,’ said his aunt.
Sultan needed help. A suitor cannot himself ask for a girl’s hand. It is an Afghan custom that one of the women of the family conveys the proposal and gives the girl the once-over to assure herself that she is capable, well brought up and suitable wife-material. But none of Sultan’s close female relations wanted to have anything to do with this offer of marriage.
Sultan had picked out three young girls he thought might fit the bill. They were all healthy and good-looking, and of his own tribe. In Sultan’s family it was rare to marry outside the clan; it was considered prudent and safe to marry relatives, preferably cousins.
