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The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan

Format: Paperback
Author: Christina Lamb
ReleaseDate: 03 February, 2004
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Rating:

Superb Journalism
As with all best reportage of this sort, her narrative is constructed of direct observations, conversation, and interviews, both formal and informal. The author repeatedly traveled to Afghanistan (as well as to other, adjacent nations) in the course of recording her impressions and tying them together in a story of the Afghani peoples and nation. The suffering of the Afghanis is as undeniable as it is appalling--but the strength of her narrative rests upon the history and details she effortlessly weaves together. You can't read this book and remain unaffected, whatever your view about the current military conflict going on in that part of the world. It is appropriate that Ms. Lamb won the highest award available from those who know her craft best, her fellow journalists. She is a compassionate and honest human being; were it only the case we could say that of all, a story such as she tells would never have been formed. .

Very readable
The book showed a map at the beginning which it was helpful to keep referring to in order to keep in mind where the towns were located. I found the book The Sewing Circles of Herat to be historically very informative. There were also alot of photographs in the book which gave a good impression of how people looked. I really understood the change that all the unrest in Afghanistan had wrought on both the people and the country. I enjoyed the book very much.

Don't be misled by the title . . .
Wrong. Not knowing Christina Lamb's reputation as an award-winning, hardcore journalist, I started this book expecting it to explore the domestic arts and social conditions of women in this regional center of Afghanistan. Couldn't be more wrong. This is a hard-hitting look at the combined political, military, and religious forces that over the last three decades have shattered this country.

Not that Afghanistan was ever a peaceable kingdom, its brief periods of relative calm punctuated over 5000 years with invasions, occupations, and bloody fraternal warfare, characterized by extremes of brutality. And Lamb's book provides plenty of historical background in this regard. However, the tragedy of modern-day Afghanistan as spelled out in detail here is sometimes traumatizing. Lamb ventures obsessively and heart stoppingly into the pitch of battle, traveling now with mujaheddin fighters during the last months of the Soviet Occupation and later, on her own, to Herat, Kandahar, and Kabul at the end of the Taliban regime. She interviews military commanders, along with Hamid Karzai, two high-ranking Taliban on the run and the former director of Pakistan's ISI, which used a massive infusion of capital from both the CIA and Osama bin Laden to arm and mastermind the mujaheddin resistance.

Meanwhile, in her interviews with both combatants and noncombatants, we see the human cost of warfare of which the Taliban for all their excesses are only partly to blame. The loss has been inconceivable, as Lamb describes it - the dead, the tortured and maimed, the devastated cities, countless uncharted mine fields, a destroyed cultural heritage, and the impact on a whole generation who have grown up with war; the list is endless. Lamb doesn't pull her punches. It's clear that whatever foreign hands have touched Afghanistan - always in their own "interest" - they have left a proud country with a rich culture in ruins. And as today's headlines continue to reveal, that process seems far from over.

Also recommended: Jason Eliot's Afghanistan travelogue, "An Unexpected Light," and E. M. Hirsch's novel "Kabul. ".

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