Tali Girls by Siamak Herawi

 I walk along the sidewalk, and yet I don't. Simin lingers in the folds of my mind. You took the peril that was to be mine, I say to her in my heart. If it were not for you, if I had not fainted that day, it could have been me buried in that grave. I feel angry. I feel the rebel inside me, the daring, rash Kowsar. The Kowsar who doesn't believe in subservience and subjugation, who doesn't believe a woman is a pitiful wretch, to be done with as a man wishes.

Siamak Herawi's Tali Girls focuses on three young women in the village of Tali, Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, each of whose life takes them in a different direction. Kowsar is a brilliant prodigy who is lucky enough to have the blessing of her family to marry her beloved Farhad, though he provides little in the way of a dowry. Simin is the most beautiful, which is a dangerous thing to be, as she is plucked at just nine years old from the schoolyard to serve as the third wife of a vicious mullah. Geesu, too, is threatened with a similar fate when she is demanded of her father by a Taliban warlord, and she runs off with her own lover, Farrokh--and yet, as she learns, it is easy to escape one warlord, but it is difficult to escape the scheme of misogyny and brutality that govern the lives of women in Afghanistan.

Tali Girls switches between third- and first-person perspectives; mostly it's told in the voice of Kowsar, whose indignation and rage beat loudly in opposition to the religious rule that closes down the school, beats their teachers, and snatches girls for horrific mistreatment and abuse. The switching perspectives allow Herawi to write some of the most viscerally brutal scenes I have read recently. Simin's story--spoiler alert--ends quickly: she stabs her husband in the eye with a pair of scissors to defend herself against another painful rape. In return, he cuts her from her genitals to her neck, and then beheads her corpse. And all this is told from the first person perspective. And it's not the last time we are asked to witness such a terrible act from within the victim's point-of-view; we experience it through Geesu's eyes, too, when she is is captured along with Farrokh and killed by stoning.

The evisceration of Simin is brutal enough, but it may be Geesu's death that hits the hardest. Simin's husband, Mawlawi Khodadad, is the novel's primary villain, an ally of the Taliban who delights in torturing his wives and who treats them with open contempt as objects for his gratification. The most satisfying scene in the novel occurs when Kowsar, hidden behind the mandated burqa, sneaks into Khodadad's office unrecognized and takes his other eye. But Geesu's death by stoning requires more than one vicious mullah; it requires the active participation of the whole community. Tali Girls reminds us that the misogyny that kills Afghan women is not the sole property of the Taliban; in fact, Simin's rape and murder occur before the Taliban even show up in town. It would be too brutal, perhaps, if not for Kowsar, who might have been in Simin's place if not for the fainting spells that made her unappealing to Khodadad. Tali Girls pointedly asks us not to dissociate from violence by watching it from an outside vantage point, but I found myself wondering, does Kowsar as protagonist undercut this aspect somewhat? Is it a flaw in us or in the narrative that we must have a survivor to cling on to?

With the addition of Afghanistan, my "Countries Read" list is up to 95!

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

"You're not afraid, are you?" I asked.
"No. Are you?"
"No." Although I was nervous, I was reveling in the beauty of the low hills and the pale dusk. Everything was very still and silent. The long line of cliffs continued above us and we could see no on on the track. Abdul Haq stopped, looked up, and suddenly fired at the ridge. His rifle's muzzle flashed and the sharp explosion echoed around the valley.
"That will frighten them away...all of them -- bandits, villagers, wolves."

Rory Stewart, a Scottish writer, decided to walk across Afghanistan east to west in January 2002, part of a larger journey across Iran, Pakistan, Nepal and India. The country had only recently been invaded by the U.S.-led coalition which toppled the Taliban. When Stewart began his journey, parts of the country were still firmly within the Taliban's grasp. He freely admits that the reason he took the far more difficult journey of Herat to Kabul through the central mountains in winter rather than through the south by way of Kandahar was not because of bravado but because the latter was still Taliban-held.

Stewart learns after deciding on the northern route that he will be taking essentially the same journey as the Afghani warrior and Mughal emperor Babur. He intersperses this travelogue with excerpts from Babur's diaries of his own trip. When Stewart first leaves Herat in the east, he is accompanied by unwanted travel companions, guides foisted upon him by the new government's security team. These men accompany Stewart through the first half of his journey, while he travels from town to town and asks for shelter at night from villagers.

Stewart writes that he had heard of the famous generosity of the Islamic world towards travelers, and expected to be greeted with open arms at each village. He had letters of introduction penned for him by village chieftains to give his hosts at each subsequent town, and yet he still was not welcomed like he thought he would be. Stewart is begrudgingly given shelter and meager food at most villages, with a few exceptions. On more than one occasion he has to beg or remind his reluctant would-be hosts of their duty as good Muslims to feed and house him. Halfway through his journey, Stewart is joined by a large mastiff, whom he names Babur after the Mughal emperor.

Overall this book was good, if a bit dull. I haven't read much travel writing, but somehow I went into this book thinking Stewart would have crazy adventures or at least some insight to share. His knowledge of the region certainly grows as the book unfolds, but Stewart doesn't come to any grand conclusions about the culture he is observing or the West's place in it. I also found it a little off-putting that this wealthy (Stewart lives with his parents on an estate in Scotland when not traveling, and looks rather dandy on the back cover) Western traveler complains about the generosity of his hosts, poor villagers in Afghanistan, a country decimated by years of war and famine. I kept thinking as I read the book that he could have at least brought sufficient food for his journey with him, rather than complain throughout about his hunger and weakness.

This book wasn't a quick read, at least not for me. I had to work to get through it, and I considered putting it aside several times. If not for this blog, I probably wouldn't have finished it.