Download or read book Afghanistan A Memoir From Brooklyn to Kabul written by Cat Parenti and published by Afghanistan. This book was released on 2019-03-11 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thrill to this true-life adventure of an American heroine in a far off land After having visions of a strange land since childhood, Cat Parenti left New York and headed for the rugged landscape of Afghanistan, which felt like time traveling to the 12th century. There she fell in love with the people, the culture, and a tall, dark stranger. In book one of this sweeping two-volume memoir, Cat takes you on an unforgettable journey of full immersion into the sights, sounds, smells, food, rituals and beliefs of the people she came to know and love in this far off land. Her adventures are told with such exquisite detail, you'll feel as if you are there experiencing them first-hand. Afghanistan offers a rare opportunity to understand Afghan life, culture, and beliefs before the Taliban, and what it was like to be a gutsy, independent women living in a male-dominated world and thriving. From ordinary experiences like starting a business and getting a home to the extraordinary moments of falling in love with a nobleman and nearly losing her life on three separate occasions (featured in book 2), you may have to keep reminding yourself that what you are reading isn't fiction. Accolades for Afghanistan "Building bridges of cultural understanding and respect ... I thank you for giving voice to the wonderful history and culture of the region." - Hillary Rodham Clinton "The real story here is the author's love affair with an Afghan from a prominent family .... with vivid writing and an engaging story that kept me on the edge of my seat. It takes a brave woman to do [these] things." - Monica Bauer, award-winning playwright "The author takes readers through an innovative personal journey ... a magnetically hypnotizing adventure that is alternately mysterious and unique ... If you want to know what Afghanistan was like before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban, then [this book] is for you." - Abena Agyeman Fisher, Senior Editor, NewsOne Cat Parenti grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Afghanistan on and off for twenty years. She survived the political twists and turns of Afghan history from King Zahir Shah through the rise of the Taliban and started a successful business selling antique clothing and jewelry to U.S. museums and museum shops. She has given presentations on Afghanistan, including at the U.N., and taught Afghan cooking. She currently lives with her daughter in Arizona.
Download or read book Afghanistan Blood and Honor written by Cat Parenti-Hammad and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An American Bride in Kabul written by Phyllis Chesler and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.
Download or read book West of Kabul East of New York written by Tamim Ansary and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powerful and timely, this dual citizen chronicles his angst and personal journey through two cultures in the wake of 9/11.
Download or read book The Other Side of the Sky written by Farah Ahmedi and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farah Ahmedi recounts her heartbreaking journey from war-torn Kabul to America in her New York Times bestselling inspirational memoir. Farah Ahmedi's "poignant tale of survival" (Chicago Tribune) chronicles her journey from war to peace. Equal parts tragedy and hope, determination and daring, Ahmedi's memoir delivers a remarkably vivid portrait of her girlhood in Kabul, where the sound of gunfire and the sight of falling bombs shaped her life and stole her family. She herself narrowly escapes death when she steps on a land mine. Eventually the war forces her to flee, first over the mountains to refugee camps across the border, and finally to America. Ahmedi proves that even in the direst circumstances, not only can the human heart endure, it can thrive. The Other Side of the Sky is "a remarkable journey" (Chicago Sun-Times), and Farah Ahmedi inspires us all.
Download or read book Kabul Beauty School written by Deborah Rodriguez and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-04-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.
Download or read book Bumbling Through the Hindu Kush A Memoir of Fear and Kindness in Afghanistan written by Chris Woolf and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a regular person accidentally finds themselves lost in the middle of a war? In 1991, Chris Woolf travelled to Afghanistan to visit a BBC colleague. They hitched a ride with an aid convoy and bumbled straight into the war.
Download or read book Outside the Wire written by Kevin Patterson and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. Visceral, intimate and captivating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat, and an introductory reflection by Roméo Dallaire. Collected here are stories of battle and the more subtle engagements of this little-understood war: the tearful farewells; the shock of immersion into a culture that has been at war for thirty years; looking a suicide bomber in the eye the moment before he strikes; grappling with mortality in the Kandahar Field Hospital; and the unexpected humour that leavens life in a warzone. Throughout each piece the passion of those engaged in rebuilding this shattered country shines through, a glimmer of optimism and determination so rare in multinational military actions–and so particularly Canadian. In Outside the Wire, award-winning author Kevin Patterson and co-editor Jane Warren have rediscovered the valour and horror of sacrifice in this, the definitive account of the modern Canadian experience of war.
Download or read book Letters from Kabul 1966 1968 written by Janice Minott and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters from Kabul is a unique page-turning memoir. Janice Minott paints an intimate portrait of an everyday Afghanistan just entering the twentieth century, its peace soon to be shattered by decades of military conflict. The author's humorous and reflective letters make us privy to what the Muslim culture teaches one ordinary American family. Her poignant details of a culture vastly different from our own promise to awaken us to new perspectives as well. The lilting rhythms of Janice's days draw us into Kabul with both zest and profundity. From picking up a family and moving them halfway around the world to acclimating to a world apart, from ventures into the maze of Kabul's Old City bazaars to bone-rattling jeep rides into the Hindu Kush, from an on-the-fly encounter with a friendly smuggler to the heart-warming hospitality of Afghan neighbors: if you've ever fantasized about the reality of living in the mountainous kingdom of Afghanistan. Letters from Kabul offers you an open ticket. Janice writes generously from her unique vantage point as a revolutionary New Englander. Teaching English to a class of adult Afghan women is her passport out of the stifling world of Foreign Service teas and coffees. While her husband oversees the nationwide Peace Corps volunteers, Janice undergoes vast personal transformation. Such transformation ends up being an unexpected gift.
Download or read book My War at Home written by Masuda Sultan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-02-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in Kandahar in 1978, Sultan fled to the United States at age five with her family. Raised in Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens, Sultan saw her life change when she was married by arrangement at the young age of seventeen to a virtual stranger fourteen years her senior -- a marriage she struggled to maintain and then hastily fought, eventually (after three years) being granted a divorce. This very divorce would become one of the first in her close-knit Afgan community, where the subject is considered rare and taboo. Sultan went on to graduate from college summa cum laude with a degree in economics, and in July 2001, she returned to Kandahar, to explore her family roots and find herself. There she met her relatives and surveyed the conservative provincial town where she was born. on return visit to afganistan, she discovered the tragic death of her relatives at the hands of American troops and began to seek answers. My War at Home is her memoir of self-discovery, family tradition, and life as a Muslim and feminist with political ideals. It speaks to the younger generation of Muslims in America as they struggle to resolve the ever-present inner conflict about what it means to be an American and a Muslim, while also examining the Muslim-American identity at both personal and political levels.
Download or read book The Black Tulip written by Milt Bearden and published by Random House. This book was released on 2002-01-22 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “In this suspense-filled thriller, the man who ran the closing phases of the Afghan war for the Agency takes his readers on a stunning voyage of discovery through that clandestine world, from Kabul to Hong Kong and the Moscow of the Evil Empire.”—Larry Collins, co-author of Is Paris Burning? Set in the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan and the equally hazardous headquarters of the CIA Operations Directorate in Washington, The Black Tulip is a fast-paced thriller, based on real events, by the legendary spy who masterminded the plot to arm Afghan freedom fighters in their holy war against the Soviets. A longtime veteran of the CIA, Bearden knows the tricks of the trade, the price of honor, the bonds of blood, and the enduring lure of retribution. Praise for The Black Tulip “An irresistible page-turner . . . especially vivid because we know the author was a witness to events.”—The Wall Street Journal “Milt Bearden really delivers. With thirty years in the CIA to back it up, he knows what he’s talking about. . . . A terrific book.”—Robert De Niro “A heart-stopping tale of espionage and betrayal. Forget Tom Clancy: this is the real thing.”—Richard Holbrooke “A truly engrossing espionage read . . . Bearden explains how the CIA supplied Afghan guerrillas with the hardware—rockets, Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and night-vision equipment—which enabled them to chew a vastly stronger Soviet force to bloody ribbons. . . . Highly recommended.”—The Washington Times
Download or read book Another Afghanistan a Pre Taliban Memoir written by Julie Hill and published by Bookbaby. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging and richly appreciative account of life in Afghanistan in Pre-Taliban times. Many books have been written in the past thirty-five years about Afghanistan's war and its geopolitics of terrorism, but none have provided an intimate view of the country and of Afghan society from the viewpoint of a largely neutral observer. Set during the golden years of Afghanistan --a rare period of peace in the mid1970-- it records memorable and sometime humorous diplomatic encounters between East and West. Its ground level perspective differs from the usual accounts of military men and politicians, offering an intimate view of Afghanistan and its people, including he foreign community. Fluent in Dari, the author was involved with the Diplomatic Wife's Organization and in conversations with ordinary citizens in the country's remote corners. Anything about Afghanistan can bear political ramifications, given the torturous history of that country, but these are foremost personal memoirs and impressions, more than any kind of deliberate or scholarly political history, hoping that the reader will begin to appreciate another Afghanistan behind today's raucous headlines. An Alexandrian Greek who now resides in Rancho Sta. Fe, California, Julie Hill has traveled and lived all over the world as the wife of an international diplomat and on her own as indefatigable adventurer even in her senior years. This is her fifth book, following A Promise to Keep: From Athens to Afghanistan (2003), The Silk Road Revisited: Markets, Merchants and Minarets (2006) Privileged Witness; Journeys of Rediscovery (2014) and In The Afternoon Sun: My Alexandria (2017). Speaking six languages, she worked as an international telecommunications executive before retiring in Southern California.
Download or read book Torn Between Two Cultures written by Maryam Qudrat Aseel and published by Capital Books. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Exceptionally useful are (Aseel's) reflections on what it has meant to be a Muslim in America after September 11 . . . A fascinating multicultural coming-of-age story."--"Booklist."
Download or read book Return of a King written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.
Download or read book Come Back to Afghanistan written by Said Hyder Akbar and published by Bloomsbury Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Said Hyder Akbar's ordinary suburban Californian life was turned upside-down after September 11th. Hyder's father, a scion of an Afghan political family, left for Afghanistan to become the new president's chief spokesman and later governor of Kunar, a rural province. Obsessed since childhood with a country he had never visited, seventeen-year-old Hyder convinced his father to let him join him. Working alongside his father at the presidential palace and in Kunar gave Hyder a unique perspective on the creation of democratic government in Afghanistan. In Come Back to Afghanistan, Hyder interweaves his personal journey - that of a teenager struggling to find his identity in his parents' homeland - with his travels, which take him from palaces to prisons and from Kabul to the borderlands, to give a dramatic account of political and civilian life in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Download or read book A Fort of Nine Towers written by Qais Akbar Omar and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the rare memoirs of Afghanistan to have been written by an Afghan, A Fort of Nine Towers reveals the richness and suffering of life in a country whose history has become deeply entwined with our own. For the young Qais Akbar Omar, Kabul was a city of gardens where he flew kites from his grandfather's roof with his cousin Wakeel while their parents, uncles, and aunts drank tea around a cloth spread in the grass. It was a time of telling stories, reciting poetry, selling carpets, and arranging marriages. Then civil war exploded. Their neighborhood found itself on the front line of a conflict that grew more savage by the day. With rockets falling around them, Omar's family fled, leaving behind everything they owned to take shelter in an old fort--only a few miles distant and yet a world away from the gunfire. As the violence escalated, Omar's father decided he must take his children out of the country to safety. On their perilous journey, they camped in caves behind the colossal Buddha statues in Bamyan, and took refuge with nomad cousins, herding their camels and sheep. While his father desperately sought smugglers to take them over the border, Omar grew up on the road, and met a deaf-mute carpet weaver who would show him his life's purpose. Later, as the Mujahedin war devolved into Taliban madness, Omar learned about quiet resistance. He survived a brutal and arbitrary imprisonment, and, at eighteen, opened a secret carpet factory to provide work for neighborhood girls, who were forbidden to go to school or even to leave their homes. As they tied knots at their looms, Omar's parents taught them literature and science. In this stunning coming-of-age memoir, Omar recounts terrifyingly narrow escapes and absurdist adventures, as well as moments of intense joy and beauty. Inflected with folktales, steeped in poetry, A Fort of Nine Towers is a life-affirming triumph. A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
Download or read book Sparks Like Stars written by Nadia Hashimi and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Suspenseful…emotionally compelling. I found myself eagerly following in a way I hadn’t remembered for a long time, impatient for the next twist and turn of the story."—NPR An Afghan American woman returns to Kabul to learn the truth about her family and the tragedy that destroyed their lives in this brilliant and compelling novel from the bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, The House Without Windows, and When the Moon Is Low. Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives. Smuggled out of the palace by a guard named Shair, Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America. In her new country, Sitara takes on a new name—Aryana Shepherd—and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. A survivor, Aryana has refused to look back, choosing instead to bury the trauma and devastating loss she endured. New York, 2008: Thirty years after that fatal night in Kabul, Aryana’s world is rocked again when an elderly patient appears in her examination room—a man she never expected to see again. It is Shair, the soldier who saved her, yet may have murdered her entire family. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers—and, perhaps, revenge. Realizing that she cannot go on without finding the truth, Aryana embarks on a quest that takes her back to Kabul—a battleground between the corrupt government and the fundamentalist Taliban—and through shadowy memories of the world she loved and lost. Bold, illuminating, heartbreaking, yet hopeful, Sparks Like Stars is a story of home—of America and Afghanistan, tragedy and survival, reinvention and remembrance, told in Nadia Hashimi’s singular voice.
