The Bookseller of Kabul - Author: Asne Seierstad

The Bookseller of Kabul
Author: Asne Seierstad

The award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad was in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in November of 2001. One of the first people she met in Afghani soil was a bookseller called Sultan Khan who for years had defied the authorities to supply books in the city of kabul. After some meetings, she decided to ask him for permission to write about his life and his family in order to describe its habits, culture, religion and how all the changes that the Country had been suffered are felling from their perspective.
This experience came out in a amazing book, half biography of Sultan's family and half History book of Afghanistan. Exploring the every day frustration of the women in a Muslim society and stories from the time of the Taliban regime, the author managed to portrait this country that came in evidence for our sight in a terrible way.
One of the interesting part of the book is the description of the sixteen decrees that were broad cast on Radio when the Taliban rolled in. Key excerpts follow.
1 - Prohibition against female exposure
2 - Prohibition against music
3 -Prohibition against shaving
4 - Mandatory prayer
5 - Prohibition against the rearing of pingeons and bird-fighting
6 - Eradication of narcotics and the users thereof
7 - Prohibition against kite-flying
8 - Prohibition against reproduction of pictures
9 - Prohibition against gambling
10 -Prohibition against British and American hairstyles
11 - Prohibition against interest on loans, exchange charges and charges on transactions
12 - Prohibition against the washing of clothes by river embankments
13 – Prohibition against music and dancing at weddings.
14 - Prohibition against playing drums
15 - Prohibition against tailors sewing women's clothes or taking measurements of women
16 - Prohibition against witchcraft.
For us, occidental people, it is not that easy to think that the Taliban was not in fact the result of the Muslin culture, or the result of the Afghani citizens, but reading this book it could be possible think that the Taliban was, like any other form of a dictatorial govern, a expression of a minority. In this case a poor, illiterate, sexists and religious extremists. For that vision I shall return later when I will talk about others books written about the Afghanistan. I believe that in order to understand what is Afghanistan and its culture and citizens it is necessary to look backward in the history of the muslin culture and try to understand the path that it has drawn.
Just to illustrate the kind of people that had worked for Taliban, in the book there is a part that describes one day when some Taliban's soldiers came to the Sultan's book store. They were interested only in [excerpts from the book] 'pictures. Heretical texts, even those on the shelves right in front of their eyes, were overlooked. The soldiers were illiterate and could not distinguish orthodox Taliban doctrine from heresy. But they could distinguish pictures from letters and animate creatures from inanimate things'. After a while they decided to burn its books and arrest Sultan. Sultan had got to go to The Department for the Promotion of Virtue And Extermination of Sin, better known as the Ministry of Morality, and in answer for the crimes he was charged he said [excerpts from the book] 'You can burn my books, you can embitter my life, you can even kill me, but you cannot wipe out Afghanistan's history'. Sultan, as described by Asne Seierstad, thinks that the Taliban could be an attempt against the Afghani people.
The muslin culture is very highlighted in the book, of course. The author, as a women, found very hard some aspects of this culture, like wear the burka and how the women's life is controlled by the men of their family and under the rules of a sexist religion. In the second half of the book it is the main subject, when the author tell us the story about the Sultan family's women. She explains that with Taliban's government, the women were even more controlled and submissive than ever but despite the fall of this regime it is still a struggle for the women be integrated in the society.
I enjoyed very much the Bookseller of Kabul. This book had helped me to figure out what is the felling of the people involved with middle-east affairs. It works like a window to make us observe a little of this very interesting region that became, more than ever, a subject very important of our society. I think that this kind of book is very interesting because it fills the gap between the historic and politic books and the every-day news. It helps to understand what it is all about.