Thursday, February 15, 2007

"The Bookseller of Kabul"

Asne Seierstad is a Norwegian journalist who has had a varied career covering conflicts around the world. She lived with a family in Serbia and told their story, and this book results from her living with the family of Sultan Khan, "the Bookseller of Kabul," in order to tell their story. What is most remarkable about this book is the intimate detail she managed to glean about the lives of the women of the family, their hopes, loves and fears. One gets to know the members of the family: Khan himself, Sharifa his first wife, Sonya, his 16 year old second wife, his mother Bibi Gul, his youngest sister Leila and his three sons, particularly Mansur who runs one of his three bookshops.
That Asne is a feminist is clear at the start of the book and colors her view, but it is essential in order to appreciate the primitive way that women are treated in Afghan Muslim society. She creates a positive image of Sultan Khan by showing him as a constant book lover, whose books were burned in turn by the Communists, the mujaheddin, the zealous Muslims who overthrew the Communists, and then the Taliban, the extremist fundamentalists who overthrew the mujaheddin, except for the Northern Alliance. Afghanistan was a monarchy ruled by Zahir Shah from 1933-73, but then there were a series of communist puppets until the Soviet invasion of 1979. However, they were defeated by a combination of Afghani mujaheddin (holy warrior) organizations with US support, and withdrew in 1989. A civil war then erupted between various groups of mujaheddin, until the Taliban arose in 1996 and swept them aside apart from the Northern alliance. The Taliban were in turn defeated by the US allied with the Northern Alliance following the attack of 9/11/01 on NYC, since al Qaeda was being supported and fostered by the Taliban.
So Sultan Khan comes across as a kind of liberal hero, a constant book lover who hides and protects his books about Afghan history as well as Western novels. During his occasional stays in prison he reads Persian literature and becomes a protector of Afghan culture. But, as one sees the way of life of this family, that he took a 16 year old second wife and sent his first wife into exile in Pakistan, how he lords it over his family like a Victorian paterfamilias, one realizes that such a view is skewed. Facts, such as that women are not allowed to go out in public alone, and are not allowed to talk to any man they are not related to (even after the fall of the Taliban), show how primitive is the basis of Afghan society, remaining constant thru all the different political regimes.
In one case Seierstad reports, a young woman was beaten and whipped with wire and kept locked in her room for 2 months because she met a young man in a park and talked to him (nothing else). In another case a young woman who “shamed” her family by having an affair is murdered by suffocation, but of course nothing is done about this. So although in the Afghan context Khan is a "liberal," he remains consistent to the conservative and backward mores of Afghan society.
There is a certain danger in this kind of reportage, when the narrator does not know the language of the people she is reporting on. For example, consider Margaret Mead, whose famous book “Coming of Age in Samoa” (1928) was very influential in anthropology for decades. In it she reported that young women in Samoa had entirely different morals than those in the West, they “slept around” and had no guilt about it, and their society seemed to tolerate it. This helped to lead to a more permissive attitude in the West in the 1960s, since it was reasoned that alternative life styles were indeed possible.
In 1983, five years after Mead’s death, Derek Freeman published a book entitled “Margaret Mead and Samoa: the making and unmaking of an anthropological myth.” For this critique of Mead’s work Freeman went back to Samoa and interviewed the same women upon which Mead’s book and conclusions were based when they had been adolescent girls. Freeman found that the girls had lied to Mead about their lives, they had made up stories just to entertain her, they told her what she wanted to hear, it was all untrue. In fact, their lives were as controlled and regulated as much as Western girls. So the value of testimony told to an outsider who does not understand the local language must be suspect, even though some anthropologist’s dispute Freeman’s critique and accept Mead’s original reports of sexual promiscuity in Samoa in the 1920’s.
Now it might be argued that “Bookseller..” is a coherent account of a peek inside the workings of an Afghan family. Since Sultan Khan speaks English as do some of his children, then we can accept the results. But, he could have deliberately misled her. However, apparently the Bookseller is now suing Seierstad because he claims that she “defamed” him and his family in this book. So it might all be true!
Actually, the book is an intense account of the trivia of life, the comings and goings, the quarrels and makings up, the conflicts between first and second wives, the conflicts between father and son, and so on. In that respect it is limited, in that only what impinges on the lives of these few people is included. It is not a novel, with plot twists and turns as in “The Kite Flyer” (which also takes place in Kabul) nor is it literary and political like “Learning Lolita in Tehran.” But it is a unique window on a different world that we might not otherwise experience.

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