Misrepresentation of the People?
Dec. 15th, 2004 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel17 Sep 2004
The Bookseller of Kabul - Åsne Seierstad - Virago 2004
* * *
In November 2001, while reporting on the fall of the Taliban, the journalist Åsne Seierstad met a bookshop owner in Kabul called Sultan Khan. His life had been a constant battle to protect the art and literature of Afghanistan from the various authoritarian regimes that sought to ban or censor them - first the communists, then the Mujahedeen, and finally the Taliban (whose soldiers, apparently, burnt any book containing pictures of living things but left the heretical texts because they couldn't read). Seierstad was impressed - anyone would be - by his heroism in trying to save his culture. She decided to write a book about his family, not because it was typical of Afghan families in general but because it inspired her. The result, however, is more of an inditement of Sultan Khan and his culture than a celebration.
The book is a series of short stories told from the viewpoints of various members of Sultan Khan's family. We hear about his first wife Sharifa, exiled to Pakistan when Sultan marries his much younger second wife, of Mansur and his pilgrimage to Mazar-i-Sharif, and poor, put-upon Leila and her unsuccessful attempts to become a) married and b) a teacher. In between are fascinating vignettes of Afghan life and history - the elaborate preparations for a wedding, the Taliban's lunatic proclamations on assuming power, a day at an Islamic school. If you want to know exactly how uncomfortable wearing a burkha is, this book will tell you.
The portrait presented is of a society blighted by tradition and tribalism. For all his heroism in the political sphere, in his home life Sultan is a dreadful pater familias whose authoritarianism and insistence that he knows best makes the daily existence of his wives and children a misery. The lives of the women of Afghanistan are portrayed as unhappy, restricted and hopeless. Any attempt by them to strike out on their own are quashed by the men in their family or by the vicious gossip of friends and neighbours - one woman is accused of being a whore because she goes walking in the park with a man who is not a relative, and she subsequently dies mysteriously in what was almost certainly an honour killing.
While I am sure that this portrayal of Afghan society is substantially true, I am not convinced that it is the whole truth. Seierstad never mastered the Persian dialect spoken by the family and instead relied on accounts from its three English-speaking members, who probably picked up much of their English from television, in particular soap operas. It is therefore not surprising that the emotions expressed and the stories told have a distinctly soap operatic feel to them. Being a journalist, Seierstad will also have simplified and given shape to situations which were almost certainly more complex than they appear to be in print.
Tellingly, Seierstad does not say whether Sultan Khan or any of his family read and commented on her manuscript. I suspect that if they had, the family would not consider it to be a true portrayal of their world. They would probably accuse it of being a westerner's view and a caricature, and they would probably be right. This book is well-meaning, but it inadvertantly gives carte blanche to western neo-imperialists to try to impose western solutions on Afghanistan. As British history tells us, this is bound to end in tears.
As it has, sadly, for the Khan family. In the epilogue, Seierstad tells us that the family split up shortly after she left. One can't help thinking that in the long run this may turn out to be a good thing for some of its members, but for Sultan at least it's a tragedy. Seierstad's presence as a westerner and the questions she asked were almost certainly among the factors that brought things to a head. She doesn't say if she regrets this.
Addendum, 9th December: Just read a newspaper article about Seierstad - Sultan had indeed not read the book when it first came out and was so angry when he did that he took a plane to Norway, hired a lawyer and threatened to sue.
The Bookseller of Kabul - Åsne Seierstad - Virago 2004
* * *
In November 2001, while reporting on the fall of the Taliban, the journalist Åsne Seierstad met a bookshop owner in Kabul called Sultan Khan. His life had been a constant battle to protect the art and literature of Afghanistan from the various authoritarian regimes that sought to ban or censor them - first the communists, then the Mujahedeen, and finally the Taliban (whose soldiers, apparently, burnt any book containing pictures of living things but left the heretical texts because they couldn't read). Seierstad was impressed - anyone would be - by his heroism in trying to save his culture. She decided to write a book about his family, not because it was typical of Afghan families in general but because it inspired her. The result, however, is more of an inditement of Sultan Khan and his culture than a celebration.
The book is a series of short stories told from the viewpoints of various members of Sultan Khan's family. We hear about his first wife Sharifa, exiled to Pakistan when Sultan marries his much younger second wife, of Mansur and his pilgrimage to Mazar-i-Sharif, and poor, put-upon Leila and her unsuccessful attempts to become a) married and b) a teacher. In between are fascinating vignettes of Afghan life and history - the elaborate preparations for a wedding, the Taliban's lunatic proclamations on assuming power, a day at an Islamic school. If you want to know exactly how uncomfortable wearing a burkha is, this book will tell you.
The portrait presented is of a society blighted by tradition and tribalism. For all his heroism in the political sphere, in his home life Sultan is a dreadful pater familias whose authoritarianism and insistence that he knows best makes the daily existence of his wives and children a misery. The lives of the women of Afghanistan are portrayed as unhappy, restricted and hopeless. Any attempt by them to strike out on their own are quashed by the men in their family or by the vicious gossip of friends and neighbours - one woman is accused of being a whore because she goes walking in the park with a man who is not a relative, and she subsequently dies mysteriously in what was almost certainly an honour killing.
While I am sure that this portrayal of Afghan society is substantially true, I am not convinced that it is the whole truth. Seierstad never mastered the Persian dialect spoken by the family and instead relied on accounts from its three English-speaking members, who probably picked up much of their English from television, in particular soap operas. It is therefore not surprising that the emotions expressed and the stories told have a distinctly soap operatic feel to them. Being a journalist, Seierstad will also have simplified and given shape to situations which were almost certainly more complex than they appear to be in print.
Tellingly, Seierstad does not say whether Sultan Khan or any of his family read and commented on her manuscript. I suspect that if they had, the family would not consider it to be a true portrayal of their world. They would probably accuse it of being a westerner's view and a caricature, and they would probably be right. This book is well-meaning, but it inadvertantly gives carte blanche to western neo-imperialists to try to impose western solutions on Afghanistan. As British history tells us, this is bound to end in tears.
As it has, sadly, for the Khan family. In the epilogue, Seierstad tells us that the family split up shortly after she left. One can't help thinking that in the long run this may turn out to be a good thing for some of its members, but for Sultan at least it's a tragedy. Seierstad's presence as a westerner and the questions she asked were almost certainly among the factors that brought things to a head. She doesn't say if she regrets this.
Addendum, 9th December: Just read a newspaper article about Seierstad - Sultan had indeed not read the book when it first came out and was so angry when he did that he took a plane to Norway, hired a lawyer and threatened to sue.