The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
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Book Reviews of The Places In Between
Book Review: Stranger in a Strange Land
Summary: 5 Stars
"I am not good at explaining why I walked across Afghanistan." Thus starts an attempt of explanation by Rory Stewart in _The Places in Between_ (Harcourt), an entertaining account of his jaunt through a strange and dangerous place. A member of the newly re-formed Afghan Security Service tells him beforehand: "You are the first tourist in Afghanistan. It is mid-winter. There are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I guarantee." It was all good advice, and it turned out that the warnings were sensible although futile, and the prediction of doom turned out to be incorrect. Stewart traveled in January 2002, weeks after the fall of the Taliban, 36 days on foot, about five hundred miles across Afghanistan's belt from Herat to Kabul, writing in his notebook at night, and drawing sketches of people and places he had seen. The trek doesn't make any real sense, the country has been ravaged by war, there are still insane Taliban goons, and yet the result is a wise and funny book to let us know how incredibly different this section of the world is from anywhere the rest of us have experienced.
Stewart is a Scottish journalist who has served in the British Army and the Foreign Office. He spoke Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, which he had learned in Iran. In fact, his Afghanistan walk is a belated link in his walk across Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal. He did not have a detailed map "... because I did not want to be thought a spy." He did have an almost constant companion, a "war dog" bought in the village of Dahan-e-Rezak. The dog was a mastiff, the size of a small pony, and as Stewart propels himself along his journey, the relationship with the dog is the most long-lasting one he describes. He finds that villages generally accept the changes that world clashes have forced upon them, but is amazed at how little they have to go on. "Most of the people in this area had not heard of Britain, though they had heard of America. Some had even heard of the World Trade Center; but they had no real concept of what it had been or why the coalition had bombed Afghanistan." The Afghans are bemused by Stewart's pedestrian ambitions. When he asks where he can buy a walking stick, he is told, "Nowhere here. Stewart, in return, has much to puzzle about. One night, villagers turned on the BBC Dari service, and listened intently to a translation of a speech by Bill Gates. "I wondered what these illiterate men without electricity thought of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows." His scariest brush with locals was with Taliban, hanging on in one sector: "The men struck me as bullies with a strangled and dangerous view of God and a stupid obsession with death. I did not envy the government that had to deal with them."
Finally he approaches Kabul, but is warned by a stranger, "Get off the road. This is much too dangerous for you. There are British and American soldiers ahead." Stewart assures him he won't get hurt, and the man unconsciously pays him a great compliment: "But you're an Arab, aren't you?" Weeks of hard travel, poor food, and illness (he wondered at one point if he were going to die of dysentery) had enabled him to blend right in. He was roughly treated at times during his journey, but dedicates with gratitude his book to those "who showed me the way, fed me, protected me, housed me, and made this walk possible." He essentially thanks them for not killing him, which is damning with faint praise: "I represented a culture that many of them hated," but almost every group he met "gave me hospitality without any thought of reward." The hospitality, a Muslim tradition that cannot be denied a traveler, is often pretty bad. At one house, the master is too busy praying to speak to his guest, but sends around "soup made from rotten meat which I could not stomach, and bread." In the guest room at a castle, he shivered: "It was as cold as any Scottish castle." By the end of his travels, though, it is clear that Stewart has affection for those he has visited, citizens of a mystifying land now tightly bound in to our own.
Book Review: Informative and Enjoyable
Summary: 5 Stars
Rory Stewart layers his narrative in THE PLACES IN BETWEEN so that every event and impression has numerous interpretations, as well as a rich undercurrent of contradiction. Rory achieves this layering primarily through continual reference to three narrative presences.
First, there is Rory himself, an informed westerner familiar with Afghan culture, history, and religion, who is on what the Afghans view as an odd and dangerous quest to walk across their country. This presence is the vulnerable, but by no means helpless, European traveler.
Next, there is Babur, an unwanted semi-domesticated mastiff that becomes Rory's companion for most of his journey. Here, the relationship is the key, with Rory, the Westerner, developing an affectionate dependence on Babur, his dog. But in Afghanistan, such a dog is valued for its ability to fight and to make money for its wagering owner. It's more complicated than this. But, the presence of Babur enables Rory to explore the tension between his Western expectations and the gladiatorial expectations that have arisen in impoverished Afghanistan, which has been brutalized by 25 years of continuing warfare.
Finally, there is Babur, a king and warrior who fought with his army across Afghanistan in the early 1500s. This Babur left an elegant narrative poem describing his adventures as he passed through a succession of cultures, some wealthy, where there were generous social customs and a diversity of religions.
See how it works? At any time in the narrative, there is the informed and resourceful Rory, Babur the dog and shabby warrior, and Babur, the king, warrior, and cultural historian. Thanks to this technique, Rory Stewart always has lots to say as he makes his fascinating journey from Herat to Kabul.
Two quick final points:
First, the implicit question posed by this book is: Does our nation building in Afghanistan stand a chance? Based on Rory's narrative, I'd say there is no foundation in remote central Afghanistan for the creation of, in the words of the UN Assistance mission, "a centralized, broad-based, multi-ethnic government committed to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law." Instead, let's first try something practical, like re-supplying the country with sheep, which have been lost over 25 years of war or slaughtered by the Taliban.
Second, the lawless fragmentation and continual warfare in Afghanistan is a tragedy from multiple perspectives. But one is that this chaos has enabled the plunder of the country's archeological heritage. Everyone, read Rory's amazing chapters on the Minaret of Jam. You'll see why artifacts from lost civilizations in Central Asia are now available at auction in Paris.
Book Review: Humanistic Profile of Afghanistan with an Adventurer's Spirit and an Anthropologist's Eye
Summary: 5 Stars
Walking across central Asia without ruminating at length about the political and military crossfire would seem like an odd diversionary tactic by a writer any less assured than Rory Stewart. However, the Scottish author manages to evoke a powerful sense of what Afghanistan was like during his arduous, often moving trek through the wartorn country in 2002. Unlike Chris Ayres' humorous adventure of being embedded with the troops in Iraq in his blistering account, "War Reporting for Cowards", the then-29-year old Stewart is more straightforward with a true adventurer's spirit and an anthropologist's eye, as he set out on his own with his wooden staff through the central mountain range to Kabul. His immersion into the country was obviously aided incalculably by his fluency in Dari, which is the Afghan dialect of Persian, and his in-depth knowledge of the cultural custom and history of the country.
There is not a whit of romanticism in the author's vision, as he shares his experiences with people who have been grouped categorically by the news media with the hard-line Taliban. The most impressive aspect of the book is his ability to provide unique, almost idiosyncratic personalities to everyone he meets from the warlord Ismail Khan to his three Afghan traveling partners to a gregarious village headman to a war-beaten dog who becomes Stewart's constant companion. He names him Babur after the 16th-century Muslim emperor who traveled across Afghanistan to found the Mughal dynasty of India. Carrying the emperor's autobiography, the author draws compelling parallels with his own experiences and describes the Afghan people with becalming respect and admiration even if the ongoing threat of violence has hardened some of their sensibilities.
In a somewhat lighter vein, Stewart provides helpful travel tips for anyone who finds themselves in a fear-based Muslim nation, for example, assessing the likelihood of open land being mined if one sees sheep droppings, or the art of slicing a donkey's nostrils to allow easier breathing for the animal. Almost gratefully, he remains relatively agnostic when it comes to the U.S.-led invasion or the ongoing Iraqi conflict, but he cannot help but vent of some of his frustrations at the bureaucracy that has compromised efforts toward redevelopment. This is an insightful and eminently readable profile of a country whose true spirit has been hidden ironically by the excessive media coverage of the military-based carnage.
Book Review: The most interesting is in between
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps the saddest thing is that a friend dies in the end. But in a way it shouldn't be the saddest thing considering what sort of things Rory sees in his walk across Afghanistan. I suppose this could be one reason why the book is also humorous in a very dry sort of way. Rory has taken us through the starkest most primitive sorts of conditions where one is hard pressed to imagine how things could be improved - except perhaps by leaving the people alone and let them recover for a few generations - and then arrives to hear a speech where the concern is with things like gender equality and rule of law. Another such juxtaposition is his listening to a translation of a radio broadcast with Bill Gates giving a speech on Windows while sleeping in a room without electricity except for the radio - in a village without electricity. Rory keeps a straight face and his prose encourages us to also. In our book discussion one member of the group argued that the dog was a metaphor for Afghanistan! What Rory is suggesting is that, just as the dog dies in the end because it has been given something it is not used to, so the Afghans may die if we give them what they are not used to - and cannot physically handle. To this another member of the book group agreed that this might be what Rory is doing but that he did not know it. General laughter among us all seemed to voice agreement. The book seems too straightforward to be this subtle as well. Rory gets mad over the digging going on at the Turquoise Mountain. He really does. In a beautiful scene we hear the locals' disbelief at how slowly the archeologists dig. If they only dig the way we do they would get somewhere! They would only go an inch at a time! If this is subtle, then Rory is being subtle.
My favorite part of the book is the middle. The politics and troubles at either end are much more familiar and while they frame the walk were less interesting than being in the villages in between. What situations! What a picture of mountain people living in such a situation! Each experience, one after the other, is fascinating and full of such telling information that it colors all thoughts concerning the situation in this country. Thank you Rory for making this trip, you nutter, and sharing it with us who would rather stay at home on the Internet in a warm house with our dogs at our feet - with all of their teeth. I will have to go read the Iraq book next.
Book Review: A Small, Magnificent Epic....
Summary: 5 Stars
The Places In Between is the true story of a young man's journey on foot across the rugged Afghanistan landscape, an adventure that began just six weeks after the Taliban had been driven from power there by the allied offensive led by the US after 9/11. Or had they?
Rory Stewart, a Scotsman with a passion for people and a unique knowledge of Muslim customs and Persian languages, takes you along on the last leg of his trek across the Middle East, along paths taken by Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India, in the 15th century. His attention to custom, place and texture automatically transports you into the villages that he visited along his way. You learn of the hospitality and the values of the Afghans. You also feel Stewart's awareness of the dangers, his fatigue and his sense of purpose. It's a story that keeps your anticipation for the next challenge and the next success on edge... right up until his poignant epilogue.
While each page is fascinating, one passage remains foremost in my mind. At a point when Stewart, a diplomat and an historian, was talking with a group of Hazara village elders about Afghani politics, he recalled how some policy makers in Kabul perceived these people, "Villagers are not interested in human rights. They are like poor people all over the world. All they think about is where their next meal is coming from."
What he was seeing was that these peasant farmers had a better idea than most about where their next meal was coming from. They defined themselves chiefly as Muslims and Hazaras, not hungry Afghans. And without the time and imagination needed to understand their diverse experiences, policy makers would find it impossible to change Afghan society in the way they wished to. Tribal traditions of honor and issues of ethnicity were still not understood in Kabul and were consequently being ignored again.
In today's turbulent times, that sobering thought is one that more people should be made to recognize, as Afghanistan begins to move to the center of the world stage once more.
Bob Magnant is the author of The Last Transition... - the ultimate Internet adventure - a fact-based novel about Iran and terrorism.