Courtesy Free Press
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Web-Exclusive Book Review
A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan
By Nelofer Pazira (Free Press, September 2005)
Review by Wendy Smith, November 2005
, May 2007
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In her lucid, intelligent memoir, Nelofer Pazira quietly reminds Western readers that even in the world's most war-torn regions, where extremism seems to grow from the blood-soaked soil, most people's hopes and fears are no different from ours. Though she grew up in Kabul during the years that saw a military coup and a Soviet invasion, Pazira's family would have been more or less at home in an American small town. Her father was a doctor, her mother a schoolteacher. They were educated, reform-minded Afghani liberals.
As the occupation floundered, however, the author shows ordinary lives being drastically altered by constant conflict. Like many young people, she came to see Islam as a vehicle of protest against the hated Soviets. They chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) as planes flew over Kabul; by 1984 seventh-grader Pazira was throwing stones at military vehicles, and she later joined an underground group distributing Islamic literature and information about the mujahidins' armed resistance.
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She got her wake-up call in 1989 after the civil war had made life so unbearable that the family fled to Pakistan. At a bazaar in Islamabad, a gun-toting militant berated her for not wearing proper "Islamic attire." Himself clad in tight jeans and a T-shirt, he was outraged that her hair was visible beneath her scarf. The author hardly knew what "Islamic attire" was before donning a burqa to blend in with the locals as she clandestinely crossed the countryside toward Pakistan. Her cogent history of the burqa, originally worn by rural Afghan women when they traveled to the city, is one of many passages that gracefully enlighten American readers about her native land's cultural and political complexities.
The book's most painful portions document the restrictions imposed on women as Islamic fanaticism took hold, not just in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan but among Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran. Pazira's voice is restrained, yet it seethes with indignation as she shows the religion practiced by her parents with mid-20th-century moderation transformed into an oppressive cult that forbade women to work, attend school, or even leave the house without a male escort. Westerners will cringe at the complacency of international aid organizations in Canada, where the Paziras found asylum and Nelofer begged fruitlessly for condemnation of the regime. Foreigners for too long regarded the Taliban as an authentic expression of Afghan culture, a nonsensical idea vehemently refuted by the anguished letters of Nelofer's friend Dyana, trapped in Kabul.
Keenly aware of the mistakes and compromises people make in times of political turbulence (one of her uncles was by turns a convinced Communist, an Islamic fundamentalist, and a disenchanted refugee), the author does not waste time casting blame; she even displays compassion for the tormented Soviet Army veterans she met during a visit to Russia in 2004. Her poignant, eloquent memoir gives a human face to Afghanistan's tragic history over the past four decades.
Wendy Smith reviews books for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The
Washington Post, and other publications.
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