The Places in Between*, by Rory Stewart (Harcourt
Publishing, 2006, 299 pages, $14.00)
A New York Times Bestseller (and, yes, it’s about a dog)
Born
in Hong Kong, brought up in Malaysia, student at Eton and Oxford, tutor of both
British princes, this British military veteran and MP (member of Parliament not
military police) walked through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and India,
and wrote about part of his travels in The
Places in Between.
Someone I Would Love to Meet
Rory
Stewart’s solitary trek through Afghanistan in 2002 was something you could never
imagine: it seemed to be more possible during the 1950s but Stewart did it in 2002!
2002
was just after the fall of the Taliban** in Afghanistan when the country was
still in transition. However, small villages often escaped the political
upheavals***.
His
second book, Prince of the Marshes and
Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, tells of his experiences in
the marshes of Iraq after the war when he served as a post-war governor.
A Road Book, Romantic and
Exotic
You’ve
heard of “Road Movies,” a genre populated with the likes of Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, The
Motorcycle Diaries, Bonnie and Clyde, It Happened One Night, and The Road
pictures of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope (Road
to Singapore/Zanzibar/Rio/Morocco
/Bali/Utopia).
Road
books include Travels with Charley
(Steinbeck), On the Road (Jack
Kerouac), and now, The Places in Between.
Take
one young person, 18-30, not yet ready to settle down in a real job, who goes
out on his own or with a buddy – preferably on his own and preferably with a
knowledge of the language.
Ah,
the travels, the adventures, the exotic places to write about at the conclusion,
so we, the readers, can live it vicariously and voraciously and dream it
happened to us. The Silk Road, the Turquoise Mountain, Buzkashi, the Koh-i-Noor
diamond, . . . .
A World Apart: "There is no
Government Anymore"
One
village has 82 inhabitants - male – they don’t bother to count the women.
Villages are often a two hours’ walk from each other – women have never taken
that trek. Streets are womenless. Children play with their cousins and when
they are about 15, they marry them.
Ah, Afghanistan!
If
you were deployed to Afghanistan you will be dumbfounded by Stewart’s
adventures. If you haven’t, it still is a book you will read and take with you
to read another chapter or page whenever you can.
If
you are a dog person, you will understand how a huge dog named Barbur adopted
Stewart and traveled with him.
“The Kindness of
Strangers. . . . “
In
drawings, photographs and words, you will meet village elders and mullahs, Taliban
fighters, NGO workers (the latter two being quite idealistic), Hazaras and Bamiyan
and more.
You
will come away with a new-found respect for a road trip and for the villagers
of Afghanistan. You will understand their sense of cordiality and hospitality.
You will eat their food, sleep in their homes, chat over tea, and come to
understand tradition.
You
will want to read this book again.
The Places in Between would make a marvelous
film!
*available in the Howard County, MD, public library system
**December 7, 2001, was the date the Taliban laid down their arms in Kandahar, Afghanistan
***When I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2007-08, one of my fellow troops
who went out into the villages overheard this comment: “When did the Russians
change their uniforms?”
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