Shah's Early Memoir and the Nerve of Some Women . . . .

Outside our sealed bubble of tolerant Muslim culture, the Islamic world was changing.  Some years before the Iranian revolution, our Qur'an teacher became fascinated by the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini.  He was hurriedly dismissed, and he eventually returned to Iran to study in a religious seminary.  When the thirst for Islamic revolution had stirred his heart sufficiently, he decided he had been brought to our household for a purpose: to witness the depravity and error into which our branch of the family of the Prophet had sunk.  For a while, we children were hurried past the thick laurel bushes in the driveway, in case our erstwhile Qur'an instructor was lurking there, ready to attack us.

What unacceptable religous ideas had he encountered in our home?  What teachings did he find so detrimental to the hearts of the faithful?  Perhaps Baghawi of Herat's sayings of the Prophet, which adjured one to think for oneself rather than conform to externals without question:

"One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer."

"Trust in God, but tie your camel first."

"The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr."

"You ask me to curse unbelievers, but I was not sent to curse."

"I order you to help an oppressed person, whether they are Muslim or not."

"Women are the twin halves of men."

These were the values I grew up with.  This was the Islam I bought into. [1, pp. 11-12]

Men write books too, and I would slight the courage of none for that, but for the brassiest of the big balls, credit on occasion the nerve of some women.

Saira Shah's book, The Storyteller's Daughter, from which I have quoted for the above teaser, tells both the memories and the contemporary experience, including experience in the Taliban presence, of the progeny to a kind of a royalty and post-colonial dispossession.

Early on in her adventure in memoir, Shah asks "Does the Afghanistan of our myths really exist?  Are we still Afghans? And if Iam not an Afghan, what am I?"

While Shah finds evidence to support the family's mythos, her question posed in 2003, the year of her book's publication, remains cutting edge: if I am not Jewish, if you are not Christian, if he is not Lakota, or she not Sunni--and relate that back to a patch on the Big Blue Marble--what are we?

"Modern" would be my suggestion.

Should that feel vague or discomfitting--it would seem to be a recycling historical state of self-assessment--try "cosmopolitan".

Or that old Jewish, multi-monotheist. and way out of copyright standby puzzled about worldwide: "good."

Much of the world, this to the misfortune of the cosmopolitan, good, and modern Mister or Ms. of the World, hasn't the cultural or intellectual breadth granted either by affluence and education, mindful pluck and education, or public education (and educated discipline) associated with secular educations to shatter the suggestion of a limited and sharply drawn caricature of the self confined by its lack of access to new language metonymy and behavior. 

Worse, many who do have such access to foreign thought may hew nonetheless to the most chauvanist perception of their role among their own, denying the spirit of, say, the accumulation of several American pedigrees in education and returning straight to the comforts of a familiar hate or prejudice, a bent from which they may then seek to lead their more impressionable and less armored "street".

The movie Amelia Earhart has recently opened (to smaller than expected box office too), but as long as that pioneer's name, if not ghost, is in the air, one may suggest that in Shah and others, whom I will mention shortly, the spirit for flying beyond fixed horizons remains strong.  It is a good thing, for the times in Islam and all around its edges demand it--may the men among Islamic Moderns rise for a match.

We carry our myths--I like to say the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves--with us all our lives, but while they may inform our sensibilities, they are inevitably too packaged, small, and fixed to define them: inevitably, for better sometimes, for worse too often, we diverge.

I don't know how the next two-thirds of Saira Shah's book will be for cogent insight and vicarious experience, but I'm enjoying the writing and the spirit of courage, curiosity, and introspective inquiry evident in the voice.

In my library, The Storyteller's Daughter will have for company work by Sarah Chayes, a Pashto-speaking Jewish American woman who has entrepreneured in small manufacturing for the good of the economy serving Muslims south of Kabul; Anne Jones, an American on a post-Taliban story (still on it too); Azadeh Moaveni, now an Iranian Muslim reporting from London for Time magazine ; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim Somali liberated through Danish hospitality and living today a most secular and modern post-modern life among security guards in the west; and Nafisi Azar, an Iranian national whose combined literary, personal, and political experiences have made Baltimore a more suitable home for her spirit than Tehran under the current regime.

Cited Reference

1. Shah, Saira.  The Storyteller's Daughter.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Other Reference

Chayes, Sarah.  The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

Hirsi Ali, Ayaan.  Infidel.  New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Jones, Ann.  Web: http://www.annjonesonline.com/index.html

Jones, Ann.  Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan.  New York: Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company), 2006.

Moaveni, Azadeh. Web: http://www.azadeh.info/

Moaveni, Azadeh.  Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran.  New York: Random House, 2009.

Nafisi, Azar.  Things I've Been Silent About.  New York: Random House, 2008.

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