وصف حياة أسرة أفغانيه, ذلك الشعب الذي يحيطه الغموض و لا يدري أحد ما الذي يدور فعلاً داخل أسوار بيوته , استطاعت الكاتبه ان تقنع رب الأسرة بأن تعيش مع أسرته و تراقب حياتهم لتؤلف كتابها الذي يوصف بانه الوصف الأكثر حميميه لحياة
عائليه أفغانيه الذي استطاع صحفي غربي كتابته على الإطلاق
تستطيع فعلاً تخيل الجدران االمثقوبه بالرصاص و مشاهدة الأطفال الذين يسيل المخاط من انوفهم و تشعر بلذة استمتاعهم بتناول الأطعمه الغنيه بالدهن و اللحم و الأرز كما تشعر بالتعاطف مع جميع شخصيات القصه بدءً من بيبي غول الجده الام انتهاءً بليلى أصغر الإخوه وأحقرهم كونها انثى مروراً بشاكيلا العانس و منصور المراهق الثائر وصونيا الحبلى و شريفه التي هجرها زوجها والشخصيه المسيطره و التي لا يرد لها سلطان خان عائل الأسره الذي لا ترد له كلمه و لا تدخل الشفقه قلبه!!
كتاب رائع زاخر بالأحداث والشخصيات يكشف النقاب عن كثير من عادات الشعب الأفغاني و يجعلك تعيش مع نسائه داخل البوركا!!
يستحق لحظاتي الممسروقه خلال اليوم لمتابعة قرائته :)

Als mir im Januar 2022 das Buch „Der Buchhändler aus Kabul“ der norwegischen Journalistin Asne Seierstad von meiner Buchhändlerin empfohlen wurde, habe ich ohne zu zögern zugegriffen. Ein Buchhändler, eine Familiengeschichte und noch dazu in Kabul spielend, das hat mich direkt neugierig gemacht, auch ohne den Klappentext zu lesen oder mehr über das Buch zu wissen. Deshalb habe ich auch nicht schlecht gestaunt, als ich im Vorwort gelesen habe, dass es sich hierbei nicht um einen Roman, sondern um einen Erfahrungsbericht handele. Die Journalistin schrieb das Buch bereits in 2002, als sie für fünf Monate bei der Familie des Buchhändlers Sultan Khan in Kabul lebte.

Die Journalistin hat in jedem Kapitel ein anderes Mitglied der Familie Khan zu Wort kommen lassen. Das war extrem spannend, weil man dadurch die unterschiedlichen Sichten und den Lebensalltag der unterschiedlichen Familienmitglieder kennenlernt, ihre jeweiligen Wünsche, Träume, aber auch Sorgen und Grenzen, die das Leben, das Land, die Kultur, die Tradition, die Religion, aber auch die eigene Familie ihnen setzt. Immer wieder sind die Kapitel mit Informationen zur Geschihte Afghanistans angereichert, was extrem informativ und lehrreich ist. Als Westeuropäerin kommt man sich vor wie einer anderen Welt und in einer anderen Zeit. Auch wenn mir die Unterschiede zwischen einem Leben dort und bei uns natürlich nicht unbekannt sind, so ist es doch etwas ganz anderes, das schon fast hautnah mitzuerleben. Auch wenn ich mir grundsätzlich mehr Nähe zu den Figuren gewünscht hätte, so haben mich vor allem die Kapitel und Schicksale der weiblichen Familienmitglieder doch sehr bewegt und vor allem wütend gemacht. Ich bin wirklich nicht sonderlich emanzipiert oder beharre darauf, als Frau gleichberechtigt zu sein, aber dies einzig und allein, weil ich solchen Grenzen und Einschränkungen nicht ausgesetzt bin. Das Schicksal, das Eingeengtsein der Frauen hat mich unendlich wütend gemacht, vor allem da man hier lernt, dass das Land schon wesentlich weiter, offener und moderner war.

Der Schreibstil der Autorin hat sich gut lesen lassen. Es war ein stellenweise sogar belletristisch anmutender Erzählstil, der aber doch immer klar gezeigt hat, dass es ein Erfahrungsbericht, eine schriftliche Dokumentation ist. Ich fand es extrem gut, dass die Autorin nicht nur den Buchhändler zu Wort hat kommen lassen und auch nicht nur die benachteiligten Frauen der Familie, sondern auch die (jüngeren) Söhne, die auch alle ihre eigenen Wünsche und Hoffnungen haben und denen ebenso Grenzen aufgesetzt werden. Allerdings waren die Kapitel der männlichen Familienmitglieder nicht immer leicht zu lesen und ihre Ansichten, Aktionen und Reaktionen nicht leicht zu ertragen.

Wie so oft bei Büchern, die in einem mir fremden Land spielen haben mir auch hier Extras wie Stammbaum der Familie, Glossar und eine Zeittafel als Zusammenfassung der wichtigsten politischen Ereignisse gefehlt. Ich hätte das gerne im Nachgang noch einmal zusammengefasst gelesen oder auch während des Lesens nachgeschlagen.

Grundsätzlich ist das Buch „Der Buchhändler aus Kabul“ ein Buch, das längere Zeit nachhallt, selbst wenn es nicht soo bewegt, wie es vielleicht ein Roman getan hätte. Ich konnte, nachdem ich es beendet hatte, nicht einfach so zur Tagesordnung übergehen, sondern habe mich noch über Dokumentationen noch ein wenig aufgeschlaut. Ein Buch, das sich auf jeden Fall lohnt zu lesen und das sicherlich nicht das letzte Buch sein wird, das mich in diese mir so fremde Welt entführt.

This was a difficult book to read for me. The kind of subjugation women have to contend with, the violence leashed out on them if they don't can never be justified, no matter how holy the words are said to be.

It was very well written, the way of life in Kabul vividly brought to life. I recommend it and hope since the writing of the book, life in Kabul has improved for everyone in every way!

It's hard to read this book even though it is very good. I just can't believe that a society can treat women the way they do in this area of the world. I also got so angry at all of the world treasures the Taliban blew up or destroyed. It just boggles my mind. In fact, I consider it "crimes against humanity." Has there ever been a group of people who destroyed so many of their own national treasures? I guess the Huns and Visigoths did the same, but world has lost a lot because of the Taliban.

12/29/12

I've finished the book and it is one of the best/worst book I have ever read. It wasn't the author that was at fault, it was the subject. Life for not only women is abysmal. The head of the household rules everything and his wishes, often his whims, are law. People's lives are squandered and that is in the more civilized parts of Afghanistan. The tribal areas are evil incarnate.

That being said, it was an excellent book and one everyone should read. The story is well told and extremely interesting. In one chapter Seierstad relates a shopping expedition and she captures the essence of women in that culture by using the third person in the form of "the burka."
"The lead burka has stopped near the bed-linen counter. She feels the material and tries to gauge the color through the grille. She bargains through the grille, while dark eyes can only just be seen dimly behind the lattice. The burka haggles, arms waving in the air....Burka women are like horses with blinkers; they can look only in one direction. Where the eye narrows, the grille stops and thick material takes its place; impossible to glance sideways. The whole head must turn, another trick by the burka inventor: a man must know what his wife is looking at."

This is a sad, sad country and I am afraid that it will take generations before it is changed.

4,5 stars: this was not an easy read, and this was not because the English was difficult, the prose was dense or any other such reason. I read this book in just 3 days (which is very fast for me), but I had a hard time reading it, because I empathized with the people – especially the women – portrayed here and gosh… do they have a hard life…
Even so, I did not like what I read in the introductory text by the author in which she says that although she’s written the book in literary form, it is based on real events or what was told to her by people who took part in those events and then justifies the description of thoughts and feelings, as having used as point of departure what people told her they thought or felt. I think this is going too far, especially because even though she used different names, everybody now knows who the bookseller and his family are. The book I read just before this one, by a Portuguese journalist who was in Kabul a few years after the publication of The Bookseller of Kabul, includes a short mention to a visit to this bookshop. Not surprisingly, the bookseller told the Portuguese journalist he did not like the book, and I can only imagine what the consequences of this read have been for some of his family members...
This being said, this was nevertheless a very good read that I recommend to everyone who likes to know more about other people’s culture and history and who like reading fiction and non-fiction alike, because as mentioned above, it is written as a fiction book, but one can easily feel that the characters are based on real people.

Reportáž v románe alebo román v reportáži?

The Bookseller of Kabul is a very interesting piece of literature. Åsne Seierstad tells the story of the Khan family without being part of the story herself, which is in my opinion the major strength of this book. She is in most places objective and gives a voice to every member of the family. She writes the book as if it is a fiction story, and the notion of it being a true story therefore makes it even more striking. It is an important account of Afghan society and how its people have suffered and lived through war after war. Because Seierstad was allowed to be close to the women as well as the men and listen to their stories, this book offers a valuable look at the position of both women and men in a post-Taliban society.

However, I do think the book should be looked at and interpreted critically. It is in the end not written from the perspective of any of the family members, which makes it harder to distinguish the actual facts and the author’s own interpretations of the situation. Because of the writer’s privileged background and origins, I think it would be better to look further than this book and also read stories written by native people who have experienced such hardships themselves.

Audio version. Very well done and captured my interest from the first. Compelling. I coud not put it down. This quote from the book's flyleaf sums up my feelings: "a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history."
I was constantly reminded of my privileges and extremely thankful to have been born in 20th century America.

Bokhandleren i Kabul = The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad

The Bookseller of Kabul is a non-fiction book written by Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, about a bookseller, Shah Muhammad Rais (whose name was changed to Sultan Khan), and his family in Kabul, Afghanistan, published in Norwegian in 2002 and English in 2003.

It takes a novelist approach, focusing on characters and the daily issues that they face.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی ام ماه ژانویه سال2005میلادی

عنوان: کتابفروش کابل؛ نویسنده: اسن سیراستاد (سی شتاد)؛ برگردان: زهره خلیلی؛ نشر تهران، قطره، سال1384، در328صفحه، موضوع افغانستان، آداب و رسوم، زندگی اجتماعی، یادمانها، کابل، افغانستان، سیر و سیاحت از نویسندگان نروژ - سده21م

گزارش نویسنده، در سفر به «افغانستان»، پس از براندازی «طالبان»، و شرح مشاهدات ایشان است؛ نویسنده به آشنایی از زندگی مردمان «افغانستان»، و دوستی با كتابفروش شهر «كابل»، علاقمند می‌شود، تا داستانی بر اساس واقعیت زندگی مردمان «افغانستان» بنویسد، به همین سبب تصمیم‌ می‌گیرد تا با خانواده‌ ی «سلطان» زندگی كند، و مشاهدات و یافته‌ های خود را، در قالب داستان بازگو نماید

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 19/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 30/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Delivering pizzas in Germany is far more lucrative than working as a flight engineer [in Afghanistan] (p58)

Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, stayed as a guest of the bookseller of Kabul of the title shortly after the fall of the Taliban. It is odd really that the USA ended up raining bombs on the Taliban. There's a common current between some political persuasions in the USA and the Taliban, both really dislike women having pre-martial sex, both are strongly inspired by the Bible and want to see religion at the heart of their national cultures, both believe in saying no to drugs, yet perhaps when it came down to it the Americans were just too jealous of the Taliban's free and easy gun culture. But that's the nature of war, to make strange allies and stranger enemies.  Seierstad lived in his home with his extended family - his mother, two wives, a sister, children of various ages. The home was a flat in a Soviet built block in Kabul. Running water and electricity were casualties of the on and off warfare going on since the 1970s.

Seierstad calls the bookseller Sultan. He was an ambitious and energetic man, or depending on your perspective - simply an overbearing patriarch. He had been to school, and had studied engineering at university, while there had fallen into the booktrade supplying his fellow students with textbooks. During the time that Seierstad was his guest he had three bookshops doing a roaring trade in selling postcards to coalition soldiers, a confectionery concession in a lifeless hotel, and was bidding for the textbook contract for the whole of Afghanistan - here he ended up loosing out to the University of Oxford. The businesses were staffed by his sons, none of whom he sent to school.

Sultan, his sister Leila, and his son Mansur were the only people in the household who spoke English. Seierstad in her introduction admits that she didn't master Dari so there is a difference between this book and One Hundred and One Days. There everything she describes she either saw herself or is related by other journalists she spoke to. Here her presence is elusive in the text. She tells us that she was present on certain occasions  the visit with Mansur to Mazar-i-Sharif, at the bathhouse, the visits to the central police station and the ministry of Education, the road trip with American journalist 'Bob' and his interpreter to find Osama Bin Ladin they don't in the introduction, for the rest we are in a grey zone of stories related and potentially misunderstood in translation between members of the family and Seierstad.

Luckily for us, perhaps, some of the potential uncertainty is removed by a court case launched by Sultan second, and much younger wife, in 2010 against Seierstad. The grounds of her complaint was not that Seierstad's account was inaccurate, but rather that she had unfairly shared her private thoughts and opinions with a wider public. Eventually in 2013 a court decided that this was what journalists do.

Anyroad, and I am sorry if this is a gross spoiler for you, Afghanistan, it turns out, was not a happy place  shockingly despite its lack of control over gun ownership and the near complete ability of people to resist central government.

Leila has a plan to become an English teacher, to which end the responsible Minister is duly and appropriately bribed to sign the relevant paperwork unfortunately because the ministers spend large parts of the day signing the papers of people who have bribed their way in, their signatures become progressively less valuable (p269), so by the end of the book she hasn't managed to make it to the front of a classroom and get chalk on her fingers.

A carpenter hired to build sloping bookshelves for one of the shops is repeatedly beaten for stealing some of those valuable postcards by his elderly father. Eventually having confessed that he stole them for one of Sultan's rivals he gets a few years in prison. "Don't forget, under the Taliban he would have had his hand cut off," the chief constable emphasises (p226) the modern Afghan police, happily, is all about community policing "Once we surprised a couple in a car. We, or rather the parents, forced them to marry," he says. "That was fair, don't you think? After all, we're not the Taliban...we must try to avoid stoning people. The Afghans have suffered enough" (p228).

Luckily for Seierstad she manages to travel in a car on separate occasions with 'Bob' and Mansur  this is the journey to Mazar-i-Sharif when she sees the remains of Soviet tanks destroyed by Mujahadeen who had swarmed down the mountainside like goatswithout getting stopped by the police and obliged to marry. Partly maybe because when with 'Bob' they are in a region were homosexually is all the rage among the warlord's army, but I'm anticipating myself with my comparisons with ancient Greece, let me make you wait until the next paragraph, here major jealous dramas develop around the young men; many blood feuds have been fought over a young lover who divided his favours between two men. On one occasion two commanders launched a tank battle in the bazaar in a feud over a young lover. The result was several dozen killed (p250).

It was Leila in her burka pausing to hire an urchin to accompany her to the market as a chaperone that put me in mind of the well to do ladies of ancient Athens. Seierstad says that the burka was only introduced in the 20th century to Kabul by one of the Kings of Afghanistan who decreed that the 200 women of his harem should each wear one when ever they left the palace to wander about town. No-one wanted to be seen as any less dignified and decent than one of the women of the King's harem and so the practice of wearing a small tent with a small grill to see out of trickled down from the uppermost social class over time to very lowest.

The world of the burka, Seierstad tell us, is a smelly one, with restricted vision an added bonus. No sooner have the women of the household - The whole Khan family are on the plump side, certainly compared to Afghan standards. The fat and the cooking oil they pour over their food are manifested on their bodies (p163), swabbed themselves down in the municipal bathhouse in it is back inside their old clothes. The women are spotlessly clean under the burkas and the clothes, but the soft soap and the pink shampoo desperately fight against heavy odds. The women's own smell is soon restored; the burkas force it down over them (p168), as they walk along the dry and dusty streets.

It is a closed and cautious country in which marriage negotiations are conducted by a man's nearest female relative - except in cases of utmost need, and in which the brides family can be expected to say no on the first attempt merely as a matter of form anything else would be to sell short to this rich unknown suitor whom Sultan recommended so warmly. It would not do to appear too keen. But they knew Sultan would return; Sonya was young and beautiful (p13). One mustn't appear too eager after-all. History is a constant theme  not that Seierstad is herself a good example, early on writing that the British invaded India from the north via the Khyber Pass, no doubt they would have done if they could, however geography intervened to make that an impractical proposition , Leila declaring that she will not wear a burka again once the king has returned, the ignorance of the people of their own past, leaving us to wonder quite what can be rebuilt, it is a more absolute year zero than we can imagine. Outside Kabul war continues in different forms, while within the coalition soldiers are a source of ready income. A world in which a Matriarch orders her sons to smother her daughter for the sake of the families honour and in which Mansur's work colleague offers a beggar girl money for sex - provided she has a wash first  witnessing this incident is the impetus for Mansur to visit Mazar-i-Sharif and get spiritually cleansed , a man must have a code it seems, however twisted.

Seierstad, although she is often humorous in tone  unless this is down to the translation, doesn't seem to have much enjoyed her time with the bookseller of Kabul. Which is not surprising. Living in a small flat with a large family, all traumatised in different ways by the experience of war and exile in Pakistan - occasionally dreaming of the bright lights of Tehran - while obliged to wear a burka when out on the streets is not an easy experience for an outsider. The stories she tells are claustrophobic. The social releases limited to quail fighting and watching buzkashi fights - something rather like polo, except with a headless calf rather than a ball.

This is the kind of book that must be read with caution. The author chose to write it as though it was a novel and not a journalistic account. This incurs the risk - as it is obvious when one reads other reviews - of having readers confusing it with actual fiction.

Then there's the whole "western gaze". This is a norwegian woman writing on a society she does not belong to, a society that is very different from hers, and it can perfectly be argued that five months spent amongst a family are not sufficient to actually know them or the society they live in.

There's also the question of privacy: is it right for someone to expose the inner life of a family in such a way? Perhaps a more interesting question, wasn't it incredibly naive of Sultan Khan (Shah Rais in real life) to invite a European journalist into his own house and think that the portrait she'd paint would be positive? And wasn't it naive of Seierstad to think that Rais would gladly go along with how she portrayed his family in the book? Perhaps Seierstad didn't care. She probably should have. There is something very unkind in the way she exposes the thoughts of the people - especially the women - who are already suffering under the pressure of living in a such a patriarchal society. Oppressed people don't have to be exposed to prove their oppression. Especially not in such an undignified way.

The most important question that Seierstad manages to ask, however, is how can an educated man, who wants to edit school textbooks and who believes in a (limited) form of free thought (after all, Sultan Khan would never sell Salman Rushdie in his bookshop) be so unable to understand the oppressive nature of the society he lives in and so blind to his own personal contribution to it?

I would very much like to not believe this book. I would very much like to believe, like other reviewers do, that she can't possibly know all the things she claims to know, because why would people confide in a foreigner like this, why do all these people speak English? I would love to be able to dismiss this book based on her condescending tone and on her belief in the superiority of the western world. And I am ready to believe that there are "embellishments" and exaggerations. Seierstad admits as much in a interview to the Guardian:

"If I write a book in future, I may decide to take the precaution of going back to every person I interview, reading their quotes back to them and asking them to sign a letter, saying it is accurate... In everything I write, ever again, I need to make sure I am 100% accurate. A journalist can get away with this sort of controversy once, but I can't survive it again." ( https://www.theguardian.com/theguardi... )

However, at the same time I also can't help but think that it would be incredibly naive to believe that many situations portrayed here aren't horrifying real. It is precisely for this reason that they deserve a better journalistic treatment than the one given by Seierstad.

#بائع_الكتب_في_كابول.
#آسني_سييرستاد
إصدار : #الدار_العربية_للعلوم_ناشرون
تعريب : #حليم_نصر
عدد الصفحات : ٣٥٧
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سيرة ذاتية بأسلوب روائي تحكيهِ لنا صحفية أجنبية قَدِمتْ إلى أفغانستان خلال فترة حكم طالبان والحروب الأهليةوهجرة الأهالي بعدها.
تتناول الرواية حياة سلطان بائع الكتب في كابول الذي أسس حياتهِ بجهدهِ الخاص بعد تَعلّمهِ مهارة تجارة بيع الكتب والكسب الوفير منها. بالإضافة لحياتهِ الخاصة، عائلتهِ و زوجتيهِ وأبناءهُ.
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الرواية مملة ومخيبة للظن نوعاً ما، قد يكون بسبب السرد المبالغ فيهِ وقد يكون لكثرة الشخوص التي تُشتتْ أحيانا قدرة الرواية على شدّ القارئ. ولكن بالنسبة لي فإن السبب الأساسي هو إبتعاد كبير جداً لعنوان الرواية عن مضمونها فلم يُذكر من الكُتب شيء سوى جانب الربح المادي فقط. مع أني توقعتُ أن أقرأ سحراً من نوع خاص عن الكتب بالإضافة لسحر أفغانستان الذي أُحبه.
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أعجبتني شخصية ليلى أخت سلطان في الرواية لإنها الوحيدة التي تصرخ بأعماقها وتشعر بظلم مجتمعها وأخوانها وتحاول الخروج من هذا البؤس المفروض عليها . باقي الشخصيات رتيبة، مُملة تتراوح بين سلطة الذكور و خنوع المرأة وفقر المجتمع والتمييز الطائفي.
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مراجعة : #زينب_بني_سعد