West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story

by Tamim Ansary Narrated by Tamim Ansary

Overview

The day after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Tamim Ansary sent an anguished e-mail to twenty friends discussing the attack from his perspective as an Afghan American. The message reached millions.

Born to an Afghan father and American mother, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life. When he emigrated to San Francisco, he believed he'd left Afghan culture behind forever. But at the height of the Iranian Revolution, he took a harrowing journey through the Islamic world to rediscover his roots. In the years that followed, he struggled to unite his divided self and to find a place in his imagination where his Afghan and American identities might meet.

Here in his own words is one man's personal journey through two cultures in conflict.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Any carping about this being an instant book should be quelled when readers actually encounter Ansary's considered prose prose he himself contrasts to the e-mailed commentary he fired off on September 12 that found its way to millions of readers around the world (including FSG editorial). The e-mail, printed here in an appendix, included such comments as "When you think `Taliban,' think `Nazis.' When you think `Bin Laden,' think `Hitler.' And when you think `the people of Afghanistan,' think `the Jews in the concentration camps.' " Ansary, the son of a Pashtun Afghan father and Finnish-American mother, lived as a Muslim outside of Kabul until the early '60s, when he left on scholarship to attend an American high school, eventually going on to college and becoming an educational writer ("if you have children, they have probably read or used some product I have edited or written") with a family of his own in San Francisco. This book chronicles, with calm insight and honesty, Ansary's feelings at all points: his childhood spent within his "clan" ("our group self was just as real as our individual selves, perhaps more so"), a narrative of his often fascinating 1980 trip ("Looking for Islam") throughout the Muslim world that makes up the bulk of the book, and dissections of the differing paths taken by his sister, brother and himself. While Ansary's political insights can be detached or perhaps purposefully aloof his descriptions of having lived in and identified alternately with the West and the Islamic world are utterly compelling. (Apr.) Forecast: Ansary made the rounds of talk shows after September 11 and should be in for another stint upon publication. Look for a bestselling run that will be partially correlated, unfortunately, with the level of fighting in Afghanistan. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Some books are timely by accident, some through a prescience that conveys mystique upon their authors; either makes a writer's reputation. This book is a consequence of specific events last September, intended and only understandable within that recent, collective, and perhaps forever unfixable knowledge. Stripped of that context, this would be an insightful but somewhat plodding autobiography. Ansary, who was raised in pre-Russian-client Afghanistan, the son of an exemplar of that nation's civil elite and of an American his father met while studying abroad, moved to the United States in time to live out college and urban cool in the Sixties and Seventies. But this Afghan American, writing in response to one awful day and in fact extending to book-length some of the notions he posited in a widely read e-mail on September 12, 2001, tells truths about dislocation, heritage, home, family, and religion that both affirm life and profoundly sadden. Ansary's account of how his brother chose to stay "east of New York," of his travels through Muslim communities at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis, and of his personal collision with conspiracy theory are particularly unsettling and worth any reader's time. Recommended for high school, public, and academic libraries of all stripes. Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-This powerful, illuminating three-part memoir is a fast and enjoyable read, richly embedded with stimulating insights. In a friendly and often humorous style, Ansary charms readers with colorful stories of his life in Afghanistan and America, and shows what it is like to belong to two very different cultures. His mother (a feminist, atheist, and teacher) was Finnish-American and his father was an Afghan from a distinguished and talented family engaged in the country's first attempt at modernization. In "The Lost World," the author shares amusing and touching memories of a 1950s' boyhood in an Afghan extended family, or "clan." After moving to America as a teenager and then completing college, he became a dedicated participant in the counterculture of the '60s and '70s, and rarely looked back. In "Looking for Islam," Ansary describes a frustrating, harrowing, and often ludicrous trip through North Africa and Turkey in the late '70s where he met Muslim extremists; he casts much-needed light on the "weird" and "scary" internal logic of their belief system. In counterpoint to the inhumanity of fanaticism, he tells a sweet love story: how he found, fell in love with, and married a Jewish woman. In "Forgetting Afghanistan," Ansary shares with readers how he renegotiated his family relationships and found his balance as an adult-he remains somewhere between cultures but determines his own course. Teens should be fascinated by this unusual life story, learn much from it, and identify strongly with the author's identity quest.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An instructive memoir by an Afghan-American thrust into the news after September 11, 2001. On September 12, responding to talk-show callers who urged that Afghanistan be nuked or otherwise pounded into submission, Microsoft Encarta columnist Ansary wrote an impassioned E-mail defending his native country. "Bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age would be redundant," he wrote. "Twenty-three years of war had taken care of that already. The horrific crime in New York was not committed by the Afghan people, but by nationless thugs who had moved into ruined Afghanistan like rats into rubble." Widely circulated, the E-mail brought Ansary to international attention, affording him both the celebrity and the occasion for this memoir. Born in Kabul in 1948 into an influential family, Ansary lived in two worlds from the start by virtue of having an American mother. When his family was forced to leave Afghanistan at the outbreak of the long civil war, Ansary relocated to the US, grew his hair to his waist, listened to rock 'n' roll, and became an American-but always with a backward glance at his homeland, which clearly could have used his talents and level-headedness. He had an opportunity to revisit his native culture when reporting on militant Islam for the Pacific News Service, which, he writes, required that he put a Marxist, materialist slant on what he considers to be the "spiritual and not material hunger" of the young adherents to fundamentalist theology. Much of this slender book is given to recounting Ansary's travels through North Africa and the Middle East, where he hears many variations, some of them quite twisted, on the themes of Jewish evil, American perfidy, and Islamicsuperiority. This reportage is highly useful for anyone seeking to understand the Muslim world's hatred for the West, and it adds much to an already thoughtful consideration. Lucid, often surprisingly funny: a very welcome contribution to our understanding of this tragic nation.

From the Publisher

A book that steadies our skittering compass...It speaks with a modesty of tone and is all the more resonant for that reason....[It] sees things we cannot make out, and need to.” —The New York Times

“There are many lives now in our melted world as complicated as Tamim Ansary's. The wonder is that this son of Afghanistan and America moves between the competing pronouns of his life with a graceful pen; he is never less than curious and generous toward the various chapters of his life that claim him.” —Richard Rodriguez, author of Days of Obligations

“[This] powerful, timely book, written with clarity and eloquence, chronicles [Ansary's] angst and his personal journey through two conflicting cultures....We come to see the humanity behind the country that has come into the international spotlight.” —The Mercury News (San Jose)

“[Ansary's] descriptions of his Afghan childhood are luxe and delicious....The author's profound, complicated homesickness burns across every page.” —Esquire

“[An] emotional and moving memoir, driven by passion and intelligence...It breaks the heart.” —The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169803693
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

For many long years, my siblings and I thought we were the only Afghans in America. When I introduced myself to people, they'd say, "Interesting name. Where are you from?" When I said Afghanistan, I could feel myself changing, not unpleasantly, into a curiosity. Few knew where Afghanistan was, and some were amazed to learn it existed at all. Once, in a college gym class, a coach found my free-throw shooting form humorous. "Where have you been all your life," he guffawed, "Afghanistan?" When I said yes, he was taken aback: he thought Afghanistan was just an expression, like ultima Thule, meaning "off the map."

The Soviet invasion put Afghanistan on the map, but it didn't last. By the summer of 2001, a new acquaintance could say to me, "Afghanistan, huh? I never would have guessed you're from Africa."

That all changed on September 11, 2001. Suddenly, everywhere I went, strangers were talking about Kandahar and Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif. On September 12, the abrupt notoriety of Afghanistan triggered a volcanic moment in my own small life.

I was driving around San Francisco that day, listening to talk radio. My mind was chattering to itself about errands and deadlines, generating mental static to screen me off from my underlying emotions, the turmoil and dread. On the radio, a woman caller was making a tearful, ineffective case against going to war over the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The talk-show host derided her. A man called in to say that the enemy was not just Afghanistan but people like that previous caller as well. The talk-show host said thoughtfully, "You're making a lot of sense, sir."

The next caller elaborated on what should be done to Afghanistan: "Nuke that place. Those people have to learn. Put a fence around it! Cut them off from medicine! From food! Make those people starve!"

More than thirty-five years had passed since I had seen Afghanistan, but the ghosts were still inside me, and as I listened to that apoplectically enraged talk on the radio, those ghosts stirred to life. I saw my grandmother K'koh, elfin soul of the Ansary family. Oh, she died long ago, but in my mind she died again that day, as I pictured the rainfall of bombs that would be coming. And I saw my father, the man who wouldn't, or couldn't, leave when the Soviets put the country in a clamp. He was long gone, too, but if he'd lived, he would be in Kabul now, an eighty-three-year-old man, in rags on the streets, his ribs showing, one of the many who would be starving when the fence was flung up around our land.

I didn't begrudge those callers their rage, but I felt a bewilderment deeper than shock. No one seemed to know how pitifully harmless Afghans were, strong contenders for the Poorest People on Earth award, overrun by the world's most hardened criminals, and now, it seemed, marked out to suffer for the crimes of their torturers.

I wanted to call that talk show, but when I came home, I felt too shy. I'd never spoken to the media at any level. So I went downstairs to my office and wrote an e-mail to a few of my friends. I poured out to them what I would have said to the public if I could have mustered the courage to call that talk show. The moment I clicked on SEND, I felt infinitesimally better.

Later that day, some of the people on my list asked if they could pass my note on to their friends, and I said, "Sure," thinking, Wow, with luck, I might reach fifty or sixty people.

That night, I logged on to my server and found a hundred e-mails in my in-box, mostly from strangers responding to the message I'd hammered out earlier. It boggled my mind. The power of the Internet! I had reached . . . hundreds.

The next day, I realized something bigger was rising under me. At noon I got a call from my old friend Nick Allen, whom I hadn't seen in fifteen years. Somehow, he'd received the e-mail and had felt moved to track me down and say hi.

An hour later, I heard from Erik Nalder, the son of an American engineer, whom I had last seen in Afghanistan thirty-eight years ago. He'd received my e-mail — I couldn't imagine how — and had felt moved to track me down and say hi.

Then the phone rang again. A caller from Chicago. A hesitant voice. "My name is Charles Sherman. . . ." Did I know this guy? "I got your e-mail . . . ." I couldn't place him. "You don't know me" he said.

"Then how did you get my number?"

"I looked you up on the Internet — anyone can get your number . . . I just wanted to tell you that . . . your e-mail made a lot of sense to me."

I thanked him and hung up, but my heart was pounding. Strangers were reading my e-mail, and anyone could get my phone number. What if the next caller said, "Hi, I'm with the Taliban"? What if Al Qaeda knocked on the door? How long before some hysterical racist sent a brick through my window?

I wanted to cancel my e-mail. "I've reached enough people, thank you; that will be all." But it was too late. I couldn't withdraw the e-mail. I couldn't issue corrections, amendments, or follow-ups. My e-mail spread like a virus throughout the United States and across the world. My e-mail accounts overflowed with responses, and the servers had to start deleting messages I had not read. Radio stations started calling — then newspapers — then TV. By the fourth day, I found myself putting World News Tonight on hold to take a call from Oprah's people — inconceivable! I have no idea how many people received the e-mail ultimately. A radio station in South Africa claimed it reached 250,000 people in that country alone. Worldwide, I have to guess, it reached millions — within a week.

What had I written? I wondered. Why the response? I barely had time to ponder these bewildering questions. The media seized on me as a pundit. The questions came at me like hornets pouring out of a nest, and all I could do was swing at them. From those first few insane weeks, I only remember Charlie Rose's skeptical face looming toward me with the question, "But Tamim . . . can you really compare the Taliban to Nazis?"

Copyright (c) 2002 Tamim Ansary

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