On the Good and Bad of Adventure Literature on Afghanistan*
Khisraw Amini
عجبستان روری ستوارت: در باب خوب و بد سفرنامه های افغانستان / خسرو امینی
کتاب "سرزمین های میانه" نوشته روری ستورات، ماجراجوی انگلیسی یکی از جذاب ترین کتاب هایی است که در سال های پسین در باره افغانستان نوشته شده است. این کتاب حکایت سفر روری استورات با پای پیاده در زمستان از هرات به کابل از طریق مناطق مرکزی افغانستان میباشد. اما در این کتاب روری از خاطره نویسی فراتر رفته و در باب سیاست و جامعه افغانستان به شکل ضمنی نظریات مشخصی را انکشاف میدهد. عجیب نیست که روری ستوارت اکنون نماینده پارلمان بریتانیا است. این مقاله معرفی این کتاب ارزشمند و در عین زمان نقد آن میباشد.
Rory Stewart's bestseller, The Places in Between, was my reward in a winter when I was researching about Afghanistan, desperately looking for something genuine to read about the country. I found the book at the Barnes and Nobles and read much of it in the cafeteria upstairs; surprisingly engaging, full of genuine pictures and stories to be told. For me, who was in a few of those places by which Rory passed, this joy was double when looking back to those images and memories for a second time in a great travel narrative. I became interested in Rory's affairs and searched him on the internet and learned about his sympathy for Afghanistan and his activities in Kabul especially at the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. Running such a foundation which introduces a richer cultural image of Afghanistan to the Western audience and on the other hand rehabilitates the cultural life of the old Kabul in an economically viable way, and his taste for earth architecture was fascinating to me.
