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.
In his travel memoir and in his lectures, Rory goes beyond storytelling and tries to draw a bigger picture of today's Afghanistan and the involvement of international community there. Here was where I kept my breath and hoped that he would not fall into the trap of stereotyping Afghanistan which is very common among people who has been writing on the country. To many of its readers and writers, Afghanistan means the photogenic pictures of its landscape and people; It means the stereotypes of warriors, invaders, customs and so on. For sure, there are truths in these images, Afghanistan is photogenic, and has gone through such stories in the past. But the problem is to fit these facts into the images and desires that a visitor has in mind a priori. I think, the problem is even not the reduction of Afghanistan facts into these ideas, since every analysis has some sort of reductionism inherently, but it is this stereotyping thing that transforms those beautiful pictures into political or anthropological theories.
Rory too slips into these holes although he is witty and conscious enough not to stay there long and to make his way through possible accusations. However, putting it in simple words, to him the true Afghan politics is the local influential people who are the materialization of Afghan political values and realities. There are also instances where Rory takes Afghan sense of humor or idioms very seriously. I am not sure to add these to those stereotypes, or to put them in Rory's overconfidence of his language knowledge or to count them as some dramatic techniques. But they further that larger tendency of stereotyping, maybe not intentionally.
Rory makes the people he met in the course of his journey into characters. There is a Haji Mohsin Khan of Kamenj, who has a family heritage in his community and has always been the influential person in that place, including during the Taliban period; regimes have changed but Haji Mohsin Khan has always survived; He is now the director of education of his district. To put it straightforward, For Rory, Haji Mohsin Khan of Kamenj and Pahlawan Nasir of Morad Khane are the reality of the country and jargons such as human rights, democracy and good governance or women's rights are not for this country. This is a general tendency in some literature writing about non-Western countries. I don’t want to speculate on that if one takes this argument very seriously how far one can go with it. In my opinion, this is rather about mixing politics with psychology, or over-politicizing psychology.
In narrating the Afghan society, Rory is persistent to translate its relative and contingent factors directly into politics; he does not much account for humors, ironies and exceptions which are the rule in social interactions. As a result, in this socio-political picture much of the past modern Afghanistan is absent; what the country went through in its campaign against the massive presence of the Soviet; the ideological confrontations that has been there for decades now; and the total destruction of the country thereby. This simple political memory allows him to build a political theory out of the pictures of Afghan social life that he encountered.
Beside being a brilliant travel book, the importance of Rory Stewart’s book for our condition is that the way he describes and prescribes for Afghanistan is a projection of the logic of some circles in the Afghan Government and outside; that the failures of the government are inherent to the political structure of Afghanistan, which should be about intrinsic limitations and the strange mentality of its people. Of course, Afghanistan is specific like every other country is, and maybe more, but the way that the political business must be done, is to be perceived as a universal discussion, especially in a globalized environment of today where this old universal discussion has become real time. This way, the discourses on justice, human rights, democracy and good governance may be imperfect jargons, but they are the only possibilities that we have developed to approach the question of justice and politics throughout the history. The alternative way would be the illusion of the possibility of direct understanding of individuals and making a political plan out of it, which is in fact nothing but a typology of Haji Mohsin Khan's personality and psychology.
Rory's book is indeed a great genuine travel memoir with a charming classical flavor written by a lover of Afghanistan, and I am personally thankful to him for this book that opened new doors of ideas to me. I owe another thank to Rory for his introduction of another British writer who had traveled to Afghanistan through the Middle East in early 1930s, Robert Byron and his Road To Oxiana. Very surprising to me, his encounter with Afghanistan was a surprise but not an odd experience. He is rather humorous and modest, not very ambitious and persistent. Not too much persistent to reduce all mysteries or social images he encounters into theories. That's why his image of Herat, a small lonely policeman in the center of a vast deserted square, directing two donkeys and a bicycle with a majesty more appropriate for the Champs Elysees, is so simple, funny and mysterious that inspires Rory's memoir and I wonder if this image will be there for the people to pass by in the future.
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In his travel memoir and in his lectures, Rory goes beyond storytelling and tries to draw a bigger picture of today's Afghanistan and the involvement of international community there. Here was where I kept my breath and hoped that he would not fall into the trap of stereotyping Afghanistan which is very common among people who has been writing on the country. To many of its readers and writers, Afghanistan means the photogenic pictures of its landscape and people; It means the stereotypes of warriors, invaders, customs and so on. For sure, there are truths in these images, Afghanistan is photogenic, and has gone through such stories in the past. But the problem is to fit these facts into the images and desires that a visitor has in mind a priori. I think, the problem is even not the reduction of Afghanistan facts into these ideas, since every analysis has some sort of reductionism inherently, but it is this stereotyping thing that transforms those beautiful pictures into political or anthropological theories.
Rory too slips into these holes although he is witty and conscious enough not to stay there long and to make his way through possible accusations. However, putting it in simple words, to him the true Afghan politics is the local influential people who are the materialization of Afghan political values and realities. There are also instances where Rory takes Afghan sense of humor or idioms very seriously. I am not sure to add these to those stereotypes, or to put them in Rory's overconfidence of his language knowledge or to count them as some dramatic techniques. But they further that larger tendency of stereotyping, maybe not intentionally.
Rory makes the people he met in the course of his journey into characters. There is a Haji Mohsin Khan of Kamenj, who has a family heritage in his community and has always been the influential person in that place, including during the Taliban period; regimes have changed but Haji Mohsin Khan has always survived; He is now the director of education of his district. To put it straightforward, For Rory, Haji Mohsin Khan of Kamenj and Pahlawan Nasir of Morad Khane are the reality of the country and jargons such as human rights, democracy and good governance or women's rights are not for this country. This is a general tendency in some literature writing about non-Western countries. I don’t want to speculate on that if one takes this argument very seriously how far one can go with it. In my opinion, this is rather about mixing politics with psychology, or over-politicizing psychology.
In narrating the Afghan society, Rory is persistent to translate its relative and contingent factors directly into politics; he does not much account for humors, ironies and exceptions which are the rule in social interactions. As a result, in this socio-political picture much of the past modern Afghanistan is absent; what the country went through in its campaign against the massive presence of the Soviet; the ideological confrontations that has been there for decades now; and the total destruction of the country thereby. This simple political memory allows him to build a political theory out of the pictures of Afghan social life that he encountered.
Beside being a brilliant travel book, the importance of Rory Stewart’s book for our condition is that the way he describes and prescribes for Afghanistan is a projection of the logic of some circles in the Afghan Government and outside; that the failures of the government are inherent to the political structure of Afghanistan, which should be about intrinsic limitations and the strange mentality of its people. Of course, Afghanistan is specific like every other country is, and maybe more, but the way that the political business must be done, is to be perceived as a universal discussion, especially in a globalized environment of today where this old universal discussion has become real time. This way, the discourses on justice, human rights, democracy and good governance may be imperfect jargons, but they are the only possibilities that we have developed to approach the question of justice and politics throughout the history. The alternative way would be the illusion of the possibility of direct understanding of individuals and making a political plan out of it, which is in fact nothing but a typology of Haji Mohsin Khan's personality and psychology.
Rory's book is indeed a great genuine travel memoir with a charming classical flavor written by a lover of Afghanistan, and I am personally thankful to him for this book that opened new doors of ideas to me. I owe another thank to Rory for his introduction of another British writer who had traveled to Afghanistan through the Middle East in early 1930s, Robert Byron and his Road To Oxiana. Very surprising to me, his encounter with Afghanistan was a surprise but not an odd experience. He is rather humorous and modest, not very ambitious and persistent. Not too much persistent to reduce all mysteries or social images he encounters into theories. That's why his image of Herat, a small lonely policeman in the center of a vast deserted square, directing two donkeys and a bicycle with a majesty more appropriate for the Champs Elysees, is so simple, funny and mysterious that inspires Rory's memoir and I wonder if this image will be there for the people to pass by in the future.
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* An edition of this article was first published on Dr. Ashraf Ghani's Website, in 2009.
