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The Storyteller's Daughter: One Woman's Return to Her Lost Homeland

Saira Shah

Discussion: Asia

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Sep 18, 2013 Lilisa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-2016-lilisa-s-chal, 2016, audio-read, non-fiction, afghanistan

A well-done memoir of a young woman seeking her roots, restless in the land where she was born (in Britain) but feeling very much at home in the land of her forefathers - Afghanistan. Saira Shah recalls the stories her father shared with her and her siblings growing up - about his parents and the land of beautiful mountains, crisp streams, the wonderful food and the warmth and camaraderie of family and friends. She was fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit Afghanistan as a young girl an ...more

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Feb 20, 2016 Nick rated it really liked it

An elegy for Afghanistan by a journalist who was there during the war with Russia and went back after the towers were destroyed; unlike a lot of these books, it was written by someone of Afghani descent, the daughter of Idries Shah, who did so much to popularize Sufism in the West. So, in addition to the appalling stories and tales of Western misunderstanding, Saira Shah explores her roots, grapples with her love for the country of her ancestors, and finds her relatives. The relatives, by the wa An elegy for Afghanistan by a journalist who was there during the war with Russia and went back after the towers were destroyed; unlike a lot of these books, it was written by someone of Afghani descent, the daughter of Idries Shah, who did so much to popularize Sufism in the West. So, in addition to the appalling stories and tales of Western misunderstanding, Saira Shah explores her roots, grapples with her love for the country of her ancestors, and finds her relatives. The relatives, by the way, furnish the source of one of the best stories I have ever read, as one tries to marry the teenage Shah off to a local man only to be outwitted by a maiden aunt. Her descriptions of the forbidding landscape are lyrical, her untangling of the even more convoluted and treacherous politics clear, her passion for the country and its people deep and genuine. She quotes Rumi (who lived in what is now Afghanistan) and the Gulistan with ease. Books by Westerners on the Afghan conflict tend to focus on the educated class because that is who the authors can speak to directly. For the first time, I felt as though I was reading an author who understood the many Afghans who are not and whose purpose was to convey their feelings and even words effectively, perhaps because she could converse with them in their languages. There are the usual stories of American malfeasance, parachuting supplies in of things that Afghans do not eat, and in any case usually to the wrong people, the vigorous market in the Stinger weapons that Charlie Wilson fought so hard to give the mujahedin. The refugees in Pakistan produced great amounts of aid and investment, most of it going to service organizations, local businessmen and, Shah is honest enough to point out, journalists. Shah is heartbreaking on what she could not do, not finding the lovely, peaceful Afghanistan of her family lore in violent ruin and failing to help even the subjects of a documentary she filmed. She is beyond heartbreaking on a number of other stories, which should be read rather than paraphrased here. I will limit myself to Abdul Haq, the mujahedin who in exile argued for a peaceful approach in what had been the Afghan tradition of side-switching, only to be executed by the Taliban shortly after he returned to implement his ideas. There are many tragedies in this book, but perhaps the greatest is Shah's perception that the way of Abdul Haq is gone, that there is a generation of people who grew up during these violent decades and have lost everything but the one thing they know how to do, which is to make war. ...more

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Dec 18, 2008 Toni rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: multi-cultural, biography-memoir, history, afghanistan

English born Saira Shah's was weaned on her father's stories of a lush and majestic land, instilling in her the desire to search for her Afghani roots. As an adult her longing to find her ancestral land takes her into the violence and upheaval of an Afghanistan torn apart by years of invaders. It's a difficult, though moving, story of the time she spent as a journalist in a land she beautifully describes.

I now have a much better grasp of Afghanistan's convoluted history and the mindset of it's ...more

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