The Places In Between
by Rory Stewart
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Book Reviews of The Places In Between
Book Review: Following in Babur's footsteps
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Places in Between" is the chronicle of Rory Stewart's journey by foot from Herat to Kabul, accompanied by nothing else but the occasional villager or passing soldier and his local dog, named Babur. This is a fitting name because Stewart, who would later be appointed to an important government post in occupied Iraq (The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq), not only wants to explore the beautiful Afghan landscape but also study the traces of its history in the present. The original Babur was one of the few leaders in Afghan history who had united the whole territory and who considered it central to his empire, and he is particularly interesting because he left an autobiographical text which is remarkable for its honesty, its objectivity, and its insight into the norms of those days. With these two Baburs, knowledge of local language and customs, and a bag full of medication, Rory Stewart sets out to traverse the sublime deserts and snow-capped mountains of central Afghanistan.
The tale is very well written and makes for easy and highly compelling reading. It is a telling fact that he makes his journey, which consists in essence out of endlessly repeated harsh day marches from one village chief's tent to the next, interesting to people who have never even been near the area. Stewart is very nonjudgmental overall, probably in part because he is entirely reliant on the kindness of strangers (who are often as hostile as they are hospitable to travellers) in the classic manner of travel writing. The book sheds some light on the highly complicated chain of political and ethnic conflicts within Afghanistan - almost every Afghan male has fought in at least one, if not more, war in the country. It is clear that loyalties are usually not quite as clear-cut as one would like them to be in order to understand them: very often the same feudal lords who had opposed the Taliban later joined them, and sometimes Iran-supported islamists are the greatest enemies of local chieftains, and so forth. Stewart's book does not really delve into political analysis, but certainly shows 'ad oculos' what the real meaning of politics is in Afghanistan.
All this is not to say that Stewart is necessarily an entirely reliable guide. The American edition of the book indicates that Rick Loomis took pictures of him along the way, but having a cameraman along is not mentioned anywhere. Moreover, it is clear from the facts that Stewart has been in the British Army, knows Dari as well as local politics thoroughly, has been involved with the Kennedy School of Government and finally his later appointment as governor in the occupying government in Iraq, that it is highly likely that he is a spy of some sort. Given this fact, the fact that Stewart was allowed to undertake his trip at all is quite remarkable, and it does seem some strings were pulled to make it possible. Of course, he himself says nothing about this. The result in any case is an insightful and highly readable book that will appeal to anyone interested in Afghanistan.
Book Review: Somewhere in Afghanistan, the Point Got Lost
Summary: 2 Stars
It's an odd sensation in a travel book to be guided by a traveler who remains, for 300 pages, a cipher. Stewart reveals virtually nothing about himself or about his motive for undertaking his dangerous, difficult, and (evidently) unrewarding journey--on foot, no less. In fact, there's something distinctly bratty about Stewart's approach to the whole endeavor: he made the trip because he "wanted to," he repeats, and one can almost hear him stamping his foot; his evident lack of any need to support himself for years at a time (he has bundles of cash at his disposal and, at the end of the journey to Afghanistan, returns to "his room" in his parents' house in Scotland) and his conviction that he should be fed and housed by strangers all the way across Afghanistan (but not accompanied or told where to go) have a distinctly elitist and slightly juvenile ring to them, which is not completely surprising given Stewart's parentage and social status (read his Wikipedia biography to get a hint of the manor to which he was born). The people that he meets, meanwhile, are with few exceptions entirely dreadful--dull when they are not outright dangerous, rude when they are not simply miserable, malicious and sadistic when they are not merely indifferent. Nor are the villages he visits anything to write home about, each one essentially identical to another in its revolting, raw-sewage-and-war-debris sameness. The landscape--which Stewart frequently cannot see because he is walking through blinding snowstorms--gets even shorter shrift, and Stewart only occasionally remembers to describe the quality of light at sunset or the shape of a mountain range. Indeed, one gathers that all of that was wholly secondary; his goal was the destination (Kabul), never the journey. (And that's perhaps no surprise, given how ghastly Afghanistan appears in Stewart's version.) The inclusion, meanwhile, of the numerous grade-school-quality sketches that Stewart inked into his journal is a blunder that undermines what little seriousness the book can lay claim to. Stewart hints occasionally that he's bedeviled by unhappy memories or regrets as he walks, but that's as close as he lets anyone come to a glimpse of what's taking place inside his head or of what his reactions are to most of the things that happen to him. That's a fatal flaw in a book that has so little else to offer the reader. If the Afghans are essentially unknowable and alien, if the places are unremarkable and monotonous, and if the narrator slowly disappear as he writes, the whole edifice of the project crumbles. Stewart's only tears in the book are for an animal and never for the human misery he traipses through, as much proof as anyone should surely need that he is (or was) a callow, overprivileged youth on walkabout and that _The Places In Between_ got published through high-society connections and not because Stewart had anything particularly meaningful to say. In a country as barren and forbidding as Afghanistan, the places in between are largely voids, and it is a void that Stewart's book most faithfully transmits.Book Review: Even the author doesn't know why he took this walk..
Summary: 3 Stars
...other than for a sense of closure, since he had walked through much of Asia and considered the then recent invasion of Afghanistan by the US led coalition just a minor detail to be worked around.
From Stewart's description there are quite a few points in the narrative when he, with good reason, expected to be shot and killed. It appears that sheer boredom and dumb luck allowed him to complete the walk. Boredom by the potential killers, largely villagers caught up in the centuries old tribal conflicts, who felt no threat from the unarmed strange man walking through their land, and thus allowed him to pass with just threats and one beating thrown in.
As far as the people of Afghanistan: to me, a people who consider playing a form of polo with the corpse of a goat a sporting event, are a people who are, aside from modern weapons and landmines supplied by our country and others, a people stuck in the middle ages. These folks are literally centuries behind the rest of the world in everything but the ability to kill things with a rifle or blow things up with a bomb.
Is there a chance in heck that our 2002 invasion of this land will drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century, to the ridiculous notion of "democracy"? Not one in a google. Not one in ten googles. Most of the villagers (the vast majority of the population of Afqhanistan lives in villages with no modern conveniences) had never heard of, lets see, I'll make a list:
The World Trade Center
England
Scotland
Christianity
Illiterate folks who think in terms of Muslim: good, everything else: infidel/bad are NOT GOING TO BE BROUGHT OUT OF THE MIDDLE AGES in my/your/your grandchildrens lifetimes.
This book was useful in one major way for me: another brick in the temple I'm building to worship the insanity of our administration, run by Generalisimo Bush/Cheney. Bomb them? Just stop giving the Kalishnikovs and land mines and we will never be bothered by them again. They appear, from this book at least, to have little desire to change. Afghanistan has no great natural resources, other than the magnificent mastiffs that these enlightened (hah) folks use strictly for fighting and killing wolves.
The author tried to adopt one of the mastiffs, which had been horribly mistreated by one group of villagers. Took the huge, intelligent and brave dog on the last half of his trip.
At the end of his journey the dog was left behind by Stewart to be flown the next day to Scotland. A friend gave the dog some lamb, which contained a few bones. The dog, not used to meat with actual bones in it, ate the entire meal, then died from the bones puncturing his stomach. The care and feeding of this animal killed it. Seems apropos, if you ask me.
A very sad tale, all around.
Book Review: A very curious book
Summary: 4 Stars
I walked halfway across Afghanistan with Rory Stewart. It was enough.
But then I felt compelled to return to this curious diary and reflection on the author's rugged, snowy trek in the first months after the fall of the Taliban.
The premise is remarkable itself. Having completed, on foot, most of his trip across southwest Asia, events conspire to allow him to complete the missing piece. In early 2002, he flies to Herat to begin a miserable journey to Kabul. His route through the center of the country follows a leader from centuries ago, Babur, avoiding the remaining Taliban forces near Kandahar but facing harsh weather and terrain. He repeatedly states that he is interested in Afghanistan today, not its history, but he tells his own story along with that of Babur, long-lost historical sites, and earlier travel writers of region.
He is genuinely unimpressed with most of the people he meets. His expectations of Muslim-dictated hospitality are frequently not met. He also tells of some auspicious occasions when he imagines his trip will come to a violent end. He travels with a dog, also Babur; it is an important but difficult relationship. Perhaps coloring all of his adventure and his writing, he is sick with dysentery much of the time, often in villages without running water much less decent WCs. There is little joy: it is more akin to Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk (to and from a Siberian gulag) than Marco Polo.
But for students, and the general reader, there is much to be learned. One simple example is the local unit of measure for distance: how many days walk? Relatedly, letters of introduction, from regional or local leaders, are his essential travel items. As he advances, the letters from the various leaders become less valuable, until finally they are a liability and must be replaced by new letters from different leaders.
More broadly, Stewart's accounts reveal the real distance between the "new government of Afghanistan" and its people. Stewart's village leaders vary widely in kindness and sophistication. But the number of people who have never traveled even to the next village, the half-informed versions of world events, the various local interpretations of Islam, the oral histories of fighting the Soviets, the Taliban and the other villages - all these combine to make Western notions of democratic reform seem other worldly.
But his experience provides for a remarkable career move: as a British diplomat in 2003 he is appointed as a deputy governor in occupied southern Iraq. His account is forthcoming in The Prince of the Marshes (August 2006; it is available already in UK as Occupational Hazards). It will be, one can only suspect, a remarkably different insider-view than Bremer's My Year in Iraq or Diamond's Squandered Victory.
Book Review: Informative and Enjoyable
Summary: 5 Stars
Rory Stewart layers his narrative in THE PLACES IN BETWEEN so that every event and impression has numerous interpretations, as well as a rich undercurrent of contradiction. Rory achieves this layering primarily through continual reference to three narrative presences.
First, there is Rory himself, an informed westerner familiar with Afghan culture, history, and religion, who is on what the Afghans view as an odd and dangerous quest to walk across their country. This presence is the vulnerable, but by no means helpless, European traveler.
Next, there is Babur, an unwanted semi-domesticated mastiff that becomes Rory's companion for most of his journey. Here, the relationship is the key, with Rory, the Westerner, developing an affectionate dependence on Babur, his dog. But in Afghanistan, such a dog is valued for its ability to fight and to make money for its wagering owner. It's more complicated than this. But, the presence of Babur enables Rory to explore the tension between his Western expectations and the gladiatorial expectations that have arisen in impoverished Afghanistan, which has been brutalized by 25 years of continuing warfare.
Finally, there is Babur, a king and warrior who fought with his army across Afghanistan in the early 1500s. This Babur left an elegant narrative poem describing his adventures as he passed through a succession of cultures, some wealthy, where there were generous social customs and a diversity of religions.
See how it works? At any time in the narrative, there is the informed and resourceful Rory, Babur the dog and shabby warrior, and Babur, the king, warrior, and cultural historian. Thanks to this technique, Rory Stewart always has lots to say as he makes his fascinating journey from Herat to Kabul.
Two quick final points:
First, the implicit question posed by this book is: Does our nation building in Afghanistan stand a chance? Based on Rory's narrative, I'd say there is no foundation in remote central Afghanistan for the creation of, in the words of the UN Assistance mission, "a centralized, broad-based, multi-ethnic government committed to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law." Instead, let's first try something practical, like re-supplying the country with sheep, which have been lost over 25 years of war or slaughtered by the Taliban.
Second, the lawless fragmentation and continual warfare in Afghanistan is a tragedy from multiple perspectives. But one is that this chaos has enabled the plunder of the country's archeological heritage. Everyone, read Rory's amazing chapters on the Minaret of Jam. You'll see why artifacts from lost civilizations in Central Asia are now available at auction in Paris.