The Places In Between
by Rory Stewart
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Book Reviews of The Places In Between
Book Review: Incredible Story Told Dully
Summary: 3 Stars
No one can say that Scottish professor, humanitarian, and travel writer Rory Stewart lacks guts: shortly after the fall of the Taliban, he sets out on a harrowing trek across a snow-covered Afghanistan with only a walking stick and a few basic supplies. With steely determination, he crosses a landscape that is treacherous and unforgiving both geographically and politically, following in the footsteps of the 15th-century Mughal emperor Babur. It is an incredible journey few would even imagine undertaking, but he does so with remarkable grit, refusing on principle to travel any way other than on foot.
Unfortunately, as amazing as the story itself is, the book does not make for a very engaging read. Two factors conspire to make the prose dull: 1) the journey is inescapably repetitive because the terrain is barren and the author is numb with exhaustion; 2) Stewart's writing style is sparse in the extreme. It is to his credit that he does not embellish, and his account is realistic and straightforward. However, the reader learns almost nothing about how the journey impacts Stewart, and his descriptions of the people he meets along the way leave much to be desired. In fact, despite the hospitality he receives from these impoverished villagers, Stewart seems to view interacting with them as a nuisance that must simply be tolerated in order to reach his goal. Often, the pages seem to blur together as he moves from one village to another.
However, between the parts that blur together, there are passages that are quite interesting. Stewart includes a good bit of interesting history, including passages from Babur's own writings from his travels. He also provides insights into the political situation in Afghanistan, including the ethnic and religious strife between Pashtuns and Hazaras and the decentralized nature of the country. Although Stewart does not push a political agenda, his description of rural Afghanistan brings into focus just how difficult--if not impossible--it will be to transform the country into a modern, centralized democracy. Most of the people he encounters are thoroughly isolated, living in medieval conditions with feudal, rather than national, loyalties. The book does an excellent job of conveying the harsh and unforgiving conditions in which they live.
In one village, Stewart is given a dog, who accompanies him on the remainder of his trek. Despite his unemotional writing, it is apparent that he becomes quite attached to the dog--whom he names Babur--and this provides the book with rare moments of poignancy. My heart broke for Babur, who was badly abused by his former owners and had to be dragged, sick and hungry, through the snow in hopes of giving him a new life in Scotland.
Book Review: Humanistic Profile of Afghanistan with an Adventurer's Spirit and an Anthropologist's Eye
Summary: 5 Stars
Walking across central Asia without ruminating at length about the political and military crossfire would seem like an odd diversionary tactic by a writer any less assured than Rory Stewart. However, the Scottish author manages to evoke a powerful sense of what Afghanistan was like during his arduous, often moving trek through the wartorn country in 2002. Unlike Chris Ayres' humorous adventure of being embedded with the troops in Iraq in his blistering account, "War Reporting for Cowards", the then-29-year old Stewart is more straightforward with a true adventurer's spirit and an anthropologist's eye, as he set out on his own with his wooden staff through the central mountain range to Kabul. His immersion into the country was obviously aided incalculably by his fluency in Dari, which is the Afghan dialect of Persian, and his in-depth knowledge of the cultural custom and history of the country.
There is not a whit of romanticism in the author's vision, as he shares his experiences with people who have been grouped categorically by the news media with the hard-line Taliban. The most impressive aspect of the book is his ability to provide unique, almost idiosyncratic personalities to everyone he meets from the warlord Ismail Khan to his three Afghan traveling partners to a gregarious village headman to a war-beaten dog who becomes Stewart's constant companion. He names him Babur after the 16th-century Muslim emperor who traveled across Afghanistan to found the Mughal dynasty of India. Carrying the emperor's autobiography, the author draws compelling parallels with his own experiences and describes the Afghan people with becalming respect and admiration even if the ongoing threat of violence has hardened some of their sensibilities.
In a somewhat lighter vein, Stewart provides helpful travel tips for anyone who finds themselves in a fear-based Muslim nation, for example, assessing the likelihood of open land being mined if one sees sheep droppings, or the art of slicing a donkey's nostrils to allow easier breathing for the animal. Almost gratefully, he remains relatively agnostic when it comes to the U.S.-led invasion or the ongoing Iraqi conflict, but he cannot help but vent of some of his frustrations at the bureaucracy that has compromised efforts toward redevelopment. This is an insightful and eminently readable profile of a country whose true spirit has been hidden ironically by the excessive media coverage of the military-based carnage.
Book Review: The most interesting is in between
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps the saddest thing is that a friend dies in the end. But in a way it shouldn't be the saddest thing considering what sort of things Rory sees in his walk across Afghanistan. I suppose this could be one reason why the book is also humorous in a very dry sort of way. Rory has taken us through the starkest most primitive sorts of conditions where one is hard pressed to imagine how things could be improved - except perhaps by leaving the people alone and let them recover for a few generations - and then arrives to hear a speech where the concern is with things like gender equality and rule of law. Another such juxtaposition is his listening to a translation of a radio broadcast with Bill Gates giving a speech on Windows while sleeping in a room without electricity except for the radio - in a village without electricity. Rory keeps a straight face and his prose encourages us to also. In our book discussion one member of the group argued that the dog was a metaphor for Afghanistan! What Rory is suggesting is that, just as the dog dies in the end because it has been given something it is not used to, so the Afghans may die if we give them what they are not used to - and cannot physically handle. To this another member of the book group agreed that this might be what Rory is doing but that he did not know it. General laughter among us all seemed to voice agreement. The book seems too straightforward to be this subtle as well. Rory gets mad over the digging going on at the Turquoise Mountain. He really does. In a beautiful scene we hear the locals' disbelief at how slowly the archeologists dig. If they only dig the way we do they would get somewhere! They would only go an inch at a time! If this is subtle, then Rory is being subtle.
My favorite part of the book is the middle. The politics and troubles at either end are much more familiar and while they frame the walk were less interesting than being in the villages in between. What situations! What a picture of mountain people living in such a situation! Each experience, one after the other, is fascinating and full of such telling information that it colors all thoughts concerning the situation in this country. Thank you Rory for making this trip, you nutter, and sharing it with us who would rather stay at home on the Internet in a warm house with our dogs at our feet - with all of their teeth. I will have to go read the Iraq book next.
Book Review: Rory, Babur and Babur
Summary: 4 Stars
I understand and concur to a qualified extent with some of the less than glowing reviews here. Yes, the prose is sparse. Yes, our author doesn't seem to talk very much about himself. Yes, Tom Bissell's review in the NYT is ridiculously encomiastic...."a novelist's sense of character"...??? I wonder what particular novelist Mr. Bissell had in mind. But to counter these criticisms, I would offer two pointed rejoinders.
1) Stewart makes clear that the Emperor Babur's account is the model for his own. Indeed, passages from Babur make up a great part of the book. Readers seemed to have skimmed the passage on p.11 of my copy about Babur:
"At times it seems the only thing missing from the story is himself. He never explains what drives him to live this extraordinary life and take these kinds of risks. He does not describe his emotions, and as a result can seem distant and the episodes of his life, repetitive. Confronted by dead bodies or people trying to kill him, he writes in increasingly dispassionate and impersonal prose. But this restraint only emphasizes the extraordinary nature of his experiences."
Rory has followed Babur's formula to the letter.
2) I can not help but notice how much a sort of class envy hangs over these critical reviews: "bratty", "Eton boy", "super privileged" are just some of the adjectives applied to Mr. Stewart. I would submit to these reviewers that they come across as more than a little ill-natured and absurd. If you have taken the sorts of risks with your life as Rory does here, if you have suffered from dysentery and managed to keep walking through sub-zero weather day upon day, then let fly with the slings and arrows of your resentment. If not, pray don't expose yourself as an armchair yob with a twelve tonne chip on your shoulder.
I don't myself know why Rory took this journey. He doesn't seem to know either. I don't know why he adopted a dog whose teeth had been knocked out by villagers to accompany him, naming him Babur after the emperor. It may well be that he's completely mad. If so, we could do with a little more madness in the world. The book and its author have their flaws, but a lack of intrepidity or kindness, to animals and men, are not among them. Good job, Rory. I'm glad you made it through.
Book Review: A Small, Magnificent Epic....
Summary: 5 Stars
The Places In Between is the true story of a young man's journey on foot across the rugged Afghanistan landscape, an adventure that began just six weeks after the Taliban had been driven from power there by the allied offensive led by the US after 9/11. Or had they?
Rory Stewart, a Scotsman with a passion for people and a unique knowledge of Muslim customs and Persian languages, takes you along on the last leg of his trek across the Middle East, along paths taken by Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India, in the 15th century. His attention to custom, place and texture automatically transports you into the villages that he visited along his way. You learn of the hospitality and the values of the Afghans. You also feel Stewart's awareness of the dangers, his fatigue and his sense of purpose. It's a story that keeps your anticipation for the next challenge and the next success on edge... right up until his poignant epilogue.
While each page is fascinating, one passage remains foremost in my mind. At a point when Stewart, a diplomat and an historian, was talking with a group of Hazara village elders about Afghani politics, he recalled how some policy makers in Kabul perceived these people, "Villagers are not interested in human rights. They are like poor people all over the world. All they think about is where their next meal is coming from."
What he was seeing was that these peasant farmers had a better idea than most about where their next meal was coming from. They defined themselves chiefly as Muslims and Hazaras, not hungry Afghans. And without the time and imagination needed to understand their diverse experiences, policy makers would find it impossible to change Afghan society in the way they wished to. Tribal traditions of honor and issues of ethnicity were still not understood in Kabul and were consequently being ignored again.
In today's turbulent times, that sobering thought is one that more people should be made to recognize, as Afghanistan begins to move to the center of the world stage once more.
Bob Magnant is the author of The Last Transition... - the ultimate Internet adventure - a fact-based novel about Iran and terrorism.