The Places In Between

The Places In Between

by Rory Stewart
The Places In Between

The Places In Between

by Rory Stewart

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

A New York Times Bestseller
This acccount of a 36-day walk across Afghanistan, starting just weeks after the fall of the Taliban, is “stupendous…an instant travel classic” (Entertainment Weekly).

In January 2002, Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan, surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion—a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following.

Through these encounters—by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny—Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780156031561
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 05/08/2006
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 215,485
Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile: 980L (what's this?)
Age Range: 14 - 18 Years

About the Author

About The Author
RORY STEWART is the best-selling author of The Places in Between and The Prince of the Marshes. A former director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy and Ryan Professor of Human Rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services in Iraq. He is the Conservative member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border, a constituency in Northern Cumbria, where he lives with his wife.

Read an Excerpt

The Places in Between


By Stewart, Rory

Harvest Books

Copyright ©2006 Stewart, Rory
All right reserved.

ISBN: 0156031566

The New Civil Service

I watched two men enter the lobby of the Hotel Mowafaq.

Most Afghans seemed to glide up the center of the lobby staircase with their shawls trailing behind them like Venetian cloaks. But these men wore Western jackets, walked quietly, and stayed close to the banister. I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the hotel manager.

"Follow them." He had never spoken to me before.

"I'm sorry, no," I said. "I am busy."

"Now. They are from the government."

I followed him to a room on a floor I didn't know existed and he told me to take off my shoes and enter alone in my socks. The two men were seated on a heavy blackwood sofa, beside an aluminum spittoon. They were still wearing their shoes. I smiled. They did not. The lace curtains were drawn and there was no electricity in the city; the room was dark.

"Chi kar mikonid?" (What are you doing?) asked the man in the black suit and collarless Iranian shirt. I expected him to stand and, in the normal way, shake hands and wish me peace. He remained seated.

"Salaam aleikum" (Peace be with you), I said, and sat down.

"Waleikum a-salaam. Chi kar mikonid?" he repeated quietly, leaning back and running his fat manicured hand along the purple velveteen arm of thesofa. His bouffant hair and goatee were neatly trimmed. I was conscious of not having shaved in eight weeks.

"I have explained what I am doing many times to His Excellency, Yuzufi, in the Foreign Ministry," I said. "I was told to meet him again now. I am late."

A pulse was beating strongly in my neck. I tried to breathe slowly. Neither of us spoke. After a little while, I looked away.

The thinner man drew out a small new radio, said something into it, and straightened his stiff jacket over his traditional shirt. I didn't need to see the shoulder holster. I had already guessed they were members of the Security Service. They did not care what I said or what I thought of them. They had watched people through hidden cameras in bedrooms, in torture cells, and on execution grounds. They knew that, however I presented myself, I could be reduced. But why had they decided to question me? In the silence, I heard a car reversing in the courtyard and then the first notes of the call to prayer.

"Let's go," said the man in the black suit. He told me to walk in front. On the stairs, I passed a waiter to whom I had spoken. He turned away. I was led to a small Japanese car parked on the dirt forecourt. The car's paint job was new and it had been washed recently. They told me to sit in the back. There was nothing in the pockets or on the floorboards. It looked as though the car had just come from the factory. Without saying anything, they turned onto the main boulevard.

It was January 2002. The American-led coalition was ending its bombardment of the Tora Bora complex; Usama Bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar had escaped; operations in Gardez were beginning. The new government taking over from the Taliban had been in place for two weeks. The laws banning television and female education had been dropped; political prisoners had been released; refugees were returning home; some women were coming out without veils. The UN and the U.S. military were running the basic infrastructure and food supplies. There was no frontier guard and I had entered the country without a visa. The Afghan government seemed to me hardly to exist. Yet these men were apparently well established.

The car turned into the Foreign Ministry, and the gate guards saluted and stood back. As I climbed the stairs, I felt that I was moving unnaturally quickly and that the men had noticed this. A secretary showed us into Mr. Yuzufi's office without knocking. For a moment Yuzufi stared at us from behind his desk. Then he stood, straightened his baggy pin-striped jacket, and showed the men to the most senior position in the room. They walked slowly on the linoleum flooring, looking at the furniture Yuzufi had managed to assemble since he had inherited an empty office: the splintered desk, the four mismatched filing cabinets in different shades of olive green, and the stove, which made the room smell strongly of gasoline.

The week I had known Yuzufi comprised half his career in the Foreign Ministry. A fortnight earlier he had been in Pakistan. The day before he had given me tea and a boiled sweet, told me he admired my journey, laughed at a photograph of my father in a kilt, and discussed Persian poetry. This time he did not greet me but instead sat in a chair facing me and asked, "What has happened?"

Before I could reply, the man with the goatee cut in. "What is this foreigner doing here?"

"These men are from the Security Service," said Yuzufi.

I nodded. I noticed that Yuzufi had clasped his hands together and that his hands, like mine, were trembling slightly.

"I will translate to make sure you understand what they are asking," continued Yuzufi. "Tell them your intentions. Exactly as you told me."

I looked into the eyes of the man on my left. "I am planning to walk across Afghanistan. From Herat to Kabul. On foot." I was not breathing deeply enough to complete my phrases. I was surprised they didn't interrupt. "I am following in the footsteps of Babur, the first emperor of Mughal India. I want to get away from the roads. Journalists, aid workers, and tourists mostly travel by car, but I--"

"There are no tourists," said the man in the stiff jacket, who had not yet spoken. "You are the first tourist in Afghanistan. It is midwinter--there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee. Do you want to die?"

"Thank you very much for your advice. I note those three points." I guessed from his tone that such advice was intended as an order. "But I have spoken to the Cabinet," I said, misrepresenting a brief meeting with the young secretary to the Minister of Social Welfare. "I must do this journey."

"Do it in a year's time," said the man in the black suit.

He had taken from Yuzufi the tattered evidence of my walk across South Asia and was examining it: the clipping from the newspaper in western Nepal, "Mr. Stewart is a pilgrim for peace"; the letter from the Conservator, Second Circle, Forestry Department, Himachal Pradesh, India, "Mr. Stewart, a Scot, is interested in the environment"; from a District Officer in the Punjab and a Secretary of the Interior in a Himalayan state and a Chief Engineer of the Pakistan Department of Irrigation requesting "All Executive Engineers (XENs) on the Lower Bari Doab to assist Mr. Stewart, who will be undertaking a journey on foot to research the history of the canal system."

"I have explained this," I added, "to His Excellency the Emir's son, the Minister of Social Welfare, when he also gave me a letter of introduction."

"From His Excellency Mir Wais?"

"Here." I handed over the sheet of letterhead paper I had received from the Minister's secretary. "Mr. Stewart is a medieval antiquary interested in the anthropology of Herat."

"But it is not signed."

"Mr. Yuzufi lost the signed copy."

Yuzufi, who was staring at the ground, nodded slightly.

The two men talked together for a few minutes. I did not try to follow what they were saying. I noticed, however, that they were using Iranian--not Afghan--Persian. This and their clothes and their manner made me think they had spent a great deal of time with the Iranian intelligence services. I had been questioned by the Iranians, who seemed to suspect me of being a spy. I did not want to be questioned by them again.

The man in the stiff jacket said, "We will allow him to walk to Chaghcharan. But our gunmen will accompany him all the way." Chaghcharan was halfway between Herat and Kabul and about a fortnight into my journey.

The villagers with whom I was hoping to stay would be terrified by a secret police escort. This was presumably the point. But why were they letting me do the journey at all when they could expel me? I wondered if they were looking for money. "Thank you so much for your concern for my security," I said, "but I am quite happy to take the risk. I have walked alone across the other Asian countries without any problems."

"You will take the escort," said Yuzufi, interrupting for the first time. "That is nonnegotiable."

"But I have introductions to the local commanders. I will be much safer with them than with Heratis."

"You will go with our men," he repeated.

"I cannot afford to pay for an escort. I have no money."

"We were not expecting any money," said the man in the stiff jacket.

"This is nonnegotiable," repeated Yuzufi. His broad knee was now jigging up and down. "If you refuse this you will be expelled from the country. They want to know how many of their gunmen you are taking."

"If it is compulsory, one."

"Two . . . with weapons," said the man in the dark suit, "and you will leave tomorrow."

The two men stood up and left the room. They said good-bye to Yuzufi but not to me.



Copyright © Rory Stewart 2004
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Rory Stewart

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should be submitted online at harcourt.com/contact
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Continues...

Excerpted from The Places in Between by Stewart, Rory Copyright ©2006 by Stewart, Rory. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents


Contents

Preface ­xi
The New Civil ­Service 1
Tanks into ­Sticks 6
Whether on the Shores of ­Asia 10

Part ­One 15
Chicago and ­Paris 17
Huma 19
Fare ­Forward 23
These ­Boots 30

Part ­Two 35
Qasim 37
Impersonal ­Pronoun 44
A Tajik ­Village 48
The Emir of the ­West 50
Caravanserai, Whose ­Portals . . . 56To a Blind Man’s ­Eye 62
Genealogies 69
Lest He Returning Chide . . . 74
Crown ­Jewels 85
Bread and ­Water 90
The Fighting Man ­Shall 95
A Nothing ­Man 99

Part Three 103
Highland ­Buildings 105
The Missionary ­Dance 112
Mirrored Cat’s­-­Eye ­Shades 117
Marrying a ­Muslim 120
War ­Dog 127
Commandant Haji (Moalem) Mohsin Khan of ­Kamenj 134
Cousins 141

Part Four 145
The Minaret of ­Jam 147
Traces in the ­Ground 157
Between Jam and ­Chaghcharan 161
Dawn ­Prayers 164
Little ­Lord 167
Frogs 172
The Windy ­Place 177

Part ­Five 183
Name ­Navigation 185
The Greeting of ­Strangers 192
Leaves on the ­Ceiling 197
Flames 200
Zia of ­Katlish 203
The Sacred ­Guest 208
The Cave of ­Zarin 212
Devotions 217
The Defiles of the ­Valley 220

Part Six 227
The Intermediate Stages of ­Death 229
Winged ­Footprints 231
Blair and the ­Koran 234
Salt Ground and ­Spikenard 239
Pale Circles in ­Walls 242
@afghangov.org 245
While the Note ­Lasts 250

Part Seven 255
Footprints on the ­Ceiling 257
I Am the ­Zoom 260
Karaman 262
Khalili’s ­Troops 266
And I Have ­Mine 270
The Scheme of ­Generation 273
The Source of the Kabul ­River 276
Taliban 279
Toes 285
Marble 289

Epilogue 295

Acknowledgments 299

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

UK PRAISE FOR THE PLACES IN BETWEEN
"[Stewart's] encounters with Afghans are tragic, touching and terrifying; they all have the ring of unembellished authenticity . . . A mature debut, and an intelligent and illuminating introduction to this fascinating, unfortunate country."
-THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

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