Book Seller of Kabul

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Tartisilacak kitap"Book Seller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad

The Kabul bookseller, the famous reporter, and a 'defamation' of a nation An international bestseller has caused fury in the Afghan capital - and the man on whom it is based has flown over to defend his name, reports Tim Judah Sunday September 21, 2003The Observer
She is young, glamorous and famous, he is an obscure bookseller from Kabul. She had a good idea - why not live with him for a few months and write his story, which would also be the story of one family's experience of surviving the tragedy of civil war? At the time, he thought it was a good idea, too. Asne Seierstad's book is now a world bestseller - but Mohammed Shah Rais is an angry man. 'It is defamation of me, my family and my nation,' he rages.
So, just weeks after its publication in Britain, and in a move that has unnerved the publishing world, Shah has decided to do what no Afghan or, indeed, anyone who has been the subject of such a book from a poor country, has ever done before. He has flown to Europe, determined to drag Seierstad through the courts and campaign for the destruction of her book. 'It is slander and salacious. I hate her,' he says.
Seierstad, 33, is Scandinavia's best-known war reporter. In spring this year, she covered the Iraq war from Baghdad. But one year earlier, after having covered the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, she lived for several months with Shah and his family. Her book has been a phenomenal success.
The Bookseller of Kabul has sold more than half a million copies in Scandinavia alone. It has been sold to publishers in 17 countries and came out to rave reviews in Britain last month. It is due out in the US in October, and is the bestselling Norwegian non-fiction book of all time.
Not surprisingly, it has propelled Seierstad to fame and fortune. What is so gripping about it is her portrayal of the innermost thoughts of Shah's family. Perhaps he thought he would be presented as a hero. After all, as he tells her: 'First the communists burned my books, the mujahideen looted and pillaged, finally the Taliban burnt them all over again.'
But, in fact, he comes across as a cruel, tyrannical patriarch. The women of his family, except for his new teenage bride, are treated like dirt. His sister, especially, is a virtual slave. His 12-year-old son is made to sell sweets rather than go to school.
So now, in the cruellest of ironies, Shah who, in the book, is called Sultan Khan, is not only demanding 'compensation' and 'damages', but says that many people, himself included, 'would be happy to see it burned'.
Over the past three weeks, Shah has been conducting a media blitz in Norway, Seierstad's home. Soon he will head to Sweden and Denmark and then to the Frankfurt book fair, Europe's greatest publishing trade market. 'If I get a visa, I will come to Britain,' he says.
The case has opened serious questions about the ethics of journalists and authors from rich countries writing about people from poor countries with very different cultures.
Friends of Seierstad say she is angry that many who applauded her success over the past year have begun to board a bandwagon denouncing her. As one friend, who asked not to be identified, says: 'This is not about the book, it is about Asne, and it's because she has become so successful that people are jealous and want to take her down.'
Seierstad is defiant. She says she made an agreement with the family that if there was anything they did not want published, they should tell her. 'And there were things,' she says. Now Shah has called her a liar, but she says that the book is simply a straight tale of what she heard and witnessed, especially the brutal treatment of Afghan women.
She says: 'Lots of Afghan women in Norway have been calling to support me.' If the case goes to court, she adds, she has no fear, because her lawyers have told her Shah has no legal case. So, she says: 'I know I will win.'
Still, the denunciations have upset her - like those from Norwegian anthropologist and Middle East specialist Professor Unni Wikan, who doubts the authenticity of much of the book - 'especially some of those bits she gives in quotation marks'. He said: 'There is no way she could have possibly had such access to people's hearts and minds. The moment I saw it in Norwegian, I thought it would be a catastrophe when it came out in English. She has revealed the secrets of the women, which is shameful and dishonourable. It will be regarded as an affront for its lack of respect for Afghans and Muslims.'
In the book, Seierstad writes how Shah's first wife is humiliated when he takes a second bride and, 'how sometimes she hates him for having ruined her life, taken away her children, shamed her in the eyes of the world'.
When a poor carpenter steals a stack of postcards from Shah, the bookseller insists on his imprisonment, despite the entreaties of his own family that, as a result, the carpenter's children 'might die of starvation'.
Shah, one of whose shops is in the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, says all this has impugned his honour and that of all Afghans. So he has engaged a high-profile lawyer in Norway, Brynjar Meling, who says: 'She has made herself rich...he has got nothing and she has brought him into dishonour.'
Another of Meling's high-profile clients is Mullah Krekar, a leader of Ansar al-Islam, an Iraqi Kurdish group alleged to have close links to al-Qaeda, who is currently living in Norway.
Seierstad's publishers are readying themselves for the coming fight. Anders Heger, literary director of Cappelen, the book's Norwegian publishers, says: 'We're not frightened. We're supporting the book all the way.'
Likewise, Antonia Hodgson, Seierstad's editor at Time Warner in the UK, says that, on the advice of their in-house lawyer, 'we are confident that everything is OK and we stand by the book entirely. We know she is a very scrupulous and cautious journalist.'
However, Time Warner, as with all the publishers who have bought the book across the world, are not relishing the prospect of a campaign of denunciation by Shah, or legal actions which he may decide to launch in other countries after Norway. Seierstad is also gearing up for the coming fight, strenuously denying Shah's allegations.
'It is a total clash of civilisations,' she told The Observer . 'I'm very surprised. I knew, and told them in advance, that they might not like the book, but I think it is important to write about real life in Afghanistan. I'm not saying there is abuse particularly in this family, but this is still a society where women have almost no human rights.'
· Tim Judah reviewed The Bookseller from Kabul for The Observer on 31 August 31.08.2003: Observer review: The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad