Tali Girls - A Novel of Afghanistan

Informationen zum Autor Siamak Herawi was born in Herat province, Afghanistan, in 1968. He studied at Kabul University and Stavropol University in Moscow. Returning to Afghanistan in 1991, Herawi started his career as a reporter and later joined Anis Newspaper as its editor in chief. In 2003 he was appointed deputy spokesperson to President Hamid Kharzai, a position he held until he was transferred in 2012 to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as deputy spokesperson. A year later, he was appointed chargés d'affaires of the Embassy of Afghanistan in London. Herawi resigned from his position in 2014 when Ashraf Ghani was elected president and remained in the UK. Despite his long career in politics, Siamak Herawi is most recognised as one of Afghanistan’s most prolific writers whose body of work includes twelve novels. Translator Sara Khalili is an editor and translator of contemporary Iranian literature. Her many translations include Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour. Klappentext "Tali girls is an extraordinary book: poetic in its focus on the most humble moments of life and smallest details of landscape, and utterly devastating in its depiction of bright, passionate girls being crushed by corruption and desperation in an Afghanistan that has tried to render them powerless. That they are not powerless is revealed in sometimes shocking ways"-- Leseprobe Kowsar   I will start with my childhood. From the time I was three years old. I will speak of my earliest memories, of ants that crawl up the wall in columns and now and then stop to lock horns. They frighten me, I scream, I break into a fever, and everything fades into grey. It is difficult to describe how the world around me turns hazy and grey. Visualize a girl struck with such fright that she breaks into a burning fever, convulses, and loses consciousness. At times, she hallucinates. Perhaps of horrors beyond her young imagination. As a small child, dogs, cats, even people sometimes frighten me. One day, the old man of the neighborhood stops when he sees me with Mother and smiles. He walks across the way and kneels in front of me. “Kowsar,” he says, “you are so sweet. I could eat you!” I scream and hide under Mother’s chador. I start to shake and my grey world sets in. I again see the old man. He is wearing a grimy lungee and his coarse beard is sticking out in every direction. His eyes are sunken and bloodshot. He kneels in front of me and grins. “Kowsar, I could eat you,” he whispers. Then he opens his foul-smelling mouth, licks my face and digs his sharp yellow teeth into my cheek. With no resistance, I surrender to him. When all that remains are my bones, the old man licks his moustache and walks away laughing. Mother picks me up and cradles me in her arms. “Oh, my girl!” she says, feeling my forehead. “It’s the fainting spell again.” And she hurries home. “Mobin Khan, Kowsar fainted again. One of these days she’ll stop breathing. When are you going to take her to a mullah or a doctor?” Father, busy mixing hay and weeds near the sheep hold, stops, glances at her, and goes back to mixing his hay and weeds. “Wife, it’s nothing new. She’s had it since she was little. They say it’s epilepsy. Leave her be. We were seven brothers, disease killed until only two of us remained. Lucky the ones who died. We’re only fooling ourselves that we are grateful being alive.” “Husband! She’s helpless. It doesn’t please God to let her suffer. Back then children died because there were no doctors, no medicine. These days people don’t die that easily.”  “Wife! Doctors and medicine cost money. Where’s the money? If I start selling the sheep, how would I make a living?” “Then take her to a mullah. They say there’s a new one in Jawand who has healing powers. Take her to him. He can cure her with prayers and incantations.” “Mullahs don’t heal for free! But, fine, I’ll ...

About the author

Siamak Herawi

Product details

• Authors: Siamak Herawi, Sara Khalili
• Publisher: Steerforth press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.11.2023
• EAN: 9781953861665
• ISBN: 978-1-953861-66-5
• No. of pages: 391
• Dimensions: 143 mm x 165 mm x 23 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature