Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Convincing account of ..., August 26, 2004 ... the dismal servanthood (should we say slavery?) of women under Islamic fundamentalism. Written in the context of the life of a (girl, then) woman who has nothing, who migrates from one refugee camp to the next with her growing family. Is it pure novel or partly biography? In any case, the book is extremely well-written and is made more interesting by virtue of the fact that Siba Shakib is Iranian. What stood out most for me in the story of Shirin-Gol: 1. Being forced to go to "Russian School" to learn to read and write made all the difference for her, made her 'rebellious' and aware that she should demand and have rights. 2. The Mujahedin practice of "pulling off the shirt" from the waist upward of young Russian soldiers. 3. The sexual misuse of young boys by the Taleban (see also "The Kite Runner"). 4. The massive illiteracy of the populace, including the mullas. This book can and should be read parallel to Aasne Seierstad's "Bokhandleren i Kabul", which tells an analogous story of repressed and degraded women from the middle-upper class perspective. A list of the puritanic rules imposed by the Taleban is given in one of the chapters. This review is based on the German original, which is extremely well-written. It took several years for the bookto appeared in the US. Maybe it's one of the most informative books for our era of terrorism by religious fundamentalists against freedom-loving people.

I read Siba Shakib's novel Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep in the original German, and I am excited to read the novel in its English translation. I was deeply moved by Shakib's descriptions of the fate of the strong and independent Shirin Gol, a woman, who like so many women in Afghanistan, survived the trauma of war and its harrowing consequences. Yet, unlike the many accounts of horror and victimization I have encountered when reading about the fate of Afghan women, this novel does not strip its main character of her dignity and strength. Shirin Gol is a resourceful, powerful woman who refuses to give in to despair when faced with the kinds of hardship that seem unimaginable as accounts of a lived reality. Yet, Shirin Gol's tragic story is exemplary for the way many Afghan women have had to adjust their lives to the shifty conditions of their beloved, mutilated country. As the resilient Shirin Gol struggles to come to terms with the violence of war, to see her children through the numerous agonizing journeys from Afghanistan to Pakistan's refugee camps and back, and to help her shell-shocked husband through his increasingly debilitating opium addiction, we feel Siba Shakib's deep compassion for Afghanistan and the Afghan people and her empathy for the brave women in this sad and hopeful, poetically rendered story. Mirroring Afghanistan's sparse and picturesque landscape, the novel's style is also starkly beautiful -- written with an ear for lyrical story-telling in the best of oral narrative traditions and with an open eye for the reality of the hardships of a dispossessed and dislocated people. Hence, this novel is not merely painful to read, but also gripping. If the English translation is able to grasp Shakib's bitter-sweet nomadic voice, the novel will speak to its readers about Afghanistan in an unforgetful way, and forgetting Afghanistan is something the world cannot afford.(December 2003)

I read this book in German before it came out here. I'm sure the English version is equally good. It provides a lot of insight on day to day challenges of life in Afganisthan (or actually the life of a refugee at times). It is easy and very pleasent to read, even though the subject matter is not pleasent at all. However, it is a novel after all, and in my opinion a novel should be fun to read even though the subject is rather grim. It also provides some valuable history and cultural background information. Obiously written from the view point of the protagonist and not a social study. ...But, isn't that what we read novels for? Otherwise one would choose research studies and not novels..To cut a long story short: this is a MUST read! It became one of my favorites. I like it much better than Tamin Ansary's book "East of New York, West of Kabul".