The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. It's a quick and easy read, and although it is not all that illuminating in many ways, it does give a snapshot of one person's fascinating journey through that country, and at least an idea about what it is like in the rural hamlets that comprise much of the population.Rory Stewart never explains why it is he decided to walk across Asia. For whatever reason, he walked across India, Nepal, Iran, and other Asian countries. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, he took the opportunity to walk across that land as well (he had previously been denied access to the country by the Taliban). Stewart walks through the middle of the country, from Herat to Kabul, braving sometimes unfriendly villagers, treacherous mountain passes in the dead of winter, and various other obstacles. It's quite the concept, and yields a fair amount of striking moments. The prose is matter of fact and dry, though sometimes you can sense Stewart's sense of humor just below the surface.However, the book does suffer from a sort of sameness. The belt of villages that Stewart walks through, and relies on to feed and shelter him, are all fairly similar. There is a familiar motion to finding the appropriate local chieftan to appeal to in each village and avoiding the same sorts of pitfalls each time. And though the journey must have been incredibly difficult, I rarely got the sense from the walking descriptions of exactly how tiring it must be. I believe that Stewart was in many ways lucky to survive at all, particularly when accounting for the dysentary he seems to always have, his lack of mastery of the language, and his travel through areas that had heavy support for the Taliban still. One moment that was among my favorite in the book: Stewart has just come into another poor dwelling hoping to find nourishment. It is a typical mud hut with no power or amenities; it does, however, have a poster on the wall. "[The] poster showed a yellow convertible sports car parked outside a Swiss chalet with flower-decked balconies. Printed below in capital letters in English was: ANYONE WHO HAS EVER STRUGGLED WITH POVERTY KNOWS HOW EXTREMELY EXCITING IT IS TO BE POOR. Our host had bought the poster in Herat and asked me to translate it. I told him I could not understand the inscription." Irony of that passage aside, I think that would make an excellent T-shirt.The main lesson to be drawn in my opinion from Stewart's work is that Afghanistan is not in any way to be mistaken for a uniform nation. The people do not think of themselves in national terms, and the ethnic, religious, and feudal ties are much more important to them than any action being taken supposedly in their name by a distant government in Kabul. The things that matter are of course the things that affect our day to day lives. It is a depressing book in the sense that virtually no one the author meets cares at all about human rights or really any ideal whatsoever beyond what it is to be a Muslim (indeed there is a very interesting chapter about how Bush and Blair misconstrue Muslim belief). Stewart walked a long and difficult journey, but as thinking about this book makes clear, the journey toward a humane planet will be much longer.
It's an odd sensation in a travel book to be guided by a traveler who remains, for 300 pages, a cipher. Stewart reveals virtually nothing about himself or about his motive for undertaking his dangerous, difficult, and (evidently) unrewarding journey--on foot, no less. In fact, there's something distinctly bratty about Stewart's approach to the whole endeavor: he made the trip because he "wanted to," he repeats, and one can almost hear him stamping his foot; his evident lack of any need to support himself for years at a time (he has bundles of cash at his disposal and, at the end of the journey to Afghanistan, returns to "his room" in his parents' house in Scotland) and his conviction that he should be fed and housed by strangers all the way across Afghanistan (but not accompanied or told where to go) have a distinctly elitist and slightly juvenile ring to them, which is not completely surprising given Stewart's parentage and social status (read his Wikipedia biography to get a hint of the manor to which he was born). The people that he meets, meanwhile, are with few exceptions entirely dreadful--dull when they are not outright dangerous, rude when they are not simply miserable, malicious and sadistic when they are not merely indifferent. Nor are the villages he visits anything to write home about, each one essentially identical to another in its revolting, raw-sewage-and-war-debris sameness. The landscape--which Stewart frequently cannot see because he is walking through blinding snowstorms--gets even shorter shrift, and Stewart only occasionally remembers to describe the quality of light at sunset or the shape of a mountain range. Indeed, one gathers that all of that was wholly secondary; his goal was the destination (Kabul), never the journey. (And that's perhaps no surprise, given how ghastly Afghanistan appears in Stewart's version.) The inclusion, meanwhile, of the numerous grade-school-quality sketches that Stewart inked into his journal is a blunder that undermines what little seriousness the book can lay claim to. Stewart hints occasionally that he's bedeviled by unhappy memories or regrets as he walks, but that's as close as he lets anyone come to a glimpse of what's taking place inside his head or of what his reactions are to most of the things that happen to him. That's a fatal flaw in a book that has so little else to offer the reader. If the Afghans are essentially unknowable and alien, if the places are unremarkable and monotonous, and if the narrator slowly disappear as he writes, the whole edifice of the project crumbles. Stewart's only tears in the book are for an animal and never for the human misery he traipses through, as much proof as anyone should surely need that he is (or was) a callow, overprivileged youth on walkabout and that _The Places In Between_ got published through high-society connections and not because Stewart had anything particularly meaningful to say. In a country as barren and forbidding as Afghanistan, the places in between are largely voids, and it is a void that Stewart's book most faithfully transmits.
Do You like book The Places In Between (2006)?
I closed this book sobbing and I would just like to point out, I KNEW THE DOG WOULD DIE! I just knew it. As I hugged and kissed my own dog I reflected on my obsession with the dog contextually in a book that covers so many weighted subjects. The book explores a culture which America both hates and knows nothing about. Throughout the author's extreme journey through this land, capturing moments, ideologies and fears of the people hidden in Afghanistan's mountains, plains and plateaus...I could think of nothing more than that dog.As I thought more about the dog's role in the story, I realized it was his juxtaposition with this paradoxical culture that was so incredibly ironic. The common theme with all the hosts the author stayed with was the mirage of cultural and religious ritual. Ritual that more often than not was blind, ignorant and entirely counter productive. I found it a little more then unfortunate that these people believed dogs to be unclean and lowly, because there is so much they could learn from that amazing animal regarding true being and knowing.The author's incredibly neutral and observant tone seemed parallel to the dog's role in the story. Both individuals penetrating a culture so dichotomized by various tribes and families proved a peaceful existence without reliance on hate to exist. While I guess I can't say what is right or wrong, to think about "being" and how one individualizes oneself from others is a fascinating concept. To think about how many people "are" through a network of hate and fear is something else...
—Leah Petersen
I found out about this charater from a magazine article at the time of the book's release. A scotsman who, for a variety of personal reasons not really revealed (a nice change of privacy in this world). begins walking across Afgahnistan.He intersperses historical entries of a previous walker & conquerer between tales of hospitality and snow and destruction of antiquities.I don't imagine I will ever have the opportunity to go to the places he writes about. So much of it was unfamiliar that the read was astonishing for that alone.But for all the political sensitivies he ably writes about and exhibits...I can't escape a certain irritating ballsiness of enitlement. He embarks on this journey PLANNING to rely on the proverbial kindness of strangers because that is an Islanmic cultural and religious value. And really, since he succeeds in his journey, he is evidence of an astonishing degree of hospitality and generosity. He says this too, but I cannot imagine anyone walking across America, or Scotland for that matter, who would believe that he was entitled to expect food, shelter and assistance because he asked for it. I guess I am flummoxed by his concept of need. Kindness to strangers has it roots in fear that the strangers might be gods or their messengers alongside the pragmatic need that strangers in a strange land might need assistance.But to plan a trip just because people will, presumably, shelter you? It just seems somehow to take advantage of something that you can never repay.All that being said, I am utterly in awe of man who walks with himself. That is worthy of a journey. Quite a read. And quite a humbling recognition of a world we are destroying that has been destroyed many times over time.
—Lisa
Rory Stewart walks across most of Afghanistan. I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, Stewart’s total disrespect for the customs of the people he meets along the way interfered with any enjoyment I might find in the story of his journey.He feels a sense of entitlement towards their hospitality. He expects to show up and be provided with the best accommodations and the best food. That he does this in an area where people often have a difficult time feeding themselves is irresponsible. Stewart is aware that dogs are offensive to most Afghans, but he simply doesn’t care. Even in more canine loving cultures, showing up with a large dog and expecting your hosts to accommodate it is nothing less than insensitive. His walk is self-indulgent. Not only does he put himself at risk, he also knows that the tradition of hospitality will require some Afghans to undertake the same cold and dangerous conditions, despite the fact that these individuals will have to walk back to their villages and they do not possess proper footwear. It was interesting to read this after recently finishing Three Cups of Tea. Stewart and Mortenson are complete opposites. Mortenson is a doer and clearly passionate and respectful of those he encounters. Stewart is a critical, judgmental chronicler.I also got a little annoyed with his final high and mighty bit not accepting a ride for the last 71 km to Kabul as dangerous as it might be, because “I could not explain why I was determined to walk every step of the way…I did not feel I could give up so close to my goal.” Yet somehow he conveniently forgets that his goal of connecting his walks across Iran and Pakistan, as stated in the preface, has gaps from at least the Iranian border to Herat in the west and Kabul to the Pakistani border. On a stylistic note, his frequent use of lengthy footnotes is annoying. Since he’s inconsistent about using them to expand on the historical context of his walk, they appear to be the result of lazy writing and poor editing.
—Tracey
