Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse by Suraya Sadeed – Review and Thoughts
“‘When there is life, there is hope’”
Dr. Abdullah in Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse by Suraya Sadeed
Suraya Sadeed brings us through her husband’s death, a horrifying event that sparked her humanitarian work to bring aid and relief to women and children in crisis in Afghanistan.
“The Taliban’s war on schools was driven by fear: the fear that a little learning would challenge their rules and their hold on power. Even a basic education might give the lie to their brainwashing, so they despised knowledge and learning.”
Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse by Suraya Sadeed
While it can be kind of difficult to follow Sadeed’s thought process when she jumps back in time to personal memories without really transitioning, she brings a lot of info to the reader. Sadeed gives a nice glazeover (if that’s not a word, it is now) of Afghanistan’s history leading up to 1994, she gives an Afghan-American’s perspective that I had never thought of before, and was just overall a badass.
“‘My generation was the end of it. With the coming of the Soviets it all came to an end. Our lives were turned upside down. We lost our language. Our literature. Our identity.”
Bookshop keeper on speaking Persian, Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse by Suraya Sadeed
All of the one and two star reviews on Goodreads say that the author is so self-absorbed in the book. I truly disagree on that and I don’t believe that you can have someone doing any kind of humanitarian work without being self-absorbed in the process. It’s because Suraya Sadeed’s a human being, and so is every other individual doing humanitarian work. And I’d also like to know if these reviewers have any intention of doing any humanitarian work, or are just being “self-absorbed” with their own lives.
Read on.
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