Diary

Rory Stewart

When Ali brought out his Koran I thought of Tony Blair. It was February 2002. The Taliban had retreated, having burned Ali’s village to the ground. Four feet of snow had closed the passes into Bamiyan and all the roads were laid with anti-vehicle mines. Ali opened the carved wooden box, kissed the bundle, unwrapped it carefully, said a prayer and opened the book. The fire had consumed one corner, exposing thin layers of oil-blackened paper, and as Ali opened it some ash fell from the binding.

‘If you want to understand the Taliban, look at what they did to our holy Koran,’ Ali said.

‘Can you read the Koran?’

‘No. In this village we cannot read or write.’

‘Did the Taliban take it out and burn it?’

‘No. It was lying in one of the houses that the Taliban burned when they attacked the village.’

‘So it was accidental.’

‘Yes. You see what kind of people the Taliban are.’ He meant, I imagined, that they were sacrilegious infidels.

‘How many people did the Taliban kill in this village?’ I asked.

‘Five.’

‘Six,’ someone corrected him, ‘Hussein, Muhammad Ali, Ghulam Nabi . . .’

‘Six,’ agreed Ali.

‘From your family?’

‘Yes. My brother. His father. But look at the Koran.’

There was no Coca-Cola or Hollywood in this village, they had no electricity and had never watched TV; the only global brand was Islam. Ali did not think I would be interested in the deaths in his family. But he expected me to understand that anyone who burned the Koran, even accidentally, would be damned for sacrilege.

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Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between describes his walk across Afghanistan in 2001. He has worked for the British government in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq, and is now a fellow of the Carr Centre at Harvard.

Diary

Rory Stewart

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