A Fort of Nine Towers

January 28, 2013
In this painstaking memoir, Kabul carpet seller and Brandeis M.B.A. student Omar recreates an idyllic childhood gradually wrecked by years of civil war and Taliban oppression. One of some 25 cousins who had the run of the family compound constructed on the Kot-e-Sangi mountainside of Kabul by his grandfather, a Pashtun banker who was also a carpet seller, Omar enjoyed an insular early upbringing, surrounded by doting aunts and uncles, luxuriant gardens, kite flying, copious meals, and a stringent education at school and from his own father, a physics teacher and former boxer who ran a gym near the house. As the factious mujahideen (“holy warriors”) began to fight among each other, living in the compound became untenable, and the extended family took refuge on the other side of the mountain in the mansion owned by his father’s carpet-business partner, a former royal residence now semiruined, called the Qala-e-Noborja, or “Fort of the Nine Towers.” Over subsequent years of turmoil, Omar and his family managed to survive the violence and instability besieging Afghanistan, and whenever they ventured out—for example, when Omar accompanied his grandfather to survey the damage at the old house—the results were horrifying. On one of his fantastic nomadic treks north, he even managed to learn carpet-making from a deaf Turkmen girl with exquisite intuitive technique. Omar’s tale strains credulity, but his prose is deliciously forthright, extravagant, somewhat mischievous, and very Afghan in its sense of long-suffering endurance and also reconciliation.

Starred review from March 1, 2013
A carpet designer and businessman's profoundly moving account of a childhood and adolescence lived amid the Afghan civil war. When Omar was growing up in the early 1990s, his native city of Kabul was "like a huge garden." Life was full and happy, and his only concern was besting his cousin Wakeel at kite flying. But then rival Mujahedeen factions began fighting each other, transforming the once-Edenic city into a bloody wasteland that reminded Omar of "an American horror movie." The family sought refuge in Qala-e-Noborja, a fort on the outskirts of Kabul that a friend of Omar's father had transformed into a lush, green compound. As rockets and gunfire exploded around them, the family planned for their return home. Omar and his father attempted to go back to the family house, only to find it occupied by sadistic soldiers who imprisoned and tortured the pair before freeing them. As the ring of terror tightened around the fort, the family fled Kabul. Their dangerous journey took them through central and northern Afghanistan, where they camped in caves located inside a giant statue of the Buddha and joined nomad relatives on their overland treks. Along the way, Omar met, and fell in love with, an older deaf-mute Turkmen girl who taught him how to weave carpets. These skills would eventually help him support his starving, demoralized family and secretly provide work to young Kabuli women who suffered under the misogynist regime of the Taliban. As lyrical as it is haunting, this mesmerizing, not-to-be-missed debut memoir is also a loving evocation of a misunderstood land and people. A gorgeously rich tapestry of an amazing life and culture.

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December 1, 2012

Omar's family was forced to flee Kabul when the mujahedin took over Afghanistan, then fled again when the young Omar and his father were briefly kidnapped as the family ventured homeward. They hid out for a year behind the massive Bamiyan Buddha sculptures (since destroyed), learning carpet weaving from itinerant weavers before finally returning to Kabul. At age 18, Omar thwarted the Taliban, at that point in power, by opening a secret carpet shop where boys and girls could work and study. Perfect for readers of books like Gayle Tzemach Lemmon's The Dressmaker of Khair Khana and Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran; with a reading group guide.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2013
Omar's Afghan childhood encompassed the love of an extended family and the violent tyranny of warlords and the Taliban, and he renders every facet with the glorious precision and rich palette of the exquisite carpets that provided a livelihood for his grandfather, father, and, eventually, himself. Kabul in the 1980s was a lush garden, where young Omar flew kites, excelled at school, and played with a band of cousins. The Mujahedin rapidly destroyed this verdant world, and Omar and his family fled the city for the Fort of Nine Towers, an old outpost filled with flowers, fruit trees, deer, peacocks, even a leopard. But war came to this paradise, too, precipitating his family's death-defying cross-country quest for sanctuary. They joined nomadic relatives on a caravan and lived in the caves behind one of the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan, which the Taliban later destroyed. Though he is as modest as he is entrancing, Omar clearly was a preternaturally attentive, sensitive boy with a gift for languages and an artistic eye, who embraced the diversity, beauty, and wisdom of Afghan life. He also suffered the soul-scarring horrors of looting, bombs, snipers, homelessness, atrocities, incarceration, and torture. Omar tells this staggering true story of a life and a land of radiance and terror with magnificent humility, grace, and power.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)