BEIRUT: This evocative title, which conjures up images of the iconic Silk Road, is only a foretaste of what you experience in the book. “Beyond That Last Blue Mountain” recalls the extraordinary journey of Harriet Sandys. At 19, realizing she was completely unqualified, she wondered what a girl from her background could do. Hearing about her brother’s trip to Afghanistan and reading Wilfred Thesiger’s “Desert, Marsh and Mountain” and Eric Newby’s “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” fired her imagination, and she decided to make that journey.
Four years later, in 1977, a letter inviting her to visit the archaeological sites of Afghanistan changed the course of her life.
After learning how to repair oriental carpets, she worked for the Afghan Refugee Information Network and decided to assess the situation of Afghan refugees at the North-West Frontier. Touched by their extraordinary stoicism, she organized exhibitions of Afghan embroideries and carpets and opened a shop.
However, many of the NGO carpet-weaving programs produced rugs of inferior quality which were unsellable. Harriet wanted to find an alternative project that women could do at home. The Ikat silk-weaving project was born. Over 12 years, she traveled through Pakistan, setting up the project despite problems and setbacks. She miraculously recovered from bacterial meningitis and pursued her humanitarian aid projects in Iraqi Kurdistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
After her departure, the silk-weaving project, contrary to all expectations, thrived thanks to the courage of Saleh, a 17-year-old boy she had trained in Peshawar. He brought the project back to Afghanistan and became a master weaver. The Afghan fashion event held in London in 2011 highlighted one of his creations, a stunning dark-green silk evening dress decorated with calligraphy.
“Oriot,” as she was affectionately called, defied danger, traveling in and around war zones with almost no financial support.
“Had I pondered too long and too hard on all the dangers and difficulties I might have encountered … I would have remained a secretary, regretting missed opportunities,” she said. Brave, humble and compassionate, Harriet Sandys touches our hearts in this moving true story.
Book Review: Recalling a magic carpet ride through South Asia
Book Review: Recalling a magic carpet ride through South Asia
What We’re Reading Today: Work Life Well-lived
Author: Kelly Mackin
This book will disrupt how you think about creating your best work life and workplace and give you a road map to get you there, says a review published on goodreads.com.
Through years of research and truth-finding, Kelly Mackin and her company, Motives Met, have discovered a completely new mindset and approach around what well-being at work is all about, how to get there, and why it’s so important that we do get there.
This book is a personal guide and a call to action for a shift in our approach to work.
What We Are Reading Today: Natural Magic
Author: Renee Bergland
Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls.
The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts.
“Natural Magic” intertwines the stories of these two luminary 19th-century minds whose thought and writings captured the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time strove to preserve the magic of nature.
What We Are Reading Today: Frogs of the World: A Guide to Every Family
Authors: Mark O’Shea & Simon Maddock
With more than 7,600 known species, frogs exhibit an extraordinary range of forms and behaviors, from those that produce toxins so deadly that they could kill a human many times over to those that can survive being frozen in ice.
“Frogs of the World” is an essential guide to this astonishingly diverse group of animals. An in-depth introduction covers everything from the origins and evolution of frogs to their life cycles and defense strategies.
What We Are Reading Today: Sixty Miles Upriver
Author: Richard E. Ocejo
Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some 28,000 people located 60 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley.
Like many similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents.
“Sixty Miles Upriver” tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways.
What We Are Reading Today: A Death in the Rainforest
Author: Don Kulick
As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native Tayap, an endangered Papuan language.
“A Death in the Rainforest” takes readers inside the village, revealing what it is like to live in a place carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest.
This book offers insight into the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe — and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.
An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, the book takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever.
