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 Are Reading Today: ‘A Natural History of Shells’ by Geerat Vermeij
Geerat Vermeij wrote this “celebration of shells” to share his enthusiasm for these supremely elegant creations and what they can teach us about nature.
Most popular books on shells emphasize the identification of species, but Vermeij uses shells as a way to explore major ideas in biology.
How are shells built? How do they work? And how did they evolve?
With lucidity and charm, the MacArthur-winning evolutionary biologist reveals how shells give us insights into the lives of animals today and in the distant geological past.
What We Are Reading Today: The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs
Author: Gregory S. Paul
The bestselling “Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs” remains the must-have book for anyone who loves dinosaurs, from amateur enthusiasts to professional paleontologists. Now extensively revised and expanded, this dazzlingly illustrated large-format edition features nearly 100 new dinosaur species and hundreds of new and updated illustrations, bringing readers up to the minute on the latest discoveries and research that are radically transforming what we know about dinosaurs and their world.
What We Are Reading Today: The Virtue Proposition by Sig Berg
Sig Berg, founder of the Severn Leadership Group, explains what’s missing from traditional leadership, with its emphasis on the rules and rituals of boardrooms and C-suites, and from iconoclastic leadership, which urges you to move fast and break things.
Neither of these embrace virtues, and neither has, nor ever will, deliver consistent superior results.
There is a courageous third way: virtuous leadership.
This book speaks to men and women who witness the absence of virtues and know they can do better, says a review published on goodreads.com.
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Stellar English’
Author: FRANK L. CIOFFI
“Stellar English” lays out the fundamentals of effective writing, from word choice and punctuation to parts of speech and common errors.
Frank Cioffi emphasizes how formal written English—though only a sub-dialect of the language—enables writers to reach a wide and heterogenous audience.
Cioffi’s many example sentences illustrating grammatical principles tilt in an otherworldly direction, making up a science fiction story involving alien invasion.
What We Are Reading Today: A Deadly Indifference
Author: Marshall Jevons
Harvard professor Henry Spearman—an ingenious amateur sleuth who uses economics to size up every situation—is sent by an American entrepreneur to Cambridge, England.
Spearman’s mission is to scout out the purchase of the most famous house in economic science: Balliol Croft, the former home of Professor Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes’s teacher and the font of modern economic theory.
After a shocking murder, Spearman realizes that his own life is in danger as he finds himself face-to-face with the most diabolical killer in his career.
