"Land of the High Flags" - Afghanistan

I picked up this 1964 book by Rosanne Klass, talking about her time in Afghanistan in the early 1950s, when she and her new husband took teaching jobs. Afghanistan was different then from today in at least two ways: you couldn't just fly into Kabul on a whim; you had to go to Pakistan and drive (if you could get a ride) through the Hindu Kush on narrow, unpaved roads. And, although there were bandits on the open road, a foreigner did not fear for his life and, in fact, it appeared that Afghanistan was on the beginning of a trek towards progress, with hope in the air.

The book itself stays away from politics (and hardly mentions Klass' husband), but talks of her experiences with her friends, her household staff and her students and fellow teachers at the boarding school on the outskirts of Kabul. It is meant to be a personal book, and it is. But the picture it gives of the country and the Afghans she meets is very interesting, and she writes well. Kabul was a city of cultured Afghans, members of the foreign communities, household servants of various types, teachers, market merchants, the undifferentiated masses and women in purdahs, hidden away behind high walls. The country side consisted of barren rock, extraordinary mountain ranges, and occasional garden spots (where water could be found, and the world's largest variety of grapes could be grown). Virtually nothing about Afghan government or foreign policy; virtually nothing about religion, except for the acknowledgement that it permeates everything. There are several chapters on trips taken through the country, including one to see the giant Buddhas (now destroyed) at Bamian, and one to see a buzkashi match.

After a couple of years, the couple return to the U.S., and Klass becomes a New York City public school teacher. But Afghanistan calls, and she goes back in the mid-1960s, this time as a representative of the New York Times, and then she becomes an activist, working at Freedom House in New York, and studying and writing on the Afghan situation until, with the advent of the Soviet invasion, she is recognized as an expert. She has recently donated her collection of written material on the country to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Quite a journey for a young girl from Cedar Rapids.