The Best American Travel Writing 2013 - Plot & Excerpts
A laconic, handsome, tense sort of man, Fakhri had been introduced to me as a police officer whose loves were literature and the city of his birth. Speaking in Persian, Afghanistan’s literary language, we discussed Kabul and the writers and poets who live there. So much had happened to the city in its recent history, I said, that it wasn’t easy for an outsider like me, visiting at some arbitrary point in events, to arrive at a settled view of the place. My opinion seemed unduly contingent on the latest suicide bombing, or land-grab scandal, or my sense of the Taliban at the gates. “That,” Fakhri said, “is no way to look at a city.” Before he got up to return to work, Fakhri presented me with an edition of his short stories. It was called The Roosters of Babur’s Garden. He advised me to read the title story, adding, “I think you’ll find there is something of Kabul in that.” After he had gone, I ordered a pot of green tea and opened the book. “The Roosters of Babur’s Garden”
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