I did not like medieval texts, with their references to faded theologies and forgotten viziers. (Location 252)
They were led by male singers reciting Persian poetry and accompanied by drums, timbales and tambourines, but not string or wooden instruments because these ‘blocked the taste and pain of the mystic’. (Location 1588)
Garments may be torn or thrown off in ecstasy. The dancing could overcome you as a feeling of uncontrollable agitation, (Location 1593)
Note: reminds me of g-mantle
Someone fired three shots behind us. We ran a little, then stopped. They fired again. We ran on. Abdul Haq had no idea who was shooting but he thought they were aiming at us. The shooting stopped. (Location 1627)
Note: th truth about being shot at
This was my first night in a tribal hill village. The valley was narrow with no room for large fields and the mud houses were built on terraces into the hillside. Two large sheepdogs were asleep on the flat roofs. (Location 1716)
The development agencies called this area ‘the hunger belt’ and predicted that a hundred thousand people would die from starvation that winter. No one seemed to be starving, and only one household had so little food that its members had left for the large refugee camp near Herat. But the village diet was limited to plain nan bread for breakfast and lunch and occasional beans for dinner. (Location 1725)
As in the case of many villages, however, their main source of cash was money the West, Iran and Pakistan gave to encourage them to fight against the Russians and then against other Afghan groups. (Location 1730)
The men listened intently. I wondered what these illiterate men without electricity thought of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. (Location 1741)
On a blanket on a mud roof, a large dog still slept, the night’s snowfall dusting his coat. While I looked at the dog, a small group of boys looked at me. It was two hours’ walk to their nearest neighbour, so the children spent all their time with their cousins. When they were fifteen or so, they married their cousins. (Location 1752)
‘I have memorized it,’ Sheikh replied. ‘I can recite it in Arabic from end to end – more than one hundred thousand words. But I don’t speak Arabic, so I don’t understand precisely where the individual pieces are.’ (Location 1798)
The flat plains were half controlled by militias such as Qasim’s operating out of Herat. But in the hills of Ghor, I was moving between Aimaq leaders who were barely speaking to each other and stumbling over differences only partly visible to me. (Location 1934)
Class did not necessarily reflect education and experience. My current host, Seyyed Umar, was a wealthy man from a respected family of landowning clergy, but he could not read or write and had never been abroad. Abdul Haq, who was from a much humbler background, was literate and had travelled. What mattered was power and that depended on allies. (Location 1939)
Seyyed Umar and the others could not work in the fields because of the snow; they had lived here together since they were children; nothing had happened recently that was worth talking about and they were illiterate. Throughout the long afternoon they waited in silence for the call to prayer, dinner and bed. (Location 1963)
It was as cold as any Scottish castle. (Location 2634)
In November 2001, a photograph showed Bush casually dragging a Koran across a table with his unclean left hand, while the mullah who presented the book struggled to smile. (Location 3125)
Policy makers did not have the time, structures or resources for a serious study of an alien culture. (Location 3229)
They acted as though villagers were interested in all the priorities of international organizations, even when those priorities were mutually contradictory. (Location 3231)
The differences between the policy makers and a Hazara such as Ali went much deeper than his lack of food. Ali rarely worried about his next meal. He was a peasant farmer and had a better idea than most about where his next meal was coming from. (Location 3236)
But my experience in the Balkans, through the walk and particularly later in Iraq, had shown me that we – the foreign governments and their partners – invariably knew much less, and could do much less, than we pretended. (Location 3917)
Our institutions were too inherently optimistic, (Location 3920)
Not much, however, is known about their relationship. I found a myth in India of how a great Chistiyah saint walked through Multan and Lahore in the late twelfth century and, reaching Ajmer, appeared to the Ghorid prince in a dream saying, ‘Arise, the land of India is yearning to kiss your feet and the crown and throne await you there’, encouraging the Ghorid to conquer all of India. Muinuddin Chisti Sanjari went from Multan (which they conquered in 1175) to Lahore (1186) and then to Ajmer (where they held their decisive battle in 1193). The saint’s march into India seemed to pass through the cities which the Ghorids conquered and in the order in which they conquered them. It suggested at least that the military conquerors supported the work of missionaries and then were in turn encouraged by the missionaries. The conquest was a jihad, a holy war, and both warriors and saints were required. (Location 4016)
Colonial administrations may have been racist and exploitative but they did at least work seriously at the business of understanding the people they were governing. (Location 4122)
