Avail Yourself An Unexpected Light: Travels In Afghanistan Conceived By Jason Elliot Shared As Paperback

page, Elliot reveals his personal challenge: how to be still in the face of experience so that the task of keen observation is funneled neither towards a previously used emotion, nor directed towards an abstracted intellectual exercise.
His goal is to "fashion some intermediary vessel in which to bear the raw impressions of life, . . "so that he can experience "a sort of stretching, a deepening of one's ability to stand up to life and absorb it as it happens.
"

Elliot thereby himself gives us the measure by which to assess his book, For me, as much as I marveled at his attention to detail, his willingness to describe landscape, the shapes of peoples faces, the things and human wares that make up a life, and as much as I so often felt his prose to convey an exact impression, nevertheless, I also felt that I needed him to be still, or rather, more still.
By calling attention to them, his words too often get in the way of my reading experience and perhaps of his own desires.


But Elliot's inability to reach his goal did not detract me from admiring the depth of his ambition.
And there are many, many passages whose elegant beauty seems as simply perfect as Afghanistan's topography, culture, and people.
There is no question that his knowledge and love of Afghanistan is great even as he regrets the limits of his understanding.


For my needs this book answers a few questions that have long been my companions, First, for those trained in the hubris of modernity: what kind of attitude, risk, and posture is necessary in order to find something of value in Afghanistan Every page of this book is a tribute to a people and a place whose relative value to those who calculate life's worth in terms of utility instead of grace is usually considered zero.
For his reevaluation of Afghanistan alone Elliot deserves a hug strong enough to lift him off his feet.


Second, as I read the countless times and ways in which Elliot risks his life, I wondered.
I wondered about his sanity but also about whether he might have uncovered a way of being a warrior.
Warriors, I have read, for example, in the soviet accounts of their experience in Afghanistan see sitelinkZinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War as well as in works inspired by the philosopher Hegel, are attracted to the spectacle of war.
Their deepest motivations are grounded in the need to risk their lives for a perceived ethical cause, Star Trek's Klingons capture this spirit exactly, As long as there is honor in risking one's life for such causes, there will be warriors, And war. So argues Hegel.

In Elliot's account the warrior's motivations are transposed, internally one might say, so that risking one's life ennobles and enables the lives of others.
He risks his life to find the value of others, not to dehumanize and then deprive them,

Elliot might be surprised by how his writing triggered my thoughts on warriors, I hope he might be intrigued and

satisfied by my extension, He might think that the willingness to be still and observe the beauty and significance of particular moments in life is exactly what allows his readers to find their own resonance in his account.
Through him, I find "a sort of stretching, a deepening" of my ability, For that, I offer him another hug and a cup of hot sweet chai,

Finally, I must say what a sadness it was for me to approach the An Unexpected Light's last few pages.
I feel a loss for his company and guidance,

We must live in interesting times if a book by an Afghan is crashing failure The Kite Runner, whereas one written by the product of a former occupying empire, seems so redemptive.
A fascinating look at a wartorn country during one of the few years of peace that Afghanistan has had in the pastyears.
Elliot shows the true soul of Afghanistan, not the repressive fundamentalist boogieman of most American's nightmares, but a loving and caring people with a fierce determination to survive against the worst odds.
One of my favorite works of travel literature, I was really hoping for a great travelogue with some history of Afghanistan, This was not that book, The author was at many times pompous thinking every woman who looked at him wanted more or getting upset with anyone who didn't accommodate his every whim.
He also was insulting and ungrateful to those that offered him a place to stay in Herat when no one else would.
He got upset with those that found him suspicious: single foreigner wanting to head to the front lines of Afghanistan with no aid organization affiliation or official reason for being there would logically be suspicious at that time.
He also waxed on and on with his own fantasies that seemed to be there just to show how knowledgeable he was about the geography of the area.
He also romanticized the oppression that women face in Afghanistan, A much better travelogue for a look into the people and places of Afghanistan is Rory Stewart's book The Places In Between.
This is wellwritten. It seemed disjointed and wandering, as if the author wasnt clear on what he wanted to accomplish, A similar book that I enjoyed more is “The Places in Between”, Loved traveling in Afghanistan and loved the opportunity to revisit it with Jason Elliot, An enchanting book overall.

If one wants to get back before/, and dispel myths that many Americans had even then, let alone after Sept. about many Afghans, this is a very good starting place, Elliot notes that most of them despised the Taliban but also lived in fear as they expanded their territory.


Elliot also does a good job of describing the mishmash of ethnicities and ancient empire remnants that complicate Afghanistan's history to this day.
In fact, reading between the lines, one can tell that all of Afghanistan, before the past century, has never really been united except as part of a larger political entity.
At all other times, it's been divided as parts of several entities,

Not making that more explicit is one reason this book doesn't have a fifth star, A paucity of maps is a second, Per a reviewer, the sometimes overwrought style, plus a story lacuna we never hear how Elliot gets from Mazar back to Kabul leaves it short.
Wellwritten travel book set in wartorn Afghanistan about two decades ago, I found myself distracted by my awareness of what would come next, or for us, what is happening there now.
Yet in some ways, it's too recent to be called a "historical" travel book, One of those books I will have to read again someday to appreciate further, I guess, Though it is amazing the pieces of earth that have been fought over for centuries with little resolution, and the fortitude of those who try to make a life in the middle of it all.
Although it took a while to adjust to the slow pace Elliots narrative is gripping and vividly brings the people and places he meets and visits to life.
His description of the heart pounding truck journey in the northeast was particularly gripping, with the imagery of the precarious route far above the white torrents in the valley below staying with me long after Id put the book down.
However I have skipped through several of Elliots essay like asides the section on the roots of Dervish beliefs in particular comes to mind which I found to jar the flow of the narrative rather than add to it other sections such as the discussion of Herats cultural significance were fascinating.


I would recommend anyone who has a passing interested in Afghanistan read this along with a more modern take on the country in Rory Stewarts The places in between which includes several of the same themes and characters.
Gets overly descriptive at times especially around the middle when the writer waxes on and on about the physical landscape, which I thought was too tedious and excessive.


Other than that, I enjoyed Elliot's writing and his depiction of Afghan life, his interactions with the Afghans and the travellers he met along the way.
I even highlighted many of his sentences, as the way he wrote them was so beautiful, lyrical and worth revisiting.
As a reader, what struck me most from Elliot's book was the generosity and hospitality that the Afghans consistently showed him.


The review below which was published in the final pages of the book sums up the essence of Elliot's "An Unexpected Light" the best:

"The authors impressive knowledge of Afghanistans history, his seemingly boundless affection for its people, his understanding and respect for their culture and religion, and his flair for the language make this more than a casual travelogue.
It is a plaintive love song whose discordant notes are provided by daily encounters with violence, hardship, and poverty.
” Loved every minute of it, intense intelligent writing, Wow. What a surprise this book was, Jason Elliot is quite a writer and this book is full of wonder, adventure and humanity, It has much to share on the history and culture of an area of the world that is America's current quagmire.
Jason traveled alone and his remarkable adventures were a balm for this currently office and duty bound traveler.
The title of the book speaks directly to the spirit of the people of Afganistan he experienced, He writes "Alone again and writing up the days events by candlelight, I was visited by the stream of smiling faces I had encountered during the day of begging children and shopkeepers and even the miserable looking soldiers I had thought so sinister at first and felt ashamed of the comforts by which my experience of the place was softened.
It was not simply the degree and extent of the suffering of ordinary people that roused such feeling, but the strange symmetry with which they were equipped to bear it, without lapsing, despite their intimacy with despair, into cynicism.
They still smiled. "
'Khoda mehreban ast!' God's good to us! Lectura recomendable, El libro se basa principalmente en el viaje demeses que realizó el autor en plena guerra civil, justo antes de que el país cayera bajo el control de los talibanes, aunque también recoge experiencias anteriores, especialmente su primer viaje a Afganistán en, conaños de edad, inmediatamente antes de la ocupación soviética.

El autor viaja a distintas partes del país, no sin dificultades, relacionándose con sus gentes gracias al conocimiento del idioma y de la historia y cultura local.
Para nosotros, un país tan lejano y desconocido, y aunque el viaje se realiza antes de la toma del poder por los talibanes y la posterior ocupación occidental, nos resulta una experiencia curiosa, nos sorprende la amabilidad y hospitalidad de los diferentes pueblos afganas, y nos muestra un diferente punto de vista de este emblemático país de Asia.
I bought this book my first semester in college inat the school bookstore in the clearance bin.
Nearlyyears later I finally read it, Due to my schedule and other hobbies it took me months to finish, but I really enjoyed it.
I really liked the author's writing and his stories had me on the edge of my chair a few times as if I was really there.
I even LOL'd a few times which I rarely do when reading, The Russians have gone, and the fundamentalists have not yet taken over it is through that brief window in time, in the earlys, that the author slips to revisit Afghanistan.


Since then, two Taleban governments and theyear U, S. led war that separated them have chewed up the place, perhaps beyond recognition, and have drained our well of sympathy and attention for its people.
This sympathetic and poetic portrait is a powerful reminder of both the otherness of Afghanistan and the humanity of the Afghans.


Judged a classic among travelogues by some, this book is too selfindulgent, colonialist and at leastpages too long for others.
I land somewhere in between, The Road to Oxiana it aint, but thats a very high bar,

While the book has its narrative quirks, those are a small price for the insight it provides into a country that for better and for worse seems intent to remain among the worlds least touched by modernity.
This is a beautifully written, detailed account of the time Jason Elliot spent in Afghanistan, Between the first and second trips, the Mujaheddin won the battle against the Soviets, and thngs went from bad to worse.
Only someone with his talents and connections could have safely made this trip, With his mother's facility for languages and his father's connections to the Afghan Muslim community, he had a head start.
I met Jason shortly after his first trip to Afghanistan, and he was full of stories of sitting around mountain caves, watching rebel fighters clean their Kalishnikovs.
This book is highly recommended both as a travel adventure story, and as an introduction to the people of this devastated country.
.