{"id":44,"date":"2008-09-18T21:37:55","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T02:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=44"},"modified":"2009-04-07T04:55:38","modified_gmt":"2009-04-07T11:55:38","slug":"the-places-in-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"The Places In Between"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend in a PRT in Iraq recommended Rory Stewart&#8217;s book on his time in Iraq,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0156032791?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=relaxandhavef-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0156032791\">The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=relaxandhavef-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0156032791\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> .  I haven&#8217;t had a chance to read that one yet, but I did read Stewart&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0156031566?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=relaxandhavef-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0156031566\">The Places In Between<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=relaxandhavef-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0156031566\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> over our local holiday earlier this week.\u00a0 The book is Stewart&#8217;s journal of his walk across Afghanistan (from Herat to Kabul) in 2002.\u00a0 It is incredible.\u00a0 The closing line of the book&#8217;s preface is the best way for me to summarize his observances about the Afghans he met: &#8220;Villages combined medieval etiquette with new politcal ideologies.\u00a0 In many houses the only piece of foreign technology was a Kalashnikov, and the only global brand was Islam.\u00a0 All that had made Afghanistan seem backward, peripheral, and irrelevant now made it the center of the world&#8217;s attention.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Stewart&#8217;s entries on each village are brief and the book is a fascinating read.\u00a0 There is a large dog named Babur who plays a surprising role in the story.\u00a0 There are former Taliban bullies and current Taliban bullies, warlords and nobodies.\u00a0 Fascinating.<\/p>\n<p>I read this right after Rashid&#8217;s <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a title=\"Descent into Chaos review\" href=\"http:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/?p=43\" target=\"_blank\">Descent into Chaos<\/a><\/span> to try to gain a different perspective on Afghanistan.\u00a0 Check.\u00a0 Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend in a PRT in Iraq recommended Rory Stewart&#8217;s book on his time in Iraq,The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq . I haven&#8217;t had a chance to read that one yet, but I did read Stewart&#8217;s The Places In Between over our local holiday earlier this [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relaxandhavefun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}