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American Morning
Survival Stories of Afghanistan Women
Aired December 18, 2002 - 07:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Her first reports from Afghanistan came in the late '80s near the end of the Soviet occupation. When journalist Christina Lamb returned to the country 12 years later following 9/11, she heard incredible stories of survival from people still living under strict Taliban rule.
Those profiles in courage are at the heart of her new book called "The Sewing Circles of Hurat," and Christina Lamb, author and award- winning international correspondent, joins us now.
Good to see you.
CHRISTINA LAMB, AUTHOR, "THE SEWING CIRCLES OF HERAT": Good morning.
ZAHN: Let's talk about your first visit to Afghanistan in 1988. You actually rode on motorbikes with Hamid Karzai?
LAMB: That's right. I was actually living on the border of Afghanistan for two years going in and out. And I got to know Hamid Karzai, and he took me to Kandahar, which is his hometown. And we traveled with a group called the Mullahs Front (ph), who were religious scholars who drove around on motorbikes, and who were later, I discovered, to become the founding members of the Taliban.
ZAHN: Of course, you would have had no way of knowing that then.
LAMB: At that time, I had no idea. They were an independent group, who actually were in favor of bringing the king of Afghanistan back, and they seemed to be a very effective group. They were completely separate from the other resistance groups. And they had set up a school, which I went to visit and where I saw children learning to read, and then going and learning how to load a multi- barrel rocket launcher. These were children as young as 7 or 8.
ZAHN: Wow, that's chilling. Let's come back to the point now where you most recently visited Afghanistan post-September 11, where very Western -- few Western journalists got in. What did you see?
LAMB: Well, I went to try and find some of the people that I had known, in particular the motorcycling Mullahs. But I also was very keen to talk to the women, because the women suffered more than anybody under the Taliban. And also even during the years of war when 1.5 million people were killed, the women were left as widows. And there's been chilling surveys where -- which have shown that 2 out of 3 children in Afghanistan have seen somebody killed in front of their eyes. So, I went to try and hear their stories, because I felt very strongly that the view that people were getting of Afghanistan last year was it was a place of war, of an arid (ph) place, people fighting. It's also a place of beauty and a place of tremendous courage, and those are the kinds of stories that I wanted to hear.
ZAHN: Tell us more about the strength and courage you found in abundance in what you call the sewing circles of Herat.
LAMB: The sewing circles refer to a group of very courageous women that I met in Hurat, and Hurat is the ancient Persian cultural capital. It's a place with very strong literary traditions.
And there was a group of women who were writers, and they were very concerned under the Taliban that they weren't allowed to write, women just weren't allowed to do anything, even laugh out loud. And so, they thought about ways that they could actually carry on their writing, and the only thing that they could think of that they were still allowed to do as women was to sew.
So, they set up a school which was called the Golden Needle, where they met three times a week for supposed sewing classes, and they'd arrive there with their bags full of materials and scissors and sequins. Underneath, they'd have notebooks and pens. And when they got inside, the classes were actually taken by the literature professor from Herat University. And they would talk about Shakespeare and Naba Kopf (ph), and James Joyce -- all of these things that were completely banned by the Taliban.
And if they had been caught, they would have been killed, and it made me just realize, you know, we take so much for granted -- education and the ability just to read books, and...
ZAHN: And did they talk about what that was like to learn under the specter of knowing they would be killed if they were caught?
LAMB: They told me stories that they were so scared that their brains would just rot that they actually would stay up at night doing mathematical formulae just to try and keep their brains alive.
ZAHN: Wow! The name of the book is "The Sewing Circles of Herat," and I think you really get to the essence of what these women are in this book, and we wish you continued good luck, particularly as these chilling reports come out that al Qaeda is continuing to regroup in Afghanistan. That's scary, isn't it?
LAMB: Yes, it is. I think there's a danger as we're talking about moving into Iraq to think that Afghanistan's finished and to say that that's a model for the people of Iraq, how life will be better after Saddam. But in fact, in Afghanistan, it's still far from finished. It's still very insecure, and people still are yet to see their lives really improve significantly from a year ago.
ZAHN: Well, thank you for sharing some of your stories with us this morning, and stay safe when you travel back there again.
LAMB: Thank you.
ZAHN: Christina Lamb, author of "The Sewing Circles of Herat."
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired December 18, 2002 - 07:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Her first reports from Afghanistan came in the late '80s near the end of the Soviet occupation. When journalist Christina Lamb returned to the country 12 years later following 9/11, she heard incredible stories of survival from people still living under strict Taliban rule.
Those profiles in courage are at the heart of her new book called "The Sewing Circles of Hurat," and Christina Lamb, author and award- winning international correspondent, joins us now.
Good to see you.
CHRISTINA LAMB, AUTHOR, "THE SEWING CIRCLES OF HERAT": Good morning.
ZAHN: Let's talk about your first visit to Afghanistan in 1988. You actually rode on motorbikes with Hamid Karzai?
LAMB: That's right. I was actually living on the border of Afghanistan for two years going in and out. And I got to know Hamid Karzai, and he took me to Kandahar, which is his hometown. And we traveled with a group called the Mullahs Front (ph), who were religious scholars who drove around on motorbikes, and who were later, I discovered, to become the founding members of the Taliban.
ZAHN: Of course, you would have had no way of knowing that then.
LAMB: At that time, I had no idea. They were an independent group, who actually were in favor of bringing the king of Afghanistan back, and they seemed to be a very effective group. They were completely separate from the other resistance groups. And they had set up a school, which I went to visit and where I saw children learning to read, and then going and learning how to load a multi- barrel rocket launcher. These were children as young as 7 or 8.
ZAHN: Wow, that's chilling. Let's come back to the point now where you most recently visited Afghanistan post-September 11, where very Western -- few Western journalists got in. What did you see?
LAMB: Well, I went to try and find some of the people that I had known, in particular the motorcycling Mullahs. But I also was very keen to talk to the women, because the women suffered more than anybody under the Taliban. And also even during the years of war when 1.5 million people were killed, the women were left as widows. And there's been chilling surveys where -- which have shown that 2 out of 3 children in Afghanistan have seen somebody killed in front of their eyes. So, I went to try and hear their stories, because I felt very strongly that the view that people were getting of Afghanistan last year was it was a place of war, of an arid (ph) place, people fighting. It's also a place of beauty and a place of tremendous courage, and those are the kinds of stories that I wanted to hear.
ZAHN: Tell us more about the strength and courage you found in abundance in what you call the sewing circles of Herat.
LAMB: The sewing circles refer to a group of very courageous women that I met in Hurat, and Hurat is the ancient Persian cultural capital. It's a place with very strong literary traditions.
And there was a group of women who were writers, and they were very concerned under the Taliban that they weren't allowed to write, women just weren't allowed to do anything, even laugh out loud. And so, they thought about ways that they could actually carry on their writing, and the only thing that they could think of that they were still allowed to do as women was to sew.
So, they set up a school which was called the Golden Needle, where they met three times a week for supposed sewing classes, and they'd arrive there with their bags full of materials and scissors and sequins. Underneath, they'd have notebooks and pens. And when they got inside, the classes were actually taken by the literature professor from Herat University. And they would talk about Shakespeare and Naba Kopf (ph), and James Joyce -- all of these things that were completely banned by the Taliban.
And if they had been caught, they would have been killed, and it made me just realize, you know, we take so much for granted -- education and the ability just to read books, and...
ZAHN: And did they talk about what that was like to learn under the specter of knowing they would be killed if they were caught?
LAMB: They told me stories that they were so scared that their brains would just rot that they actually would stay up at night doing mathematical formulae just to try and keep their brains alive.
ZAHN: Wow! The name of the book is "The Sewing Circles of Herat," and I think you really get to the essence of what these women are in this book, and we wish you continued good luck, particularly as these chilling reports come out that al Qaeda is continuing to regroup in Afghanistan. That's scary, isn't it?
LAMB: Yes, it is. I think there's a danger as we're talking about moving into Iraq to think that Afghanistan's finished and to say that that's a model for the people of Iraq, how life will be better after Saddam. But in fact, in Afghanistan, it's still far from finished. It's still very insecure, and people still are yet to see their lives really improve significantly from a year ago.
ZAHN: Well, thank you for sharing some of your stories with us this morning, and stay safe when you travel back there again.
LAMB: Thank you.
ZAHN: Christina Lamb, author of "The Sewing Circles of Herat."
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
