In my ever-constant desire to devour the world, I’ve decided to commit myself to reading a work from every country. I anticipate the journey to take several years as I intend to only read a couple from the list (which I’m slowly curating!) each month. I’m starting with the As.
Country: Afghanistan
Title: My Pen is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women
Author: Various
Language: Dari & Pashto
Translator: Various
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (2022)
My Pen is the Wing of a Bird is a collection of stories written by Afghan women and largely about Afghan women. From school bombings to a wedding soaked in blood following an attack, the stories are full of grit and heart ache. But they are also full of beauty, love, and resilience.
“My country was the same as I had left it: destroyed but beautiful, with helpless and poor people, but my own people.”
The collection opens with “Companion” – a brief look at a woman who lives alone, her children spread far and wide, but safe. In one of the more simple and heartbreaking scenes from the novel, she wishes her daughter would leave her video on and let her “sit” in the corner and listen to the sounds of life in her daughter’s kitchen. “D for Daud” is a kick in the teeth of a teacher who sacrifices everything for a young boy. “The Red Boots” is a sweet story of a girl’s father getting her the red boots she wanted, even though they don’t quite fit and she’ll quickly outgrow them. “I don’t have the Flying Wings” tells the story of a young man who doesn’t want to be a man. “The Most Beautiful Lips in the World” follows a young suicide bomber after the attack on the wedding – while a work of fiction, it draws on an August 18, 2019 attack at the Dubai City wedding hall in Kabul.
There’s a lot of heartache in this slim collection, but it is unlike any collection I’ve read before. These women, writing in Dari and Pashto, many of which have fled their homes, show the triumph and power of the pen. May the stories never stop.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 