Lessons from Afghanistan

The events of September 11 suddenly made Afghanistan a focus of American interest. Yet a search of bookstores and libraries will reveal that no book about the country, its history, geography, or culture exists for the common reader. Using as a springboard a recounting one of the earliest (and the smallest) Peace Corps projects which sent nine Americans to that nation in 1962, Lessons from Afghanistan explores what it is really like for someone to live in an essentially medieval culture in the current century. Conventions about the use of time and space, attitudes about life stemming from thousand-year old traditions, and the practical necessities of living in a country fragmented by geography and history are the underlying facts of life in Afghanistan. These are barriers to progress but, more important, they are the realities which Americans so poorly understand and must learn of in the process of becoming re-engaged with other nations in response to international terrorism. It is a book filled with incidents and experiences that describe a remote, little-understood culture, but it is also a book that reveals the blindness of our own culture to alternative worldviews outside our borders.

David Fleishhacker is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University with honors in English; his M. A. degree is from the University of California, Berkeley. A member of a family which has been part of the San Francisco community since the Gold Rush, he spent forty years as a teacher and administrator in independent schools in the Bay Area before retiring in 1999. He has also been an active board member of charitable organizations such as International House, Berkeley; the San Francisco Boys Chorus; the San Francisco Youth Orchestra Committee; Family Service Agency; and Booker T. Washington Community Center, and is the President of a small family foundation supporting arts and education. He writes and travels as extensively as time allows, most recently to Egypt, Russia, Ireland, England, France, and South Africa. He has appeared in over a dozen musical productions as actor, singer, and lyricist and is a freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.