Lipstick in Afghanistan by Roberta Gately - BLOG TOUR, REVIEW and GIVEAWAY {CLOSED}

Title:  Lipstick in Afghanistan
Author:  Roberta Gately
Publisher, Gallery Books, a division of Simon and Schuster
Publish Date:  November 9, 2010
ISBN 10: 1439191387
ISBN 13: 981439191385

From the publisher's website:  Roberta Gately's lyrical and authentic debut novel—inspired by her own experiences as a nurse in third world war zones—is one woman's moving story of offering help and finding hope in the last place she expected. 

Gripped by haunting magazine images of starving refugees, Elsa has dreamed of becoming a nurse since she was a teenager. Of leaving her humble working-class Boston neighborhood to help people whose lives are far more difficult than her own. No one in her family has ever escaped poverty, but Elsa has a secret weapon: a tube of lipstick she found in her older sister's bureau. Wearing it never fails to raise her spirits and cement her determination. With lipstick on, she can do anything—even travel alone to war-torn Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. 

But violent nights as an ER nurse in South Boston could not prepare Elsa for the devastation she witnesses at the small medical clinic she runs in Bamiyan. As she struggles to prove herself to the Afghan doctors and local villagers, she begins a forbidden romance with her only confidant, a charming Special Forces soldier. Then, a tube of lipstick she finds in the aftermath of a tragic bus bombing leads her to another life-changing friendship. In her neighbor Parween, Elsa finds a kindred spirit, fiery and generous. Together, the two women risk their lives to save friends and family from the worst excesses of the Taliban. But when the war waging around them threatens their own survival, Elsa discovers her only hope is to unveil the warrior within. Roberta Gately's raw, intimate novel is an unforgettable tribute to the power of friendship and a poignant reminder of the tragic cost of war..

My Take: This book tells the story of two women living in two continents with lives that at times parallel each other and later intersect.  The first, Elsa, grows up in the rough neighborhood of Dorchester with a mother who works two jobs just to give them sustenance.  She works at the library after school to help with family expenses and then runs home to take care of Diana, her 4-year-old disabled niece, just in time for her mother to go to her second job. 

The second, Parween, grows up in Afghanistan.  After losing their father to war, her mother moved with her and her two older brothers to Bamiyan.  It is Afghan custom for the brother of a widow to marry her to keep the family cared for, Parween's father didn't have a brother, so they move in with Parween's uncle Abdullah.  They are fortunate, because Abdullah is rather liberal, and the women of the house are allowed much freedom.

Both women lose childhood friends:  Elsa's only friend, Annie, moves away, and Parween's best friend Mariam, is married off to an old man as his third wife at the age of fifteen, and moves to a village an hour's drive away.

Both women have an adoration for lipstick.  Although Parween is not allowed to wear lipstick in public (other than for special celebrations), she loves the life it brings to her face.  For Elsa, lipstick always lifts her spirits.

Elsa, after being mentored by a hospital nurse who took care of her niece Diana, becomes a nurse.  She has always been determined to help those in need, so after a year as an ER nurse, she volunteers as an aide worker with Aide du Monde, a French aid organization based in New York.  Five months after 9/11, she takes a position in Bamiyan, the home of the Buddhas.

We now interrupt this review for a brief foray into history, both ancient and recent:

Bamiyan was once home to two colossal Buddha statues carved into the cliffs surrounding the valley:

Photo credit:  http://blog.tsemtulku.com

Photo credit: http://green-goats-hide.blogspot.com/

While many of us are aware of the human suffering caused by the Taliban (men not able to trim their beards; women not allowed to go out alone and, even accompanied, forced to wear the all-encompassing burqa with only a slit to see out of; people rounded up and shot arbitrarily and dumped into mass graves - words can't really begin to describe how they terrorized the country they ruled until 2002), they also set out to destroy anything that wasn't of Islam.  

From About.com:

Bamyan (or Bamiyan), situated 240 kms northwest of Kabul between the snow-covered ranges of Koh-i Baba and Hindu Kush, is a small city lying in a beautiful valley containing the remarkable statues of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The kingdom of Bamiyan was a Buddhist state positioned at a strategic location along the silk road betwenn China and Europe.
 

The construction of the two statues was begun in the second century A.D. under the patronage of Emperor Kanishka and probably finished around the fifth century A.D. The height of the Small Buddha was 38 m, that of the Large Buddha 55 m. The figures of the two Buddhas were decorated with gold and fine jewels. Many caves were carved in the Bamiyan's cliffs in the same periods as the Buddhas. They were used as chapels and many monks lived there.

From the UMW blog:

In March of 2001, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar reversed his former edict on Bamiyan’s famous colossal Buddha statues, calling now for total destruction.  Calling them religious objects of idol worhipers, of which radical Islam believes must be destroyed at all costs, in the name of Allah, the Taliban shelled the Bamiyan cliffs for days with artillery. They finally managed to finish the Buddhas off with large amounts of dynamite.  The cliffs, a famous tourist attraction and arguably Afghanistan’s most popular tourist destination, house not only the two largest statues of the Buddha in the world, but are also home to hundreds of caves.  The caves once housed Buddhist monks, the very monks who spent centuries building the Buddhas in the cliff face.  The interior of the caves are adorned with beautiful frescoes, now vandalized with Taliban shoe marks and covered in tar.  Many of these caves were destroyed with the Buddhas.

The Hazara people of the Bamiyan Valley have long been persecuted by the Taliban because of their history of Taliban opposition.  They do not see the attacks on the Buddhas as a religious conflict at all.  To them it is a matter of cultural terrorism.  The Taliban are set on humiliating them and destroying their cultural heritage.  The Buddhas have been a part of their identity for centuries (even though the area is now Islamic) and the cornerstone of the local economy (stimulating tourism, bringing up to 100,000 tourists a year) so what better way to devastate the Hazara than blow up their statues?

Photo credit:  CNN

Here is what the valley looks like now (if you look to the sort of "depression" near the right side of the screen you can see where the smaller of the two statues used to be:

Photo credit: Hadi Zaheer

These empty spaces stand as a concrete reminder of all that can happen when rigidity and intolerance are allowed to rule.  There IS talk of rebuilding, but how do you replace an artifact that existed for over 1500 years?  You can't.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled review.

We read the story of Parween's marriage and her life, and we read of Elsa's transition to a life working at a clinic in a foreign country with few supplies, living in a house with no running water or electricity.  Parween's story also tells us of the freedoms and lives lost when the Taliban descend on Bamiyan, and we learn more about how most Afghanis really feel about the Taliban. 

There is so much wrapped up in this novel:  romance, and loss, and friendship.  For a while, I lived with both Elsa and Parween.  At the end, I was wiping away tears.  This is a well-written, fictionalized account of two strong women and what happens when they come together.  Although the story's protagonists are women, this is a story that is gender-neutral.  I think any person who loves to read a good book will love this one.

QUOTES:

She paused at a shiny picture of a nurse cradling a baby.  The nurse seemed to be crying.  The caption explained that the baby was dead and the nurse was looking for his mother.
A nurse, she thought, doing something that matters.

Fortunately, the workload was relatively light, and she rushed through the rest of her day.  Then she hurried home to take a bath even though it had been only three days since her last one.
She hadn't been this clean since she'd arrived in Bamiyan

Finally, the plane appeared, slipping through the mountaintops and flying in low to land.  Just then, an errant cow wandered onto the runway and the small plane was forced back into the sky. Villagers ran to the cow and coaxed him back off the dirt landing strip.  Several minutes later, the plane finally landed, and the irate pilot jumped out to scream at the villagers about the cow.

Book Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

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End Date:  Thursday, November 25, at 11:59 PM EST

Disclosure:  I was provided with a complimentary title from the publisher to facilitate this review.  No other compensation was received.