Politics – Anarchy – Eyewitness Accounts – education and deconstruction.com

The Rainy Season

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The Book of the Week is “The Rainy Season, Haiti Since Duvalier” by Amy Wilentz, published in 1989. In this hodgepodge of a volume, the journalist-author recounted her and others’ personal experiences during several regime changes in Haiti in the course of approximately four years, interspersed with the history of the Caribbean territory.

In the new year 1986, the author and her fellow journalists from various nations held discussions at a hotel bar about the rumor that the-then Haitian dictator, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier, and his family were going to leave the country. For dissatisfaction among his enemies had reached critical mass, and tensions might boil over. There had been protests in Cap Hatien, on the northern coast. In February 1986, compliments of American taxpayers, the said rumor came true.

Thereafter, a six-man interim National Council of Government allegedly took charge of Haiti. Two institutions remained: its Army (a junta funded by the U.S.), and organized religion. General Henri Namphy headed the National Council and the Army. A few leaders of the old regime were sent to country-club prison for a few years, or secretly fled the country. Ordinary Haitians celebrated in the streets.

But anarchy persisted. The Army shot at anti-government and anti-U.S. protesters, the Tontons Macoute (the former dictator’s private militia, who operated a highly lucrative cocaine-export business) and Catholics– with machine guns. The protesters who were violent, armed with rocks or machetes, committed atrocities against the Tontons Macoute. Their reasoning was, since Haiti was a lawless, military dictatorship (the top leaders ignored rule of law), “the only way to find out what rights you have to is to exercise them until you get a reaction.” Arson was common, too. Unsurprisingly, lots of people died amid the violence.

The Christians hated the voodoo practitioners. The voodoo community knew how to survive political chaos in the long run, supporting whichever group had the power. A spellbinding Catholic minister named Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide preached inflammatory rhetoric that appealed to disaffected, dark-skinned, Haitian peasants. Quoting the Bible and pushing for socialist work-collectives (which people were actually forming as he spoke), he blamed the mulattoes (who were elitist), the Army, the Americans, and high-level Catholic leaders for Haiti’s corruption and misery. His philosophy was called liberation theology.

Haiti had been a slave state for two hundred years, as the property-owners hired (or imported) dark-skinned people to work their land for food and housing, but no pay. The owners kept them illiterate, and sent their own children to study abroad to become government officials, soldiers and priests.

An Article in Haiti’s new March 1987 Constitution banned thugs from the old regime from running for president in the “free and fair elections” to be held in June 1987. Unsurprisingly, it was deja vu all over again– lots of people died amid more violence. Voters and candidates were harassed, and polling places were burned down, too. This was before election day.

Emotionally-charged American propaganda (including gruesome images) broadcast from Haiti portrayed ordinary Haitians as the bad guys. The frenzy of hatred did go both ways, in the form of atrocious frontier-justice. From their history of governing through fear and force, federal and local leaders (with the U.S. as their accomplice!) would never break the country’s cycle of military dictatorship.

One of the author’s scores of interviewees commented, “Ah, the long arm of the State Department… Avril is really going for that U.S. aid. I bet Reagan is happy tonight. [The U.S. withheld aid to Haiti unless it engaged in a specific series of public relations gestures in connection with ‘free and fair elections’.] “

Read the book to learn numerous other details about roughly four years’ worth of drama queens’ political shenanigans, and their victims, in the bloody charade characterized by the lack of leadership in the U.S. puppet of Haiti.

Totally Unofficial

The Book of the Week is “Totally Unofficial, the Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin” edited by Donna-Lee Frieze, published in 2013.

Born in 1900 in territory that was alternately Lithuania and eastern Poland, Lemkin was raised among four peasant-farming families who grew clover and rye, and herded sheep and goats. He enjoyed an idyllic early childhood of nature and horseback-riding.

After earning a law degree, he worked for the government in Poland, obtaining higher and higher fancy titles. Even so, he was strangely obedient when, in early September, 1939, the (German occupied) government ordered all able-bodied men to leave Warsaw immediately. He got on a train, which was bombed. He walked to the forest in the countryside.

Later on, Lemkin did use his connections, however, to emigrate to a less dangerous place. In Vilnius in Lithuania, in autumn 1939, he spoke with a Russian soldier whose mentality was: The Western (Britain and France) Allies would fight the German military until they destroyed one another. Then the Russians would come and take over. Americans would sell arms to the Allies so that the Allies would have more resources than the Germans.

The German mentality was: Only the land of any territory Germany occupied, not the people, could be Germanized. So in October 1939, it (along with Russia) proceeded to deport all the Poles from Poland. This plan was written in Hitler’s 1924 book, Mein Kampf. The reason it took so long for the civil Europeans and Americans with sufficient power to head off the danger, was that they didn’t believe anyone could be so barbaric.

Earlier international agreements set out rules of engagement with regard to war. In general, destroying enemies’ military and fighting-infrastructure was believed to be justified. Nevertheless, the documents failed to mention persecuting and killing of civilians of a specific group. Lemkin felt this instance which he called genocide, needed to be codified, because early in the war, he had witnessed it in his native land. In summer 1942, he was unable to convince FDR of the urgency of making genocide an international crime.

Finally, in November 1946, Lemkin spoke with all kinds of diplomats when the world was ready to sit down at the bargaining table and form the United Nations. Panama, Cuba, India and global women’s organizations initially agreed to sign his resolution, by then called the Genocide Convention.

Still, there were years of arguments over every word, resistance and the usual political shenanigans. For, postwar, some arrogant government officials (such as French intellectuals and the British attorney general) were angry that their country had been taken down a notch in world status, so they argued that a Genocide Convention wasn’t necessary. The Nuremberg judgment had already outlawed war crimes, during times of war.

Lemkin explained that even in peacetime, human nature would dictate that a handful of evil people would acquire significant power to hate on others; thus, the need for a reminder in writing that the international community should put the kibosh on such behavior.

Read the book to learn much more about the trials and tribulations Lemkin experienced in trying to get the world to understand and commit to his ideology.

Slow Noodles

The Book of the Week is “Slow Noodles, A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss and Family Recipes” by Chantha Nguon, published in 2024. Born around 1961, the author endured the hunger, hard manual labor, bullying from the authorities and other aspects of her decades-long survival struggles through fantasizing about the food her mother cooked for her. Cooking became a life-saving skill later in her life.

In March 1970, Cambodia underwent a regime change. Lon Nol replaced Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and got a lot of financial aid from the U.S. for claiming he was anti-Communist. The new dictator also got military help in the form of American B-52s’ indiscriminately killing people in the countryside. The goal was to rid Cambodia of Vietnamese and non-Buddhist people. The author’s mother was Vietnamese, so the author was considered genetically Vietnamese, too. They were eventually forced to flee to Saigon.

All through the 1970’s, the region of Southeast Asia was particularly hard-hit by genocide, atrocities and torturous practices perpetrated by war criminals who obeyed their respective dictators. As an adolescent, Nguon was subjected to personal hardships, including the deaths of her older sister (who served as her surrogate mother until her mother arrived in Saigon) and her mother.

Nguon, like countless, anonymous hundreds of thousands of other refugees, could have died of disease, starvation, bombings, guerrillas’ bullets, pirates, or land mines, or a combination thereof. On rebuilding Cambodia after Pol Pot’s reign, she wrote, “The big foreign aid groups did their best, but they had no idea how to reshape a civilization from nothing. Who does? Donors, NGOs, and politicians want speedy tangible progress. The natural bias is ‘Hurry up and heal. We have other emergencies to attend to.’ “

Read the book to learn about the kinds of assistance the author provided to her fellow Cambodians, and much more about her food, life and times.

Butterfly

The Book of the Week is “Butterfly, From Refugee to Olympian– My Story of Rescue, Hope, and Triumph” by Yusra Mardini, published in 2018.

The author was born in March 1998 in a southern suburb of Damascus, Syria. Since her father was a swimming coach, she took up the sport with a passion.

In 2011, people expressed anti-government sentiments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in what became known as the Arab spring. During that year, Syria caught the bug. By summer 2012, armed soldiers and operators of heavy artillery and tanks, harassed protestors on the streets of the southern districts of Damascus.

By 2015, any Damascus residents who had yet to flee the violence, could die any day at any time from a fire, a bomb, shrapnel, a bullet, or a rocket-propelled grenade, aside from the more common ways life can end. Conscription into the Syrian military began at age eighteen, so early on, numerous teenage boys had already left for Lebanon, Turkey or European countries.

The author and her older sister finally decided to leave in 2015. Since they were from a middle-class family and they had been raised in a capitalist environment, they had resources that increased their likelihood of survival more than ever before in world history.

Western Union allowed them access to cash sent from their father (who had gotten a job in the country of Jordan). They had smartphones all during their journey. They and their traveling companions used the internet and its GPS feature to find hotels, eateries, train stations, and the precise dividing lines of countries’ borders. They heard cautionary tales that taught them what to do and what not to do, through not only face-to-face gossip, but also online information-sharing.

At one point, the evacuation process became like a game: “That night, we sit in Burger King [in Budapest] as the square grows dark, posting selfies on Instagram and chatting online with friends back home.”

Nevertheless, psychologists in the U.S. would probably diagnose the author with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, given what she wrote of how she behaved and what she was thinking. Her lifelong dream was to be an Olympian swimmer. But after resuming her athletic training, she felt helpless to solve the various life-and-death issues involving the war in Syria, and affect the fates of the flood of refugees in the world.

Read the book to learn numerous additional details of Mardini’s suspenseful story, and how she was able to make a difference, despite her doubts and individual powerlessness.

A Refugee’s American Dream

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The Book of the Week is “A Refugee’s American Dream, From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service” by Leth Oun with Joe Samuel Starnes, published in 2023. The book appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index.

Leth was born in October 1966 in northwestern Cambodia. He lived in a Buddhist neighborhood of seven households; it was communal, and living conditions were primitive. But his parents believed in education. Leth’s school was a half-hour’s walking distance. He began attending at six years old. The most excitement the peasants had was provided by a neighbor in the wider community. That wealthy family had a home entertainment system consisting of a screen and projector that showed Charlie Chaplin films with French subtitles.

Up until spring 1975, when extreme political turmoil turned his life upside down, Leth was allowed to bring his pet dog with him to see Cambodian and Chinese movies in a theater in Battambang City, near his home village. When the war came to his area, he saw “helicopters shooting fireballs from the sky, trees burning and exploding, trying to kill the Khmer Rouge soldiers in hiding.”

The Khmer Rouge guerrillas committed unspeakable atrocities, dubbed the “Killing Fields” by Western historians, but there was much was more to it than simply torturing and killing people in fields. Westerners who call mass deaths in modern times the “Killing Fields” are just as ignorant about world history as those who call certain leaders “Hitler” when they have no clue what they’re talking about.

Most Khmer Rouge foot soldiers were teenage boys toting AK-47’s. They were bossy and sadistic, like Nazis. The difference was, though, that Cambodia’s new dictator, Pol Pot, took lessons from Stalin’s and Mao Tse Tung’s Communist playbooks through: redistributing property to the government; turning the entire common population into peasant-farmers; and punishing everyone who had previously engaged in capitalism-related activities. They imposed an anti-intellectual godless regime that demonized all things Western. Most of his life, the author’s father had been (not by choice) in the Cambodian military, so he was doomed to be taken away and killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Obviously, the author lived to tell his tale, but he barely survived. At one point, he lived in a refugee camp, which he described thusly: “More huts were built in the dirt of the sprawling community surrounded by barbed wire beneath the mountain. The lines for food and water grew longer and slower. The latrines grew more crowded and smelled terrible.”

Read the book to learn many more details of the fate of the author and his family.

Congo Sole – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Congo Sole, How a Once Barefoot Refugee Delivered HOPE, FAITH, and 20,000 PAIRS OF SHOES” by Emmanuel Ntibonera with Drew W. Menard, published in 2021. This slim paperback volume included no index, and its writing contained occasional grammatical errors throughout. But it was suspenseful.

The oldest of nine surviving children, the author was born in April 1989. He grew up in the city of Bukavu near the Rwandan border, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (hereinafter referred to as “Congo”). Living conditions were primitive. Life-threatening conditions abounded, including malaria, poisonous snakes, bacteria-laden waterways (used for drinking), and jiggers (which burrow under the skin and reproduce; if not removed, they eventually prompt amputation of digits and limbs, but are easily prevented from doing any harm if people wear shoes!).

When the first Congo civil war started in 1996, the family fled on foot many miles to the author’s grandfather’s village in the mountains of Eastern Congo. They did hard manual labor– growing cassava, tending to pigs, and herding cows and goats. If they shot a rabbit with a bow and arrow, they ate it. When the author was about eight years old, he, his father (who was a preacher and small-businessman) and two younger brothers walked back to Bukavu. His father’s dry-goods store had been looted and trashed.

It had been only a few years after the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Child-soldiers and refugees were still pouring into the Congo, and clashing with rival tribes. In 1997, the regime change in the Congo led to yet more atrocities, including raping of females of all ages. The author and his younger brother had somehow been warned not to be lured into joining the ranks of the child-soldiers. They ran away when recruiters came to call and offered sweets.

While nearly starving to death and suffering many hardships, the author’s family truly believed that petitionary prayer worked for them. At least, people’s outlook improves with petitionary prayer, as it has a placebo effect. People who have a bible that’s falling apart, usually aren’t.

However, one burning question that can’t be answered is: What is the percentage of people for whom petitionary prayer failed (who are unable to triumphantly say that it worked for them) because they died?

Read the book to learn: how the family survived, and about many more details on how the author came to start a foundation (hint: “…for the Congolese children, a pair of shoes was a treasure, not a fleeting status symbol to be discarded for the next trend. It wasn’t about a brand, logo, or label there; it was about protection, vitality. About hope.”)

Gratitude In Low Voices

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The Book of the Week is “Gratitude In Low Voices, A Memoir” by Dawit Gebremichael Habte, published in 2017. According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked an extensive list of detailed sources, and an index), through the decades of the twentieth century, Eritrea suffered the usual traumas of a former colony (of Italy from 1890 to 1941) that was fighting for independence:

exploitation of its assets and resources (including dry docks, factories, railway cars by the British, and oil by the British and the Americans in the 1940’s);
oppression of its people (by Ethiopia in the 1950’s and 1960’s, via a UN resolution that was violated after a decade);
a military draft (by the Ethiopian government in 1983);
famine (in 1984);
ideology and language of the oppressors forced on students in the schools (by Ethiopians, funded by the Soviets in the mid-1980’s); and
arrests of and atrocities committed against, Eritrean people who uttered one word in any form, critical of Ethiopia (beginning in the mid-1980’s).

In 1973 or 1974, the author was born into a typical lifestyle for his time and place. He herded sheep and goats at an early age. By then, the Eritrean independence movement was gaining ground in the form of two armed groups resisting Ethiopian oppression: Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). His father joined the former group, and desirous to have his son educated, in the early 1980’s, sent him to school in Asmara.

Through his formative years, the author received an eclectic education. At about nine years old, he became apprenticed to a carpenter. Afraid the generous pay would corrupt him, his mother sent him to study the Bible at Saint George Orthodox Church. There, he learned Tigrinya, the language of his native people. His father went to Saudi Arabia to work, and sent money home. Eventually, his family became refugees from the violence and left Asmara but stayed in Eritrea.

Read the book to learn what transpired when the author wished to gain access to the resources in a library in his neighborhood and later, when he paid a people-smuggler to help him flee for Kenya; and his and Eritrea’s fate.

The Vortex

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The Book of the Week is “The Vortex, A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation” by Scott Carney and Jason Miklian, published in 2022. This multi-faceted story involved a massive number of deaths due to (cue the dramatic music): the Great Bhola cyclone (what would be called a hurricane in the Western Hemisphere), a cholera epidemic, dictatorial political shenanigans, atrocities and genocide; plus heroic international aid workers who were horribly hindered in their disaster-relief efforts. Sorry, no romantic subplot– this wasn’t a movie; all of this actually happened within the space of about three years. But at the end, there was the founding of a new nation, called Bangladesh.

Even decades after geographic separation of various religious and ethnic groups into: A) India, and B) a sovereignty of two discrete land masses (East and West) that comprised newly formed Pakistan in 1947– hostility still reigned. In Pakistan, anger and resentment simmered between the Muslim Punjabis in West Pakistan who spoke Urdu, and the Hindu Bengalis in East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh), who spoke their own language.

In the mid-1960’s, general Ayub (“Yahya”) Khan, who became Pakistan’s leader in 1969 [For more information, see this blog’s post, “The Rape of Bangla Desh”], ordered Pakistan’s military to attack India. The United States imposed economic sanctions on both Pakistan and India for childishly fighting. Pakistan allied with China. India allied with the then-USSR.

In August 1969, American president Richard Nixon tapped Yahya to be the contact to introduce him to China’s leader Mao Tse Tung. In exchange, Yahya wanted to purchase arms for Pakistan. Nixon violated the then-arms embargo against Pakistan to sell it armored personnel carriers and B-57 bombers.

In 1970, there occurred a quantum leap in hurricane-forecasting technology what with a new satellite called ITOS 1 that gathered real-time data on the Northern Hemisphere for the National Hurricane Center. Nevertheless, because they had no clue a storm was coming (the new forecasting technology had yet to reach Central Asia), almost all local residents drowned when the Great Bhola cyclone hit the delta near Manpura island in November 1970. A month later, fifty million Pakistanis were voting for the first time in their lives.

A few months later, American weapons were killing the Bengali people. Nixon was supporting Yahya. The latter’s military leader whipped up a Nazi-level frenzy of hatred against the Hindus, massacring them with .50 caliber machine guns and destroying– via American M-24 Chaffee tanks, jeeps and F-86 jets– key communication, political, educational and law enforcement structures in the city of Dacca in East Pakistan.

Unsurprisingly, all of the above was accompanied by a boatload of radio propaganda put out by Yahya’s side. But later, radio broadcasts helped the Bengalis. Anyway, Nixon aided and abetted Yahya in various additional ways to achieve his own political aims. Refugees fled to India, and where, counterintuitively, military camps trained Bengalis (technically Pakistanis) to resist the Pakistan Army. Indians had always been sworn enemies of Pakistanis. Still, it was in India’s best interest to see the Bengalis win the war and break up Pakistan.

There have occurred countless historical tapestries such as the aforementioned in which a complex bunch of circumstances resulted in millions of deaths; one thing led to another. The authors argued that the especially severe cyclone played a major role in giving scheming politicians an excuse to abuse their power even more. They asserted that more severe storms are occurring due to the earth’s changing atmosphere, and such natural disasters in turn trigger a series of events that increase global conflicts.

BUT, arguably, global conflicts have waxed and waned throughout history, regardless of natural disasters. There are four major causes of global conflicts (that are present in different combinations):

fighting over limited (and /or exploited) resources;
tribal hatreds;
religious hatreds; and
territorial disputes.

Present-day events (!) have shown that humanity is making slow, slow, slow progress towards a total net amount of good versus evil on earth– even with all the advances in early-warning systems for disasters and the striving for more widespread humanitarian activities. Cases in point: once-Communist countries have changed for the better in certain ways in the last thirty years, and there is less colonialism in the world than there used to be.

Unfortunately, advances in technology and charitable aid still trigger profiteering and political exploitation with their attendant propaganda. Alpha males with hubris syndrome with their greed and power-hunger still rule most of the world. Bottom line: human nature doesn’t change, but globally, human beings overall, are evolving.

Anyway, read the book to learn many more story-details, involving: how Nixon (and his evil sidekick Kissinger) came extremely close to instigating a nuclear war against the USSR in the Bay of Bengal; the fates of various political and military leaders; and the hapless common people of Pakistan, and the aid workers who passionately tried to help them.

The Six Days of Yad-Mordechai – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Six Days of Yad-Mordechai” by M. Larkin, originally published in 1965.

Passionate, mostly Polish Holocaust survivors who were able to make their way to the Gaza Strip in Palestine in late 1943 worked tirelessly to establish a new kibbutz called Yad-Mordechai. The socialistic ideal of their farm collective was this: “Since economic dependence upon the father was what gave him power, such dependence was abolished in their society.”

Still, the community fell short of total gender equality, as the males did the hard manual labor on the infrastructure; an all-male militia except for one female fought against attacking Egyptians, and females did all the food preparation and childcare.

In November 1947, a majority of United Nations (UN) members voted in favor of partitioning Palestine between an Arab state and a Jewish state. The situation was to become official in mid-May 1948, when the British were to withdraw its officials from Palestine. Arab countries broadcast propaganda that gave their fellow tribesmen the impression they were only temporarily evacuating their homes by that same deadline, and would eventually conquer the Jews and return to take over the entire strip of land that was slightly larger than the state of New Jersey.

The Yad Mordechai kibbutz just happened to be located in the Arab state. The Arabs refused to recognize the UN vote, and decided to fight the Jews for the entire territory. The villains of WWII– ex-Nazis and Italian Fascists, plus Lebanese, Egyptians, Syrians and Trans-Jordanians fought on behalf of the Arabs. The Jews had poorly equipped militias and intelligence cells called the Hagana, Palmach, Irgun and the Stern group.

Nevertheless, as of this writing, Wikipedia says this kibbutz still exists today, and its population is 737. It might be recalled that pure socialism thrived for a short time when the State of Israel was born. That was an extremely special exception, for the following major reasons; the kibbutzniks:

were forced to work together in order to survive in the desert, geographically surrounded by enemies;

were like-minded– oppressed for their religion– seeking a safe place in the world;

had a common goal bigger than themselves– building a country for themselves from the ground up– creating the political, social and cultural systems and infrastructure when everything was simple and their population was low;

had in common the shared, traumatic experience of WWII and/or the Holocaust; and

had substantial financial and military help from the United States.

Lo and behold, Yad Mordechai has since turned to capitalism to survive, selling certain brands of foods. However, the dangers of capitalism become apparent when financial scandals and crashes plague the nation due to EXCESSIVE DEREGULATION.

As is well known, there was consolidation through the 1980’s and 1990’s of the corporate auditing industry, and “Big Six” became the “Big Four” eventually, prompting businesses across the country to become even more incestuous (corrupt) in their relationships with their auditors.

In 1994, the big-name auditor Ernst & Young fired their in-house legal department and hired outside legal counsel. They must have been hiring employees from the competition, who brought a certain corporate culture to their legal department. In 2002, the Enron / Arthur Andersen scandal broke.

Certain wise folks can see a scandal coming. Like Ernst & Young. They don’t know exactly when it will hit the fan, but they know they don’t want to be there when it happens. James Baker of the Reagan administration was one of those sharp individuals. He switched positions with Donald Regan so that he would be far away when the Iran-Contra scandal became publicized.

In 2019, BB&T, a government bond broker, merged with Sun Trust Banks. Excessive deregulation can do wonders for the bottom lines (when they go hog-wild) of any profit-making organizations in the short term. BUT– it seems as though as the decades pass, financial-industry-players gain more and more experience in preventing lawsuits brought against them from their customers and clients by:

having the latter sign legal documents they never had to sign before, and placing disclaimers galore on all of their communications. The latest disturbing trend is for (previously low-risk) government-bond(!) brokers to do this.

Anyway, read the book to learn of the spirited beginnings, independence-warfare death toll and traumas suffered by the Yad Mordechai kibbutzniks, and their eventual fate. [And stay tuned for more traumas in the government bond market.]

Open Skies – BONUS POST

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The Bonus Book of the Week is “Open Skies, My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot” by Niloofar Rahmani with Adam Sikes, published in 2021.

Born in December 1991 in Afghanistan, the author deserves major bragging rights. For, she possessed the courage to serve as a liberated female role model (given her culture) by risking her own life and her family members’ lives in serving her beloved homeland. She joined the air force in December 2010. According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked Notes, Sources, References, or Bibliography and an index) this was at a time when the Americans and NATO were running the show.

The Taliban and other devout Muslims were less than thrilled that she was the first Afghan female ever to learn to fly a fixed-wing aircraft. Pursuant to the Koran, a female’s priorities were: submissive girlhood, wifehood, motherhood, and womanhood (and usually, the first three were forced on females simultaneously), and taking care of a household; only then, might she work outside the home if her oldest living male relative allowed her to.

The author spent her early childhood in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Anomalously, but fortunately for her, both of her parents believed in educating her and her siblings (mostly sisters), and encouraging them to pursue the career of their choice. The family eventually moved to Kabul. Unsurprisingly, the author’s career choice provoked angry reactions from the male-dominated air force and males in her country. The most fanatical ones began to smear, spy on, and threaten her and her family.

Nevertheless, the author’s parents martyred themselves in so many ways for their children’s futures. Her father continued to encourage the author to keep flying, even when her family was under siege and suffering many hardships due to her focusing on her dream job.

A barbaric incident that occurred in March 2015 was just one indicator that in Afghanistan, the tide was turning toward the dark side yet again: a huge flash-mob of outraged, radical Muslim men tortured and killed a devout Muslim woman wrongly accused of burning the Koran.

The victim was set upon because a mullah (a credible, influential religious leader) was her accuser. Just a few of the vicious untruths spread about her were that she was a prostitute, a blasphemer of Islam, and was an agitator sent by the Americans (perceived as the evil occupiers). The author herself was subjected to roughly equivalent, ugly utterances.

Read the book to learn how the author cheated death in this wordy, redundant yet suspenseful volume.