Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager's Story [Hardcover]

Said Hyder Akbar (Author), Susan Burton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 2005

The intimate and riveting chronicle of an extraordinarily courageous Afghan-American teenager coming of age in post-9/11 Afghanistan.

Building on two acclaimed radio documentaries aired on This American Life, Hyder Akbar tells how his ordinary suburban California life was turned upside-down after 9/11. Hyder’s father, a scion of an Afghan political family, sold his business—a hip-hop clothing store in Oakland—and left for Afghanistan, where he became President Hamid Karzai’s chief spokesman and later, the governor of Kunar, a rural province. Obsessed since youth with a country he had never even visited, seventeen-year-old Hyder convinced his father to let him join him on three successive summers. Working alongside his father at the presidential palace and in Kunar has given Hyder a rare front-row seat at the creation of democratic government in Afghanistan. In Come Back to Afghanistan, Hyder interweaves his personal journey—a teenager struggling with his identity in his parents’ homeland—with a dramatic behind-the-scenes account of political and civilian life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Uncommonly wise and insightful, Hyder travels from palaces to prisons and from Kabul to the borderlands, revealing Afghanistan as readers have never seen or understood it before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Akbar's refreshingly unsentimental reminiscences of visiting his father's homeland as a teen make for an intriguing portrait of Afghanistan at a time of significant transition. On 9/11, Akbar, who was born in Peshawar in 1984 but grew up in the U.S., was living near Oakland, Calif., where his father ran a clothing store. After the attack, the elder Akbar, a descendant of an Afghan political family, returned to his country to take a job as President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesman and, later, as governor of Kunar, a rural province. The author visited his father for three successive summers, and the result is this account, a closeup view of the creation of the country's post-Taliban democratic government, told from a perspective that's impressively both insider and objective. Akbar reports on chats with cabinet ministers and warlords, and sketches the lay of the land, visiting both sumptuous Kabul palaces as well as bombed-out villages. His youth and curiosity send him on some dangerous adventures (he retraces a mountain route between Afghanistan and Pakistan used by fleeing members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban), and that youthful flavor also infuses the writing with a hip stream-of-consciousness that is by turns funny, insightful and, occasionally, breathtaking.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 8 Up–After the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, Afghans living in exile began to return home in hopes of participating in rebuilding their war-torn country. Akbar's father sold his hip-hop clothing store in Oakland to join his friend Hamid Karzai, now the elected president, serving first as his spokesman and later as the governor of the remote province of Kunar. The author joined him right after he finished high school and spent three summers, first in Kabul and then in Asadabad, the provincial capital. The young man traveled through the countryside and across the mountainous border into Pakistan. Equipped with a microphone and recorder, he chronicled his experiences and his reactions for public radio's This American Life. These immediate observations form the basis of this engaging and informative account of Afghan life and politics interwoven with a teen's reactions to his first visit to his family's native land. Because of his background and connections, his interest and knowledge of Afghan history and politics, and his language skills, Akbar was involved in his father's work in ways that most teens can only dream of. Readers are rewarded with an inside look at Afghan reconstruction that is both informative and appealing. The teen admires his father and his father's friends immensely; he dreams of being personally involved in nation-building. Readers will come away from this memoir with a strong desire to see into the young man's future and that of the country that has so entranced him.–Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (October 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582345201
• ISBN-13: 978-1582345208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #991,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Travel > Asia > Afghanistan

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go Hyder Go!, November 13, 2005

By 

Warren Roos - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager's Story (Hardcover)

Often when we read a book or see a movie at the same time we run our own life's experiences against the story. In this book the US pre and post 9-11 history is inextricably interlaced with Afghanistan's. They get a 9-11 over and over again. In getting a look how Afghanistan is we also get a bigger look at our current world.

The book is deeply inspiring and sad too. It should be required reading for all high school students. A study question should be where are the woman. Another question should be is why so many of us do not follow our dreams like Hyder does.

Hyder, in finding himself also shows us so much between the lines about Afghanistan and this country's greatness and warts. He is modest about his real contributions leaving that for the dust jacket.

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It will make you want to go to Afghanistan, June 22, 2007

By 

Anita Anand (New Delhi, India) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager's Story (Paperback)

Yesterday a friend asked what I was reading.

I just finished 'Come Back to Afghanistan: My Journey from California to Kabul' written by Said Hyder Akbar, a 20-year old college student in California. Like many others, Akbar's story is a migrating one - from Afghanistan to Pakistan, India, and then the USA.

When the Taliban were ousted in 2001, Akbar's father, a long time friend of President Hamid Karzai decided to go back to Afghanistan. Akbar started coming with him on his school and college breaks, and got back in touch with his country that he had left a long time ago. It's a homecoming of sorts.

The book is brilliant. Written with the assistance of journalist Susan Brunton, Akbar takes us into corners and niches that few books on Afghanistan do. It is deeply personal and highly political without the usual history, geography or other details. Born in Afghanistan and raised in the US, Akbar is able to straddle both countries and regions. He neither despairs nor scoffs at anyone or anytime. His writing is passionate, gentle and unassuming.

Akbar's goal in Afghanistan is to be with his father and get to know his country. He travels with, among other things, a tape recorder, and makes programmes for National Pubic Radio in California. He interviews the person in the highest office - President Karzai - as well as his driver, Sartor. He listens to everyone and judges none. During the two years he goes back and forth, Akbar's brother and mother visit Afghanistan. His father is appointed as the Governor of the province of Kunar, a remote and troubled area, where the family collects and lives together.

Through sickness and health Akbar goes through the journeys he charts for himself. His writing is sensitive and engaging. It never strays or lags. It is clear that he loves Afghanistan, is sensing what his relationship with his old land is, and how it will develop. He is conscious of the contradictions within himself.

When I think about why I liked the book so much, and the experience of reading the book, I feel it its so akin to my time in Afghanistan. Without being able to speak the language (Dari an Pashto), I communicated with those I could, in Urdu, Hindi and English. I reached out to the humanity in them, and they in turn, reached out to mine.

In the final analysis the book is about being reconciled to where we come from. No matter where we are, our multiple identities always call us to the land we were born, and we yearn to return. That has been my experience too.

The book also describes the Afghan situation - the challenges to the Afghan people, the leaders, the donor community and Americans stationed in Afghanistan and back home. It presents everyone's reality. Akbar's strength is his ability to see what is happening, from many perspectives, and present it in a dispassionate way.

In a growing body of literature on Afghanistan, Akbar's will enjoy a place of pride. It's young, passionate, and terribly easy to read.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A strong voice in a young man, November 8, 2005

By 

Cat Ceepe "animal and book lover" (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager's Story (Hardcover)

What a wonderful experience to find a book written by a student at a community college, Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, CA.

What Hyder is experiencing is also what community college students often are after - finding out who they are, where they are supposed to be, looking for those second and third chances.

Hyder's literary voice is already well developed despite his youth, no doubt because of the rich life experience he already has.

I recommend this book to anybody interested not only in uncensored information on what really is going on in Afghanistan, but also to those of of us who are bridging countries and continents by being born in one and living in another.