The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul [Hardcover]

J. Malcolm Garcia (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807000574 | ISBN-13: 978-0807000571 | Publication Date: September 1, 2009

Shortly after September 11, J. Malcolm Garcia—a self-described middle-aged, middle-of-the-road midwesterner—arrived in Afghanistan. A former social worker, he had only recently become a reporter and had never covered a war. As for Afghanistan, he barely knew where it was. But during the next seven years of travel between Kansas City and a post-Taliban Afghanistan, Garcia found an emotional and professional center—one that, in spite of other assignments and war reporting, drew him back to the region over and over again. Unlike flyby reporters traveling through the country armed with a sat phone and a ticket for the next flight to Islamabad, Garcia settled into Afghanistan—learning its history, meeting its resilient people, occasionally making dreadful faux pas but ultimately forging lifelong connections.

When he first arrived in the country, Garcia met Khalid, a young Afghan he affectionately called Bro, who became his driver, interpreter, and, eventually, his friend. Bro in turn called Garcia the khaarijee—the outsider. He told Garcia he wasn't responsible for his new friend's life, but at least two times saved it. He instructed Garcia to avoid dogs because they were rabid, then helped him steal a puppy from an organized dog fight. Bro told him to be wary of street children, only to assist him in feeding and educating six homeless, war-orphaned boys. Bro was Sancho Panza to Garcia's Don Quixote, and together they faced the consequences of war, life without the Taliban, and Afghanistan's uncertain future.

The Khaarijee tells this story of two strangers, one dog, and six orphans thrust together after 9/11—an intersection of paths that, by all rights, should never have crossed. At a time when Afghanistan is on the brink, Garcia offers a gritty, raw, and unsentimental memoir about friendship, loss, and wanting to make a difference in the midst of a war-torn country, extending The Khaarijee beyond much travel writing and war reportage.


From the Hardcover edition.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
A memoir about six orphans, a dog, a Muslim man, and an inexperienced American journalist--thrust together in post-9/11 Afghanistan.

Shortly after September 11, J. Malcolm Garcia, a former social worker new to both journalism and war, arrived in Afghanistan. Over the next seven years, he would return to the country several times, finding there both a professional and emotional center. When he first arrived, Garcia met Khalid, a young Afghan he affectionately called Bro, who became his driver, interpreter, and, eventually, his friend. Bro in turn called Garcia the khaarijee--the outsider. He told Garcia he wasn't responsible for his new friend's life, but at least two times he saved it. He instructed Garcia to avoid dogs because they were rabid, then helped him steal a puppy from an organized dog fight. Bro told him to be wary of street children, only to assist him in feeding and educating six homeless, war-orphaned boys.

Bro was Sancho Panzo to Garcia's Don Quixote, and together they faced Afghanistan's uncertain future. Gritty, gripping, and unexpectedly moving, The Khaarijee tells the story of this extraordinary intersection of paths, and shows how profoundly Afghanistan transformed Garcia. Issues of friendship and loss, guilt and resolution, and wanting to make a difference tap into universal themes, extending The Khaarijee beyond much travel writing and war reportage.

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Photographs of J. Malcolm Garcia, Author of The Khaarijee
(Click to Enlarge)

Garcia on an embed in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2003	Garcia in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2003	Garcia on an embed in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2003

Garcia and Bro in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in 2003	Garcia with his friend and translator Bro and three boys they helped put in school

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From Publishers Weekly

An unlikely friendship is forged following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in this episodic, largely apolitical memoir. A social worker turned journalist for the Kansas City Star, Garcia arrives in Kabul with minimal overseas experience, but simplistic early descriptions (e.g., Afghanistan, like Texas, is an amalgam of tribes) thankfully give way to more serious discussions of the poverty and desperation he witnesses in Kabul. Over the course of his seven years of travel in the region, he forms a warm friendship with Bro, a driver and translator whose real name, Khalid, proves too challenging for Garcia. The author's habit of renaming Afghans (there's a Mr. Ten Dollar and a Yeltsin) is more patronizing and less endearing than the writer believes, and it's satisfying when Yeltsin unexpectedly upbraids the author for changing other people's names so cavalierly. The eponymous khaarijee (outsider), Garcia is at his best when capitalizing on his status to launch important—and engaging—investigations of what it means to be a privileged Westerner in one of the most destitute places in the world. (Sept.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807000574
• ISBN-13: 978-0807000571
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.9 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,038,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Forever the outsider, September 20, 2009

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Malcolm Garcia considers himself a good friend of the translator and driver who, during several sojourns in Afghanistan, ferried him around the dusty and war-shattered streets of Kabul, and occasionally, the dangerous, unpaved and war-gutted roads of the moonscape countryside.

But he cannot pronounce the man's (albeit simple) name, Khalid, and calls him Bro. It takes him several trips, over many years, before it occurs to him to ask the man's surname. This is a friend? No, the "khaarijee" of the book's title (meaning stranger) is the only thing Garcia gets right here. He has no genuine understanding of friendship, and even less of history, Islam or war.

Indeed, Garcia refers to virtually everyone by a nickname he concocts upon meeting them --- often disrespectful, and seldom replaced with a genuine name. Only on Garcia's fourth or later trip, in March 2004, does it dawn on the former social worker that a man might be insulted by his lack of concern for their feelings.

"Yeltsin, is that you," he shouts into his phone at 4 a.m., unduly taunting an Islamabad taxi driver first encountered less than eight hours earlier. "Yes, sir, but that is not my name, sir," the man replies. Several hours later, the driver has ferried Garcia (as requested) to Peshawar, the closest he can get to South Waziristan, where "Mr. Big" (Osama bin Laden) may have been captured. It's of course a false lead, and Garcia realizes en route that not only do Peshawar Pakistanis hate the U.S., but they also believe "Israel was responsible for your September 11 attacks to give Americans an excuse to attack Muslims." Moreover, despite repeatedly telling Garcia "you are our guest, sir," and assuring him that killings guests is "forbidden in Islam," Pakistanis can be easily worked into a murderous frenzy, and would just as soon kill him as treat him to tea.

In the same way, Garcia wants to look after six 13-ish Kabul war orphans he meets during the first five months of 2003. They sit outside his Mustafa hotel "on shoeshine boxes and hustle Westerners for change." He gives them "street" nicknames, too --- for the sunglasses or windbreaker they wear, or chocolate candy they crave. But Garcia never makes a firm commitment, to his driver friend Bro, or to his "boys."

Sure, Garcia gives readers some great Hemingway-like war stories here, complete with staccato sentences and the bereft feeling that the whole world's going to heck at the end of each chapter.

But the moral surely isn't one the author intended: Hearts and minds can only be lost (not won) in a country stuck in 1260, where life for 30 years --- no, centuries --- has remained rooted in fighting. The more troops and resources the U.S. invests in the effort, the faster hearts, minds and more lives will be lost.

--- Alyssa A. Lappen

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, direct, honest and intimate., September 7, 2009

By 

Evelyn Getchell "Evie" (Gulf Coast of Florida) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I was immediately taken by this absorbing and moving account of the war in Afghanistan. The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul is beautifully written, direct, honest and intimate. J. Malcolm Garcia as a competent war reporter gives us important and enlightening journalism. He is generous in providing much needed perspective on the brutal and never-ending conflict in this devastated, war-ravaged country.

But he also gives the reader so much more in this extraordinary memoir. He reaches deeply into the issues of the long-suffering, war torn people of Afghanistan. It is a gripping and intense story of their horror and outrage, of their anger and fear. Yet it is also a story rich with tenderness and poignancy, of humor and friendship, of culture and faith.

Garcia with moving honesty reveals his own personal transformation over the seven years of his professional work in Afghanistan. As a former social worker in San Francisco, having worked for over fourteen years in a detox program for the homeless, he was drained and numb. He wanted out of social work, out of his life as it was, so he took up journalism and became an overseas newspaper reporter, landing in Kabul for the first time in November 2001, two months after September 11th. As an American reporter with limited journalism experience and no knowledge of the local languages, Garcia hired an Afghan interpreter/driver who would help him navigate through the political, social, and cultural maze in the capital of the conflicted, violent battleground of Afghanistan.

His interpreter is Khalid, a 24 year Muslim of a Pashtun tribe who Garcia nicknamed "Bro." Likewise Bro named Garcia "Khaarijee", the outsider. After a short time of working together they became affectionate friends, eventually as close as brothers. With Bro as his guide, his protector, his friend, Garcia learns to love Afghanistan, its people, its history, its culture. Garcia found himself not only reporting on the war but immersing himself completely in Afghanistan. It became his professional and emotional center of gravity. He describes himself as the outsider seeking his place in the Afghan culture. He finds that place with the help of Bro in pursuit of his personal mission "to make a difference." It is in the lives of six homeless, war-orphaned boys who Garcia and Bro find scavenging for survival on the streets of Kabul that Garcia tries to make a difference. The story of Garcia, Bro and the six boys unfolds in a touching, profound way. I found it difficult to put down.

I highly recommend The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, yet annoying memoir of travels in Afghanistan, November 20, 2009

By 

K G R "K G R" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul (Hardcover)

Malcolm Garcia's book, "The Khaarijee" is an account of his journalistic experiences in Afghanistan (and to a much lesser extent Pakistan). It is interesting less for the facts and events recounted (there are far better written and more informative books about Afghanistan out there), but as an account of the country by a relatively unsophisticated man, and also for an account of what mundane, daily life was like for journalists in the country earlier in the decade. His lack of experience in international journalism, or with the culture and peoples of the region provides a perspective that most writers and journalists could not or do not provide.

His incomplete, rushed transition from social worker to local news reporter to international affairs is very noticeable throughout the book. While I found this unique view interesting, I also (like many other reviewers) got annoyed with Garcia. Giving people nicknames due to his inability or unwillingness to learn names that are alien to him is not only bizarre, but rather rude. While I got the impression that Garcia viewed this as something that readers should find endearing, or at least "cute", I only found it uncouth.

Like most readers, I thought that it was great that he saved "Maggot". However, his behavior with the dog afterwards was shockingly insensitive given local customs. He must have learned that Afghans/Muslims typically disdain dogs and view them as unclean. Garcia appared not to care at all. He gave himself the right to bring his dog whereever he went. Even in dog-friendly countries in the West, are we to believe that he would bring a dog into a meeting with a Minister or Cabinet Secretary? Would he bring his dog to his favorite restaurants in Kansas City? This is just stupid, insensitive behavior. He exhibits this same behavior with his drinking, making no attempt to keeping his beer consumption out of the view of locals who, as Muslims, revile alcohol consumption. At othertimes throughout the book, the author comes across as the prototypical "ugly American" overseas. Why he seemed so unwilling to try to adapt to local cultural mores is beyond me.

The way he handles the poor boys is another case in point. Garcia clearly responded to the deprived in Afghanistan the way 99% of us would, by simply giving or spending money and hoping for the best. Setting up charitable foundations and work like that would not be something I or most people could do, and I obviously do not critique him for not doing that. But the way he handled (or maybe still handles) the situation with the 6 boys appeared incompetent, if not insensitive. He was repeatedly warned by "Bro"/Khalid that the boys would have expectations, both financial and emotional. Garcia seemed to think that simply saying "sorry, I'm going to have to leave" was enough for him to escape these committments. On a certain level, his humanity and honesty was appealing, as he obviously makes no attempt to make himself into some kind of hero. But the way I understood the end of the book was that he is proverbally shrugging his shoulders and giving up due to his later logistical difficulties in getting money for the boys (are we really to believe that it would be all that difficult to send money there?! Even Western Union operates there!)

In conclusion, Garcia absolutely lived up to his title as the "khaarijee", forever an outsider in spite of all his time spent in Afghanistan. I seriously debated whether to give the book 2 or 3 stars. I give it three stars because I found that the author's foibles provided a perspective rarely seen in books, and it's account of the "behind the scenes" life of a journalist was also interesting.