The Afghan Amulet: Travels from the Hindu Kush to Razgrad - Hardcover

On a quest to discover the origins of an exquisite embroidered robe and amulet she found in London, British textile expert Paine chronicles her journeys from Pakistan to Bulgaria through some of the world's wildest outposts of civilization. Determined to track down the source of a tribal dress that protects women against evil spirits, Paine ventures as a lone, vulnerable woman through remote areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Turkey, and Bulgaria she travels armed only with photos of the embroidery, five kilos of luggage, a bottle of vodka, the Afghan amulet around her neck, and cash sewn into her bra and socks. She wends her way by bus, jeep, and hitchhiker's luck through police checks and villages where camels and Kalashinkovs are everyday sights and women's embroidery and crimson sunsets are the only vibrancy in a barren rockscape. A widow in her 60s, Paine stays in homes with bullet-ridden mud walls and in hotels without water, electricity, bedding, phone, or cutlery where she barricades her door to keep out lecherous nocturnal visitors. Babies cry at the sight of her and men either pelt her with rocks or gallantly protect and then assault her. She sneaks into Iran through a Khomeini-crowned gate and is smuggled into Iraq, where Saddam has a bounty on Westerners' heads. Under the protective guises of widowhood, motherhood, and local costume, she enters women's domestic sanctums to view their handiwork. In lyrical prose she describes lands ravaged by extreme seasons and political turmoil, where men discuss nuclear weapons and dowries, and women, hidden by veils, have 18 children while supporting their families. Ultimately, Paine's textile quest, which is solved with a twist, merely provides a pretext for a fascinating and beautifully written account of an odyssey through extreme physical, cultural, and spiritual wildernesses. Paine displays the courage of a frontierswoman and the prose of a poet, making this indispensable for hearty travelers. (3 linecuts and 5 maps) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An elaborately embroidered tribal dress and an amulet seen in a London shop set Paine off on a two-year hunt through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Iran, Kohistan, Makran, Turkey, Indus and Bulgaria to find their origin. This 62-year-old British embroidery expert slips across closed borders, navigates through tribal warfare, sleeps on dirt floors, drinks tea brewed from muddy waters and protects herself against the kidnapping, stoning and rape that lone women risk in some Muslim countries by covering herself in native dress. Everywhere she goes, she is warned of danger; everywhere people identify the source of her stitchings as somewhere over the next mountain. Undeterred, Paine follows each clue until, in Bulgaria, she finds the answer to her search. The impoverished conditions, the superstitions that have endured for thousands of years-epitomized by the embroidered symbols that she is tracking-and the tribal and intranational fighting draw such a horrendous picture that the reader marvels at and admires Paine's derring-do.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.