After working for two years for a human rights organization in the Gaza Strip and six months for another organization in Kabul, New Zealander Elliott finds what she refers to as her dream job with the U.N. in Afghanistan. She is stationed in Herat, a city in the southeastern part of the country, and spends her time investigating rights abuses of women, children, prisoners, and other oppressed people. This book is an adaptation of the journals she wrote during the year she spent in Herat and in the nearby province of Ghor.  

At first she is unprepared for the atrocities and hardships she witnesses as she goes about her seemingly overwhelming daily tasks. For instance, there are accounts of women attempting self-immolation after being forced into abusive marriages and fathers murdering daughters who displease them. She has to live in a walled-in compound with armed guards, and she is only allowed to go outside, regardless of her destination’s distance, if she has an escort. However, Elliot also recognizes the flip-side: she meets many Afghanis of noble character who are willing to work hard and make sacrifices for the sake of the well-being of their people. A subplot concerns an American boyfriend with which Elliot has a complex on-again off-again relationship.

All of the above cause Elliott to frequently feel emotionally overwhelmed. To cope, she practices an early morning regimen of meditation and yoga. This helps to stabilize her in the midst of the chaos all around. When faced with so much injustice and tragedy, she has to be able to deal with intense feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and guilt about not being able to do more to help. Yoga helps her to accomplish this. She writes: “Ironically, my efforts to repress my own feelings have actually been keeping me from moving beyond them.” Through meditation and yoga she is able to give herself “permission to feel sad, guilty, or angry.” The yoga, she writes, “is transforming my ability to be in the midst of profound suffering without closing my heart or leaping too quickly into action.”

She soon discovers that there are no quick answers to the numerous difficulties facing Afghanistan and that the small amount of assistance she is able to provide sometimes seems utterly inconsequential. But she obtains great personal satisfaction from making the attempt, and in the end, when it is time for her to leave, she finds that she has developed great love for the country and its people.

I was partially drawn to this book because I have visited Afghanistan on two occasions in the mid-seventies, once traveling overland west to east, and once east to west. I found Afghanistan to be austere, formidable, and a little frightening. While I was there, I never felt entirely comfortable or safe. One of my sons, though, had an even more difficult time; he was a Navy Corpsman (medic) attached to a Marine Corps unit during a period of intense fighting in the southwestern part of the country not far from Herat.

Having been there and caught a glimpse of the difficulties that Elliott faced, I have great respect for her. What she encountered would have emotionally overwhelmed anyone, at least anyone like her with a wealth of vulnerability, empathy, morality, and compassion. She has a great story to tell, and she tells it well. Recommended.