Beyond That Last Blue Mountain: My Silk Road Journey
Sophie Kazan
Harriet Sandys
2019, Medina Publishing, 978-1-91148-717-3, £20.00.
This evocative and colorful account of the author’s travels in the 1980s and early ‘90s throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan, then Iraq, the Balkans and Syria begins in the world of Asia- and Mideast-focused antiques traders in England, for whom Sandys sets out searching for high-quality carpets and artifacts. Along the way, she becomes interested both in ikat silk weaving and assistance to Afghan refugees. Sandys journeyed through conflict areas to set up a silk-weaving project for UNESCO, and her book describes her meetings with locals and expatriate Europeans, as well as teaching Afghan women about the resist-dying ikat techniques, which she describes with passion, expertise and empathy. While Sandys relates her experiences as a woman, traveling on dusty and hazardous roads, she also sheds light on the generosity, hospitality and warmth of people she encountered.
You may also be interested in...
The Vanishing Sea by Artist Dinara Mirtalipova—Our Book Review
How often do we take nature for granted, assuming it will never vanish? In US-based folk illustrator Dinara Mirtalipova’s new children’s book, a sea is the main character: the one that provides livelihood and prosperity, until humans’ poor choices cause its demise.
Memoir Paints World’s Biggest Game as Great Connector—Our Book Review
Tim Bascom transforms a lifetime of playing football across five continents into a meditation on belonging, arguing that the game’s great gift is not the goals but the wordless understanding it creates among people.