Afghan Travelogue Leaves a Lasting Impression

Four years ago, only weeks a US-led military offensive drove the Taliban from power, Rory Stewart embarked on a wild and dangerous odyssey – walking across Afghanistan entirely on foot, oblivious to the elements and to the lingering presence of Islamic radicals. The journey is recounted in Stewart's book, The Places in Between. The story depicts the lives of ordinary Afghans with clarity and without geopolitical spin. And like other great travel tales, it leaves the reader with a heightened sense of humility and hope.

This book begins as a gimmick and ends as something more like an epic. Before starting the book, I wondered if Stewart, a journalist with both military and diplomatic experience, was just another callow book-deal prospector going on a cultural safari. But such an impression was quickly dispelled. Along his walk, Stewart becomes more than a guide, he becomes a sojourner. He delves carefully into history and discreetly into gore. He draws the people he sees well, with words and sketches, and distinguishes his personal impulses from his policy questions. Afghanistan elicits his warmth and his fear.

That makes for rewarding storytelling. The Places in Between intertwines personal journey with historic inquiry. To Stewart's credit, he acknowledges that both are murky prospects. As the walk proceeds, Stewart boasts less about his zaniness and parses words more carefully when depicting stubborn guards or bureaucrats. At the same time, he casts himself as a (stumbling) liar with a foul temper who shows more patience with a stray dog than a destitute old man. So as Stewart deflects shakedowns and scolds plunderers, he serves more as a proxy than a guide. His writing chronicles all times of day and variations in mood, so we feel as if we're on the trip with him. When he crashes, we feel his exhaustion.

The book's other device, a recreation of a journey by the 16th-century emperor Babur, slices between cultural reporting and ethno-religious scholarship. It could easily become precious in the metaphors of a less adept writer. Instead of cutesy analogies or protestations of weakness, we see Stewart sleep and eat and bitch. All these processes elicit careful thought. We see him in Hazarajat, at once exploiting and appreciating and questioning Afghan hospitality.

Stewart's voice stays conversational, the writing equivalent of a lope, and the historical references stay relevant to the postwar puzzle. How can you govern a country whose villages implode in civil war? How dare you carpet-bomb such a country? Stewart confronts these issues by bunking with people who never get to pose these questions. He earns the right to be cranky, the right to call Taliban who lecture him about jihad "stupid" and to cry in a Scottish pub on the last page. Too much travel writing feels like dry history moistened by crocodile tears. The Places in Between feels as stinging as a dust storm and as aching as a day without food.