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Three Women of Herat: A Memoir of Life, Love and Friendship in Afghanistan
In the years before the communist coup and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Veronica Doubleday set up home in the ancient city of Herat with her husband, who was researching Central Asian music. At first, her only glimpses of women were as shadows--faceless and voiceless. Gradually, however, she formed friendships with three young mothers who welcomed her into their lives, taught her their customs and music and shared the details of their everyday existence. She witnessed their most personal the births and deaths of their children, their marriages and celebrations, religious holidays, healings, and rituals. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, she lost touch with her friends, but returned to Herat recently, adding another chapter to this poignant story. This edition features a new Preface by [Doubleday].
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 23, 2023
Wow! What a book! Doubleday takes the reader into 1970’s Afghanistan and creates a bond with three local women, she fully immerses herself into their culture and this book is about her experiences and the wonderful friendships she made. You’re bound to have an opinion on these people and their beliefs and a lot of that may come from the media, it certainly did for me, you need to ignore what you already know, pick up this book and learn from somebody’s first hand experience. The events of this book are just before the Soviet invasion and the upheaval the country has gone through since that event, the people were just getting used to tourists and even though Doubleday was an outsider she was fully embraced by these households and was treated like one of the family.
The three women who befriended Doubleday are very different from each other and each of them are experiencing a different life around the cultural rules of their religion, some have more freedoms than others. Each of the women have very strong personalities and they use those personalities to bend the rules as much as they can. Each of the women are musical and that is the basis of their bond with Doubleday who is learning to perform their style of music. I’ve been watching some of Doubleday’s performances on YouTube and it is very impressive.
There is a real tenderness to the writing, the love Doubleday shows towards these women and their families is a joy to read, she puts in a lot of effort to accept their rules on marriage and love, but there are times when a wife has no freedom at all that the anger can bubble over. Her arguments over wearing the veil or organised marriage are well balanced, she comes to understand why some women fight to keep these in place but at the same time points out how not all of the women are treated the same. With my own prejudices firmly in place I was still able to understand why they would want to keep these things. All of this happened way back in the 70’s and the country has been through more than it’s fair share of violence since then, the book is finished with a brief update on what has gone down and the efforts that Doubleday has gone through to remain in contact with her friends. Absolutely fantastic book, I felt that I had been transported and was a part of these families, one of the best books that Eland have published for sure.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2023...
The three women who befriended Doubleday are very different from each other and each of them are experiencing a different life around the cultural rules of their religion, some have more freedoms than others. Each of the women have very strong personalities and they use those personalities to bend the rules as much as they can. Each of the women are musical and that is the basis of their bond with Doubleday who is learning to perform their style of music. I’ve been watching some of Doubleday’s performances on YouTube and it is very impressive.
There is a real tenderness to the writing, the love Doubleday shows towards these women and their families is a joy to read, she puts in a lot of effort to accept their rules on marriage and love, but there are times when a wife has no freedom at all that the anger can bubble over. Her arguments over wearing the veil or organised marriage are well balanced, she comes to understand why some women fight to keep these in place but at the same time points out how not all of the women are treated the same. With my own prejudices firmly in place I was still able to understand why they would want to keep these things. All of this happened way back in the 70’s and the country has been through more than it’s fair share of violence since then, the book is finished with a brief update on what has gone down and the efforts that Doubleday has gone through to remain in contact with her friends. Absolutely fantastic book, I felt that I had been transported and was a part of these families, one of the best books that Eland have published for sure.
Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2023...
July 9, 2017
Very personal tale of women in a city in Afghanistan, before it was all lost in war. Enchanting.
April 1, 2025
A nuanced celebration of Afghan womanhood - a rarity amongst most portrayals which focus on victimhood only. Loved this book
May 7, 2019
This book gives a unique insight into the lives, loves and mindset of Afghan women in the days before either Soviet or Taliban tyranny. Veronica Doubleday first travelled to Herat with her husband in 1973 on a year's musical research project, and returned for a second year in 1976, with a shorter visit in between. During that time she gradually became intimate with the women of three different households, and was privileged to be welcomed amongst them as an honorary family member, sharing their lives, experiences, day-to-day activities and of course their music. The three women featured in this book are very different in character - Mariam, a musician's wife, is the female head of her household, pious, traditional, resourceful and kind. 'Mother of Nebi' is ill and embittered, keeping strict purdah following a bout of mental illness but also the disciple of a spiritual healer, in which capacity she performs rituals and divinations. Shirin is a 'minstrel woman' living on the verges of respectability - she and her female relatives are employed to play, sing and dance at public events such as weddings and religious festivals and are therefore viewed askance by those who observe the strict rules of purdah. Doubleday draws a loving, often heartbreaking portrait of each woman and her world - a world soon to be blown apart by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. These were her dear friends, whom she wept to leave at the end of her stay, and planned to visit as often as she could. Then came the Soviets, and by the time she managed to make contact with the families again, in 1985, everything had changed. This book was first published in 1998, but updated in 2006 following a further, post-Taliban visit to Herat, and a preface and postscript added.
I found this a fascinating read; the style is informative and accessible, as well as infused with tenderness for people and places the author has obviously come to love. The questions of purdah and sexual inequality are addressed head on, without recourse to Western prejudice - for example Doubleday finds out firsthand how seductive the safety and anonymity of the veil can be, and comes to understand why many women have fought to retain it; she also revels in the sense of sisterhood and female solidarity that a segregated society engenders, whilst lamenting the imbalance of power and the restrictions placed by male relatives upon their wives, sisters and daughters. This is a book that every Western woman should read!
I found this a fascinating read; the style is informative and accessible, as well as infused with tenderness for people and places the author has obviously come to love. The questions of purdah and sexual inequality are addressed head on, without recourse to Western prejudice - for example Doubleday finds out firsthand how seductive the safety and anonymity of the veil can be, and comes to understand why many women have fought to retain it; she also revels in the sense of sisterhood and female solidarity that a segregated society engenders, whilst lamenting the imbalance of power and the restrictions placed by male relatives upon their wives, sisters and daughters. This is a book that every Western woman should read!
February 9, 2018
Portrait of a world blown away
It's probably trite by now to say that "the past is a foreign country", but if it's true anywhere in the world today, it must be most of all in Afghanistan. The Afghans managed to preserve their independence from colonial rule with only minimal interference from Great Britain (a country that lost two wars with Afghanistan). We might conclude that such freedom was a blessing, but it meant that the country sailed well into the treacherous waters of the 20th century without much social or economic change, with only a small educated class of people that could navigate the perils of the wars and competitions raging all around. By the 1970s, when most nations in the world had changed drastically from what they had been fifty years previously, Afghanistan still had not transformed itself. It was in this last moment of the Afghan past that Veronica Doubleday accompanied her husband to Herat, a large city in the west of Afghanistan, a historical capital and cultural center. While her husband studied traditional music, Doubleday studied first art, then women's lives, re-entering the musical world with a female music teacher. THREE WOMEN OF HERAT is a well-written, colorful memoir of that time, a picture of an Afghan city and women's lives, a picture that is now a shard of the Herati and Afghan past, covered over with the debris of 40 years of utter destruction and violence.
Though the author came from an educated English background, she chose three simple women for her portraits---a proper wife of a large musical family, a strict Muslim's suppressed wife who took refuge in faith healing and trances, and a female musician whose status in Herati society was dubious as she appeared in public. Through the medium of describing her interactions with these three, Doubleday presents a picture of Afghan society in the mid-`70s, emphasizing womens' lives. She covers the whole marriage process, childbirth and family relations, holidays, purdah, the music world, spirit possession, healing, and the evil eye. Her relationship with the three women is always at the center. There are a number of excellent color photographs and many drawings by the author as well. A short epilogue underlines the disaster that befell the city and society she loved and we see the beginnings of fanaticism as a tool to fight foreign rule. I think that for people interested in studying women in the Islamic world, THREE WOMEN OF HERAT could be very useful. Friedl's "Women of Deh Koh" (Iran) is anthropologically more sophisticated and gives the women their own voice. Fernea's "A Street in Marrakech" (Morocco) brings out the contrast between Western and Moroccan cultures better. Perhaps the novels of Djebar and Fernissi are more of an inside view than can be offered by a European. But Doubleday's book combines well with all these others. It is a beautiful portrait of a lost world, all the more poignant for what has befallen the Afghan people most recently.
It's probably trite by now to say that "the past is a foreign country", but if it's true anywhere in the world today, it must be most of all in Afghanistan. The Afghans managed to preserve their independence from colonial rule with only minimal interference from Great Britain (a country that lost two wars with Afghanistan). We might conclude that such freedom was a blessing, but it meant that the country sailed well into the treacherous waters of the 20th century without much social or economic change, with only a small educated class of people that could navigate the perils of the wars and competitions raging all around. By the 1970s, when most nations in the world had changed drastically from what they had been fifty years previously, Afghanistan still had not transformed itself. It was in this last moment of the Afghan past that Veronica Doubleday accompanied her husband to Herat, a large city in the west of Afghanistan, a historical capital and cultural center. While her husband studied traditional music, Doubleday studied first art, then women's lives, re-entering the musical world with a female music teacher. THREE WOMEN OF HERAT is a well-written, colorful memoir of that time, a picture of an Afghan city and women's lives, a picture that is now a shard of the Herati and Afghan past, covered over with the debris of 40 years of utter destruction and violence.
Though the author came from an educated English background, she chose three simple women for her portraits---a proper wife of a large musical family, a strict Muslim's suppressed wife who took refuge in faith healing and trances, and a female musician whose status in Herati society was dubious as she appeared in public. Through the medium of describing her interactions with these three, Doubleday presents a picture of Afghan society in the mid-`70s, emphasizing womens' lives. She covers the whole marriage process, childbirth and family relations, holidays, purdah, the music world, spirit possession, healing, and the evil eye. Her relationship with the three women is always at the center. There are a number of excellent color photographs and many drawings by the author as well. A short epilogue underlines the disaster that befell the city and society she loved and we see the beginnings of fanaticism as a tool to fight foreign rule. I think that for people interested in studying women in the Islamic world, THREE WOMEN OF HERAT could be very useful. Friedl's "Women of Deh Koh" (Iran) is anthropologically more sophisticated and gives the women their own voice. Fernea's "A Street in Marrakech" (Morocco) brings out the contrast between Western and Moroccan cultures better. Perhaps the novels of Djebar and Fernissi are more of an inside view than can be offered by a European. But Doubleday's book combines well with all these others. It is a beautiful portrait of a lost world, all the more poignant for what has befallen the Afghan people most recently.
March 11, 2022
Veronica Doubleday, the author, is the aunt of my friends! So this book is on all their shelves, signed.
I really love this fascinating topic of women in Afghanistan, this impressive dive into life in the city of Herat for two years in the 1970s. Doubleday focuses on the lives of women, secluded by purdah, separated from men and much of the world. Each woman's life is very different, depending on the amount of freedom her husband gives her. He may restrict her ability to go out, even to do grocery shopping or attend a wedding or visit a shrine, but many women share a communal life with other women in ways unfathomable to Westerners. The core strength for the community is family-based; in Afghanistan, you represent your family in all of your actions, so anything you might do will bring honor or shame upon your entire family. Thus, you must be very careful what you do and how you dress, and of course men have almost total control over the lives of their wives and daughters.
Wonderful subject, and I'm envious of the opportunity the author had to live in Afghanistan for two years in the 1970s.
I really love this fascinating topic of women in Afghanistan, this impressive dive into life in the city of Herat for two years in the 1970s. Doubleday focuses on the lives of women, secluded by purdah, separated from men and much of the world. Each woman's life is very different, depending on the amount of freedom her husband gives her. He may restrict her ability to go out, even to do grocery shopping or attend a wedding or visit a shrine, but many women share a communal life with other women in ways unfathomable to Westerners. The core strength for the community is family-based; in Afghanistan, you represent your family in all of your actions, so anything you might do will bring honor or shame upon your entire family. Thus, you must be very careful what you do and how you dress, and of course men have almost total control over the lives of their wives and daughters.
Wonderful subject, and I'm envious of the opportunity the author had to live in Afghanistan for two years in the 1970s.
September 12, 2010
I love memoirs that make you feel both that you know the author, and that you would have liked being there, and knowing the people she knew. Doubleday paints a picture of life in Afghanistan long gone and yet, in some ways still existing. It's part brutal, part uplifting and at the end I had to remind myself it was real.
Love and friendship are everywhere, and some people will always been willing to welcome outsiders into their world. An excellent book if you're curious about women living with (in) purduh but not the most cheerful book.
Love and friendship are everywhere, and some people will always been willing to welcome outsiders into their world. An excellent book if you're curious about women living with (in) purduh but not the most cheerful book.
November 14, 2015
A fascinating look into the life of women in Islam.
March 12, 2025
Beautiful book about 3 women from Herat and stories all too familiar if you’ve been to Afghanistan. Makes me want to write about the people I’ve met and gotten to know in my life :)
February 14, 2023
I think the author hit exactly the right tone, deeply appreciative of the culture and deeply connected to the women she is profiling, but still critical of the society. She wears the veil but doesn't like it. Sometimes she conforms and sometimes she rebels.
She was there with her husband studying and documenting music from an academic lens, which is especially poignant now that music is banned in Afghanistan. You can check her out on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5zJr...
As a side note, when this arrived in the mail I saw Doris Lessing wrote a blurb for it, she always had great taste.
She was there with her husband studying and documenting music from an academic lens, which is especially poignant now that music is banned in Afghanistan. You can check her out on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5zJr...
As a side note, when this arrived in the mail I saw Doris Lessing wrote a blurb for it, she always had great taste.
August 21, 2020
Very interesting "thick description" of women's culture among musicians in Herat in the 1970s.
May 8, 2011
If you are non-Muslim reading this book, my advice and warning is, this book does not show the real image of Islam. It shows the image of some Muslims but not all. For example in the issue of male as leaders of a house, the men in the memoir did not do as the Quran rightly teaches us. Heck, this problem persists until today. Some men just cannot get the idea of being more superior to women out of their heads, no matter from which religious and cultural background they come from.
October 13, 2015
*Read a book with a number in the title 11/50
This wasn't terrible.The writing was good, the content was interesting, I just hated reading it. Most likely due to the looming deadline to have it read.
This wasn't terrible.The writing was good, the content was interesting, I just hated reading it. Most likely due to the looming deadline to have it read.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews