A Fort of Nine Towers

Twenty-one years ago, Kabul was a garden where seven-year-old Qais Akbar Omar flew kites from his grandfather’s roof. Then civil war exploded as Mujahedin factions fought one another to control Afghanistan.

With rockets falling around them, Omar’s family fled to an old fort on the far side of Kabul, leaving everything behind. On their first trip home, Omar and his father were kidnapped and forced into slave labor for weeks, returning to find their family hosting their funeral.

The family decided to flee Afghanistan. On the perilous journey to the border, they camped for a time in caves behind the Buddha statues in Bamyan and later took refuge with nomad cousins. While his father desperately sought smugglers to take them over the border, Omar met a deaf-mute carpet weaver who would change his life.

Later, as the Mujahedin war devolved into Taliban madness, Omar learned about quiet resistance. He survived imprisonment and, at eighteen, opened a secret carpet factory to provide work for girls who were forbidden to go to school or even leave their homes. As the girls tied knots at their looms, Omar’s parents taught them literature and science.

In this stunning coming-of-age memoir, Omar recounts hardships and narrow escapes, as well as moments of intense joy and beauty. It reveals the truth about life in a country whose history has become deeply entwined with our own but has, until now, eluded our understanding. Inflected with folktales, steeped in poetry, A Fort of Nine Towers is a life-affirming triumph.