The most enriching read of this year..

Reading is my passion. It is said about me by my near and dear ones that I cannot spent a day without spending sometime with a printed material before my eyes. I happily agree to that notion. It's true that I love to read, be it anything like a newspaper article, writings of fellow bloggers, magazine bits and pieces, novels and non-fiction or even (if nothing's available) the community newsletter and everything with religious interest and attention....!!! 
Last year I read a novel that I loved and will always remember.... 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini. It's the story of two friends in Afghanistan. This year, incidentally, another book on Afghanistan stood out of all my readings. This is not a novel though, but a work of non-fiction, named 'Good Morning Afghanistan. 

Waseem Mahmood, and award-winning broadcaster and an ex-BBC producer, writes this brilliant book about the radio programme (named, Good Morning Afghanistan) he, with his team, started in the nation ravaged by the unruly Taliban for over half a decade. After the fall of Taliban at the end of 2001, the radio programme voiced the concerns and the incidents that were taking place in the battered nation, helping the people in a way to get over the nightmare of years of war and irrational policing.

The book starts with the description of one of the heinous acts of terror in modern world, the 9/11 and how it shook the lives of a string of people mentioned in the book along with the thousands who bore the brunt of this destruction first-hand. Written with the lucidity of fiction and details of a document, Good Morning Afghanistan is a compilation of true incidents that happened in the course of one and a half year, beginning from September, 2001 to January, 2003. It reveals what Afghanistan went through during the course of the Taliban regime and what it takes for the people to recover from such huge material and emotional damage. It takes courage and persistence to bear the unnecessary and meaningless acts of cruelty and terror for so many years.

The book is a documentation of a nation starting afresh, after having lost almost every hope of getting back their usual way of life, with the radio programme giving them the first glimpse of hope.

I must say that I will remember this book as well with a heart full of compassion and respect for the brave people of Afghanistan.