Notes on Akbar Ahmed’s The Thistle and the Drone

  1. Akbar Ahmed's The Thistle and the Drone is his reading of the American War against Terrorism and its ambiguities. He is a former Pakistani Civil Servant, for a number of years Professor at American University, who identifies with the British administrative tradition and a distinguished academic anthropologist—which combined with a liberal humanist Islam and his own identity as an Pashtun aristocrat who knows everyone influences this very human book. His wife was a member of the Royal Family of Swat way into the mountains of Northern Pakistan and his father a senior civil servant. My favorite story is when I had him come as a lecturer to the Foreign Service Institute and was worried about him being late. Only to discover him sitting on a bench in reception because the secretary had not imagined...

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The Week’s Reading List

In Queen Esther's Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature A lot of reading this week. First, a book on Judaeo-Persian literature.  There turns out to be a remarkable amount with an impressive level.  Interesting is the parallel with other Western literature.  A translation of the Bible by Shahin the greatest of the Judaeo Persian authors (1300s) starts with a story about the origin of the devil in a rebellious angel (shades of Paradise Lost), a great sequence latter in which Jacob figures out that his sons aren’t coming clean with him about what happened to Joseph including a sequence with him interrogating the wolf accused.  Also a piece by Imrani (14-1500s), echoing Dante’s Inferno, with graphic accounts of the various sinners suffering in hell—not as clearly connected with specific targets. I can’t imagine that we won’t be...

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