A common saying about Herat, Afghanistan is that you cannot stretch out a leg there without “poking a poet in the ass.” In her 2002 book The Sewing Circles of Herat, British journalist Christina Lamb attributes the quote to Ali-Shir Nava’i, a leading patron of the arts in fifteenth century Afghanistan. Khaled Hosseini borrows the line in the first chapter of A Thousand Splendid Suns. Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, thought the quip clever enough to recount in his memoirs, the Baburnama.
Farzana Marie, who first traveled to Afghanistan as a volunteer teacher and then as a member of the U.S. Air Force, repeats Nava’i’s line in the introduction to her recently released collection of poetry. Compiled, translated, and edited by Marie, Load Poems Like Guns: Women’s Poetry from Herat, Afghanistan brings together a selection of works from eight Afghan women who have preserved, and are reviving, Herat’s cultural heritage.
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