Book Discussion, Saturday November 7, 2015, 2:00 PM, San Leandro Main Library

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemon

Meet the Author

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Biography from Amazon.com: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The New York Times best sellers Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield and The Dressmaker of Khair Khana. She is also a contributor to Atlantic Media's Defense One site. In 2004 she left ABC News to earn her MBA at Harvard, where she began writing about women entrepreneurs in conflict and postconflict zones, including Afghanistan and Rwanda. Following MBA study she served as a vice president at the investment firm PIMCO. She has written for Newsweek, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune, as well as for the World Bank and Harvard Business School. She gave a TED Talk on Ashley's War and its all women's Special Ops team this past May, following on her 2011 TED Talk on the importance of investing in global entrepreneurs. A Fulbright scholar and Robert Bosch fellow, Gayle speaks Spanish, German, French and is conversant in Farsi.

Below is a TED Talk by Gayle Tzemach Lemon about Kamila Sidiqi and other female entrepreneurs in conflict areas and about the challenges they face and have overcome.

The Afghanistan Puzzle

Just as an example of why the situation in Afghanistan is so complicated, this is a map showing the territories of the different ethnolinguistic groups that form the nation of Afghanistan. The the dark brown area is the territory of the Pashtun people, the people traditionally known as Afghans throughout Central and South Asia. The Pashtun are also one of the major ethnic groups of Pakistan. This is the ethnic group that the Taliban came from. The bright green area is the traditional territory of the Tajik people, the ethnic group that the Sidiqi family belong to. The Tajik language is from the Persian family of languages. The Tajik people are also the majority ethnic group of Tajikistan, a Central Asian republic that was formerly part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Note: This map was created in 1985, and no doubt the boundaries of the different ethnic territories have shifted, maybe even significantly, since then.

UPDATE: Afghan Dresses

Here are links to a few sites selling Afghan dresses, including wedding dresses, so that you can get an idea what goes into creating one.

Saneens
Zarinas
Afghan Fashion