The woman from Kabul
I discovered that these qualities were personified in the young woman from Kabul. She had a fierce pride and self-belief; even on the 14th floor she never lost it. She wished to have an education for herself and her children. She would have stayed in Afghanistan under the Taliban, worn the burka, endured the silly privations, had it not been for the prohibition of education for women. She finished her university course in Scotland and sent me the dissertation for any last-minute corrections of her English. Few corrections were necessary. She was awarded an honours degree. Still, of course, she could not work. Then, to our great surprise, we learned that she was no longer in Glasgow, no longer in Scotland, but had moved to London, and that she had been granted leave to remain in this country. I could not quite understand why she had uprooted the children from a school where they were settled and happy. We have not heard from her again.
Robert Byron, a brilliant, meteoric talent, a man who despised appeasement, died at the age of 36 when his ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean in 1941.
So, yesterday, he was remembered too.
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13.11.09
Issue no 169
A week in Glasgow
north-east
Islay McLeod’s images of the constituency which produced more than 1,000 votes for the BNP on Friday morning
[click here]
The woman from Kabul
Afghanistan and remembrance I
Kenneth Roy
on a visitor who personified
the qualities of the Afghan
[click here]
The white poppy
Afghanistan and remembrance II
David Mackenzie
and Andrew Sarle
[click here]
The gentry’s cloth
Peter MacAulay
People wove tweed when
there was no other work
[click here]
A hunger for ideas
Walter Humes
on the intellectual
life of a city
[click here]
More than a bus operator
Richard Benjamin
leaps to the defence of
Ann Gloag. Sort of
[click here]
Next edition:
Tuesday