A Bed of Red Flowers Paperback by Nelofer Pazira

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (2006-04-11)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 432 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780679312727
• Item Weight: 294.84 grams
• Dimensions: 11.18 x 13.21 x 2.41 cm

As a young girl growing up in 1970s Afghanistan, Nelofer Pazira seems destined for a bright future. The daughter of liberal-minded professionals, she enjoys a safe, loving and privileged life. Some of her early memories include convivial family picnics and New Years’ celebrations overlooking the thousands of red flowers that carpet the hills of Mazar. But Nelofer’s world is shattered when she is just five and her father is imprisoned for refusing to support the communist party. This episode plants a “seed of anger” in her, which is given plenty of opportunity to grow as the years unfold.

In 1979, the Soviets invade Afghanistan beginning a ten-year occupation. The country becomes an armed camp with Russians fighting U.S.-backed mujahidin fighters while trying to impose military rule. For Nelofer, daily life includes an endless succession of tanks, rockets screaming overhead and explosions in the street. During this time, she and her best friend, Dyana, seek refuge in their love of poetry. At eleven, the two girls throw stones at Soviet tanks and plot other acts of rebellion at the local school. As Nelofer gets older, she joins the resistance movement, distributes contraband books, studies guerilla warfare and hides a gun in her parent’s mint garden.

When Nelofer’s younger brother comes home from school in military garb, the family finally decides to flee Afghanistan. What follows is a perilous, clandestine journey across rugged mountains into Pakistan. But the life of a refugee is not what Nelofer expects. Though she once idealized the mujahidin as freedom fighters, she is shocked, as a woman, to find herself stripped of her personal freedom in their midst.

In 1990, Nelofer and her family are offered refugee status in Canada. Here she corresponds with her friend Dyana, whose letters reveal the increasing oppression of life under the Taliban. Fearing that her friend will kill herself, Pazira returns to Afghanistan to rescue her. This search becomes the basis for the acclaimed film Kandahar. Her journey to discover Dyana’s tragedy leads her finally to Russia, the land of her enemy, where she confronts the legacy of the Soviet invasion of her homeland first-hand.

A Bed of Red Flowers is a gripping, heart-rending story about a country caught in a struggle of the superpowers – and of the real people behind the politics. Universally acclaimed for its astute insights and extraordinary humanity, Pazira’s memoir won the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize for 2005.The Winnipeg Free Press writes: “Powerfully written, A Bed of Red Flowers is a rare account of a misunderstood country and its intrepid people, trying to live ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances.” The Gazette (Montreal) describes the book as “an outpouring of passionate non-fiction that captivates like the tales of Sheherazade.… It’s a remarkable journey. An inspiring read.”

About the Author

Nelofer Pazira is a journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist living in Toronto.

In 2001, she starred in the film Kandahar, which was loosely based on her journey to find a friend living in Afghanistan. Two years later she co-directed and produced the Gemini Award-winning documentary Return to Kandahar.

A Bed of Red Flowers, her first book, won the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize awarded by The Writers’ Trust of Canada. In an interview with Time magazine, Pazira explains the impetus for writing the book: “A lot of my memories were unhappy, and I didn’t want to revisit them. But making Kandahar, I was forced to think about those memories. Once we finished the movie, I felt that I had started something, and instead of closing that door, I should go through it.” She elaborates on her choice of genre in Embassy: "I realized that I had a choice of doing either a very academic book that would be a history of Afghanistan, but what new can I say about that? There are hundreds of books written on that subject, analyzing various periods, and I asked what else can I add to this that would be different, that would really add a unique touch? I realized what I could do that was different would be to write about what life was like when we lived there. I realized that nobody knows about that, and that people don't know what it was like to live in Afghanistan in those years before the Taliban."

A regular contributor to CBC’s The National, Pazira has set up a charity – Dyana Afghan Women’s Fund – to provide education and skills training for women in the city of Kandahar.