West of Kabul, East of New york by Tamim Ansary

This book is a biography of Tamim Ansary, an Afghan-American looking to reconnect with his afghan roots. Tamim's father was an Afghan who got the privilege of studying abroad in America where he met Tamim's mother, a shy Finnish-American girl who was also living at the University of Chicago. Tamim and his sister Rebecca were born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and because of their mother, they grew up speaking English instead of Farsi, eating with forks instead of fingers, and sleeping in beds instead of on mats. A few years later however, Tamim's father got a new job and the family moved to Lashkargah, where Tamim was first introduced to co-education, racism, and discrimination. After enduring name-calling, bullying, and overall rejection from his peers there, Tamim's family moved back to Kabul after another job change for his father. Later, during Tamim's high school years, he got application forms for CRMS (Colorado Rocky Mountain School) and after sending them off and receiving the acceptance letter, Tamim was off to America with his family traveling along to help him settle in, except they weren't planning on coming back. After his junior year at CRMS, Tamim's father was called back to Afghanistan and had the difficult decision of returning to the Ansary family compound or staying with his American family. He chose Afghanistan.

After high school and college, Tamim lived in a counterculture in Portland, an intimate community of closely interwoven networks of friends and lovers numbering around 200. A few years later, he began to move away from the counterculture and moved to San Francisco with dreams of being a writer. Once there and employed as an editor for a newspaper outfit called the Asia Foundation, he went looking for a similar communal living situation and found 1049 Valencia St. and Debby Krat. After living there for a while, he received a check in the mail and decided to use it to try and re-visit Afghanistan and the East. Before he went, he visited his mother in Maryland and met with his younger brother Riaz, who had just returned from Pakistan and had newly converted to Islam. Riaz's conversion was one of the reasons he wanted to go to the East, to find out about Islam. He traveled from Paris to Madrid to Algeciras before entering into the Middle East in Tangier, where he was swarmed by tour guides who were really just homeless men looking for a source of income. They told him about Abdullah, a "true muslim" who seemed like an extremist to him and was even worse in person, talking only of the harsh and negative side of Islam. After about a week, he traveled across Morocco to Oujda, a small town on the border of Morocco and Algeria. Unfortunately, getting to ALgeria was easier said than done because one had to walk from the Moroccan border to Oran, Algeria. On the train out of Oran, there was limited space so he stood between two of the cars with a group of Algerian soldiers who talked with him about Islam. He kept traveling and everywhere he went it was the same, Islamic and socialist countries with poverty and lots of "true muslims" eager to tell him all they knew about Islam. Finally, he decided to return to America where he married Debbie, left Riaz and his wife to themselves, connected with his Afghan cousins and friends, and decided that Islam was much too complicated for him.

I really liked this book because it was interesting to learn about his thoughts on Islam and what he thought of the situation in the East. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes reading about different cultures and ethnicities.