Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban has made many an ordinary event seem extraordinary, and few more so than the task that had Dr. Aziz Ahmad Rahmand, a professor of contemporary Afghan history, bursting with pride, joy and not a little gloating as he hurried about Kabul University on Wednesday.
Dr. Rahmand, 45, was supervising entry examinations, the kind of duty senior professors in most other countries might shun. But not in Afghanistan, where the source of the professor's bliss lay in the fact that row upon row of women were taking the exam beside men in the library and in many another unheated hall across the bitingly cold campus. ...
... Books, too, are in short supply. Years of no acquisitions, along with theft and book burning -- and that novelty of Taliban literary criticism, book shooting -- have left many shelves in the library empty.
The chief librarian, Muhammad Sadiq Wadid, 40, came running after the visitors to make a special request. "We say hello to the educated people in the Western countries," he said, "and we ask them, kindly, if you have any books about the technical and scientific world, engineering, literature -- anything! -- please send them to us.
"The Afghan people are in darkness, and we ask the Western countries to help us shine some light," he said. [read more]
For many US libraries, the disposition of duplicates is a major problem. Maybe some of them could be sent to Kabul?
