Beloved Afghanistan II

"It was a very interesting and educational display, expanding my understanding of the Afghan culture. Now I understand the sentence: Afghanistan is a very beautiful country. I got a lot of new information from your exhibition: now I am interested to learn more about this country. Thank you for the touching and beautiful images. Watching those photos I hope that there is a better future for Afghans. I felt melancholy and sadness thinking about the suffering of Afghans. What a pride and dignity on the faces of the people! Thank you for your devotion to Afghans. Great photos, fantastic – I was there, but I never saw this country like you did. Visiting this exhibition made me forget the typical media picture of “everyday war” in Afghanistan."
These are just some of the inscriptions in the guest book of my photo exhibition. There are comments in Estonian and in Russian (Russians are a big minority in Estonia), but also in English, in Italian, in Finnish, in German... Furthest visitors seemed to be from US, Australia and Guatemala.
The exhibition has been to five museums and it is now in Pärnu, our summer capital on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The exhibition has been quite popular. In addition, I have received a number of invitations to give lectures: students, teachers, librarians, clubs or non-profit organizations. Even Estonian military forces seem to be interested.
My book Beloved Afghanistan was published half a year ago. Generally the feedback has been nice (by the way, it has been called the most beautiful travel book ever published in Estonia). Sales have gone reasonably, but not as well as expected. Why? In my opinion there are two reasons: first, the larger audience is more interested in personal survival – neutral portrayal style is not so common. The other reason is related to stereotyping. One librarian wrote in her blog: "I recommended Beloved Afghanistan to my reader and he responded: I am not interested to read about war! But there is everything else - with the exception of war – in this book…"
Anyway, I am satisfied with the results so far - it is making good progress slowly, but surely. There are more and more people interested in culture of Afghans, but also in Islam and Central Asia. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia decided to support the project Beloved Afghanistan once again: two more exhibitions will be held in different towns of Estonia and book will be sent to every college and school in Estonia.