provides cover but it is funded by a private foundation and teachers received a small stipend for teaching. they meet today's per week and run five or six weeks. then everybody goes to the tent to register. . .

developed the citizenship schools initially. four months after parts left highlander is the day she refuses to move from her seat on the bus. so there's a lot of behind-the-scenes organizing and educational efforts going on in the movement before things emerge into public view and clark was a big behind-the-scenes person preparing people to take action through her education program. as far as things people don't know i don't think that many people know of her at all and her role in the movement. clark first took political action in 1919 after world war i. she joined the charleston naacp

to force charleston to hire black teachers in their black schools, public schools because they only had white teachers at this point. and so she joined early and she kept not on an unbroken chains but she had that experience, and through that experience she kind of set the pattern that she would follow brought in her life which is to advocate on behalf of black women and their professional options but also on behalf of black children so she was concerned through her life and activism with things like health care, employment, political participation and the eggs and flows over the course of her life but it's always there. the one thing that is important that was recognized she said one

time it's like the pebble thrown in the pond. one thing spreading out starts others and it was like a lifelong approach for her and certainly shows her wisdom and that's also something she would say to us today but tv continues now with khaled hosseini who talks about his travels in afghanistan and his work with the high commissioner for refugees. this is about an hour. >> thank you for this beautiful

synagogue it's such an extraordinary setting and to see all of you here to a claim. this is a work of fiction for any of us that have spent time in afghanistan. stevan like your first two novels this is less you have described it, less afghan center at and more global in its perspective. i am wondering how central the complex history of afghanistan is. it's always been afghanistan and the last 30 some odd years has been a background character in my novels and in my first and

second book it's in the background of this novel as well but i would say not quite as prominently. part of that is because as i wrote the novel i saw the character struggles playing out on a more personal intimate level that's more of a human drama not necessarily playing out on the big political arena but there are characters in the book whose lives are seriously impacted by the defense in afghanistan by the taliban and the fighting in afghanistan and so on and so forth. it's just not quite as forceful of an impact. part of it is because it's sort of my way to attempt to try to change a conversation about afghanistan. i felt i dealt with of those things in the first two books and it's nice to have a conversation about afghanistan and dhaka characters and the relationship and a brother and

sister, parent and child talk about your complicated feelings about welfare and so on and so forth rather than the war and so on and so forth. >> i read that you said that this is a love story and clearly the relationship, the sibling relationship is rooted in this fierce love but there is so much heartbreak and the trail to the kobe -- betrayl but there is also the mother and father and child and the sacrificing of children first in the allegory that you open sacrificing the child to the double but then of course the heartbreak that follows. >> the novel is sort of thing

shaped like a tree and there is a love story between a boy in his 3-year-old sister. we need them in the 1950's and they live in a remote village in afghanistan and they are on their way to kabul with their father, a kind of trekking across the desert and neither child knows what's in store for them. when they get their something rather dramatic happens that splits this beautiful relationship between the brother and his sister and the are separated. and it's a separate nation that is both in very unique and specific ways and from there the story just spreads out and this one act early in the novel has echoes.

at the core it is a family story and it's a love story like you said. it's between cousins, and interested in the manifestations of love that are the kind of different from the usual man we meets woman and a fall in love and i've sort of just inclined to write that is a dramatic motive between the people that have a of an unlikely deep meaningful relationship circumstances. >> so many of these relationships of lawful so involved caregiving between the sisters what is it about that will of caregiving that also

inspires you to create these characters. it's meeting someone and falling in love and going on a date and that sort of thing but it turns out love is a lot of work. it's complicated. when my father became sick in the last year-and-a-half and two years of his life and as he gradually lost his faculties and became increasingly dependent. in this beautiful rock-solid expression of love that i've

ever seen. and that kind of expression of love writing about that is very appealing in its meaningful, its deep, and i find it very touching and moving. >> you said that you were inspired by the william blake pullen and the idea of the children's voices echoing in the mountains. what about that poem captured your imagination? >> i kept waiting for a title that never came and we begin to worry and e-mail my editor what am i going to do? so i started researching poems about children because in some ways of this really is about children. and i found this lovely poem by william blake and of one of the last lines was all the hills

echoed. >> he's singing them. i thought was an evocative phrase and it struck me. i talked to my editor and we kind of played around with it and changed the hills of the mountains for obvious reasons because in afghanistan because the mountains are so recurring in the novel but more so for the word echo because as i mentioned earlier there is a central event that happens in the book. each of them are given a chance to voice their perspective so the novel is composed like a series of a mosaic vignettes

that they enter and create collectively in one big picture. >> there is a scene of the family massacred involving -- roshi. and the complexity of the choices made by those who come to afghanistan and then the doctor returns to california. can you expand on that? >> there is a chapter in this book where there is an afghan living in northern california. [laughter] who has been away for 20 some odd years who returns to afghanistan after the fall of the taliban and has a very difficult experience.

for one thing when he arius' he feels out of place. the experiences of the people on the street by passed him and he hasn't shared in the struggles and all of that horrific things that have happened so he's not sure how to connect with the people and interact with them and what is the proper way to engage with the locals, with his own people, so he feels like a fish out of water and then he meets this young girl named roshi who has been brutally injured, he meets her in the hospital and something about this little girl awakens something in him and this sort of dormant philanthropic and paulson and he becomes very attached and decides he's going to help her then he returns home and he learns a kind of

difficult lesson about the midst of his own powers and how complicated the generosity really is about the strain is difficult nature of actual kindness about charity so it becomes a kind of morality tale it's something i thought about a lot when i get to afghanistan and of my impulse was to help everybody. i was very careful not to promise anything to anyone but i can't help everybody on the street when i came back, i realized that's just human impulse and the emotion speaking yet to be organized and think it takes time and patience and

perseverance and so on and so forth. so anyway, those are sort of the themes and that story. >> in fact you have the foundation that we saw in the film your work as a u.n. envoy there is an impulse to try to find a structure for the need to help. >> absolutely. i have made it abundantly clear that one of the reasons i started my foundation is all i had overwhelming guilt when i went to afghanistan and kabul and this is the inside of a 12-year-old and that doesn't make it untrue. it felt very guilty because my life is so charmed and this is before the publication in my book and so on and left a life of complete privilege. i saw these people on the street

and realized the only thing separating me from the man chewing gum on a street corner is genetics. if i had been born and his family, i would have been in the refugee camp in pakistan and i wouldn't be where ibm. that is what it boils down to. and so deep inside there is this a million feeling of privilege of kind of survivor's guilt which i know other afghans to allow. so my foundation, that is one of the reasons why i started this is to turn something that i found as a negative emotion into something positive, productive, and as a vehicle to do something that hopefully was enduring and would make a difference in the lives of people who live written about in my box to read that is the point of the foundation is to help people like my characters, the elderly, the sick, the people on the street, the downtrodden vulnerable people.

>> having been recently with secretary carey and the president gave a speech which is largely motivated by the necessity to refrain our relationship with afghanistan and the region as we begin withdrawing what is your perspective going forward? do you see this as conceivably being the first truly free election of the handing off power and the successful withdraw can afghanistan stand on its own militarily? >> that is a very big question facing a chemist in. i don't think anybody knows the answer to that. i don't think the afghan people certainly know. i would describe the upcoming few years as a time of uncertainty in the minds of many afghans certainly those that i've spoken to. there are some that are

convinced i happen to be not among them, but there is a legitimate argument some make that afghanistan, the doomsday scenario is coming. the doomsday scenario being not only the takeover by the taliban, but what happened before the taliban which is all out militia warfare. there are people who believe that will happen. i happen to think maybe it is wishful thinking that i happen to think it won't helpfully and the parties that were involved in the several war hopefully have learned important lessons about the benefits of peace and of a peaceful country. but certainly that is the boogeyman that every afghan right now is terrified of is the return to the chaos of the rampant violence with impunity of the 1990's. >> one of the recurring themes in my book is the women of afghanistan and their efforts,

self-determination, the education, things americans have done the things that afghans have done for themselves and women business leaders who are extraordinarily very worried about the fragility of the legal rights that they have won, these interventions. >> things have been approved in pockets and i think that if you were to go to a remote village say south of afghanistan you wouldn't know what your it is. it could be 1999 or 1950 some things haven't changed all that much. i think in the urban regions like kabul there have been significant advances in the field of women's rights and there is a female provincial governor in afghanistan that would have been unthinkable before september 11th, the women serving in the lower house of

parliament. but i, like you and those business leaders in afghanistan do worry. i think that the role of women in afghan society has to be preserved and tested be one of the cornerstones of national rebuilding if they have any chance of being a prosperous peaceful nature. the way to lift people out of poverty is to empower women if you have 50% of the population of the public sector and if they are in prison in their homes you are doomed. so i'm hoping that isn't a bargaining chip at the negotiating table whenever those negotiations have been. >> i think people would want to know how you go about your writing, how the creative process works with you.

>> it's very disorganized. i know writers that outlined their entire novels and spent a lot of time outlining every chapter and spent three months writing the book and in some way i envy that but it doesn't work for me. i just start writing. this novel my latest book began with just a very, very simple but clear and vivid picture which was there was a guy walking across the desert pulling one of those red flyer wagon and a little girl about the-years-old in the wagon and about ten steps behind there was a boy following them. i had no idea who these people where, where they were going but this image completely possessed me and i became convinced. it was very dramatic and compelling and i had to figure out what it is. they kept snowballing to the

point that this came my most sweeping book with a largest cast of characters and more ambitious and bigger in a thematic way but it just kind of snowballed. i had no idea or the book was going. i ended up having revelations come epiphanies with each subsequent draft so i keep remolding into something truthful to me. as for instance the dramatic example is in the kite runner more than an entire draft and i have no idea that the two were related. i wrote a whole draft and then i thought of it and it changed the whole tenor of the book. so it became a more powerful but

i think for that because of that relationship. it was not planned. >> it's not an accident one of your characters is a poet. poetry infuses this book. >> it does because it is in the afghan seóul. if you go to afghanistan and you've been many times you talk to people there's even a poetry in the way that they express themselves. even in remote villages people know poetry. they can recite suddenly reverses. when we were in school we were obligated to memorize poetry and to people to recite it from memory. even in the way people express themselves this is a slight lead poetic flavor to the way people speak. i think the most vivid example is when i went to the palace

which was built by an afghan king and was a massive prowl less and a cancer of the battlegrounds for all of that fighting in the 1990's ended end up being the perfect metaphor for what's happened to absolute destitution and snakes and scorpions everywhere and so much of the graffiti was poetry and i was very touched by that. there was lines of classic poetry and lines that had been to amateur poetry that a lot of it was amateur come some verses and so on and there is a character in this book the was a

greek doctor they say why do you stay here why do you like this place. even the graffiti artists spray paint so that is a lot. >> what do you hope that people take away from this experience of reading this book aside from the fact it is so heartbreaking and sweeping in its emotional grip? >> there is a real answer to that question and then there is the fake noble answer to that question. you want the real one. okay. the answer is i want people to be deeply moved. i want people to read this book and recognize something of being human on this planet as they

come to understand it this far on the pages of the book i want them to read something and say you know i know that experience. i've had that. i know what he's talking about and to the devil to connect on that kind of a human level with my riding. but, the fake noble dancer and what i want people to understand and afghanistan better, i happen to hope they do but it's not the reason i sit down to write. understand fiction serves a purpose and it reaches people in ways that the writer never really intended so my books have served as a window into afghan history and culture and way of life and has given a human dimension for the same kind of

things over and over again. >> often in the news for a different reason, american understanding why we are there and with this commitment is and what you've managed to do is create the universal reality of human experience. >> thank you for saying that. it's the first step to empathy, not that i'm trying to create empathy but that is what history apparently does. i always use the example to make me feel for the first time we must have been like to be refugees fleeing the civil war and trekking across the desert to make it across the border in kenya being attacked by wild animals and the militia along the way i felt a good sense of empathy for those boys just because of this book, this novel

and that's what literature is for you to leap over low wall and that is the gift of reading is that you get to be some deals for awhile and experience something different and come to understand them better. >> thank you for the gift you've given us. i know people have microphones and our friends from politics and prose have organized. so please, come down the aisles. >> may i say this is of the loveliest of the new -- venue. it's beautiful here. >> and a perfect place, a perfect setting for us to talk to you. thank you. >> hello. i am still waiting to wake up.

>> i'm sorry? >> i'm still waiting to wake up i can't believe i'm finally face-to-face talking to you. >> i thought you were waiting for me to wake up. [laughter] >> my friend is deborah cummins and my friend and i are both educators, high school teachers. i don't have a question for you, i'd just like to tell you your remarket how you may not be aware of how you affected people just really sets in my heart because my friend and i were both -- we spearheaded an effort as part of our curriculum in northern ireland which was very successful and i1 you to know thousands of students have read your book and it's changed the lives from admitting this is the only book that they have ever read to passing it down to their siblings to changing prejudice and stereotypes'. i wanted to let you know that and we are forever grateful for

that. [applause] ..

>> ha man when they do have that impact to connect with

people on a level that might change their mind about something to make a positive impact to be eliminating in some fashion so every time i try with the'' other'' agenda it has always, about as polemical and self-conscious in digest's see in her myself on the pages just a gimmick i have been following you and i have been here that long and thank you for a wonderful interview. they queue for coming to washington. i am sure i speak for many people about feeling a real sense of sadness whenever i finish a book of yours because when you create reader real good books you are very sad and i cannot wait but what happens to

your characters and you are finished friday a book? do they live with you or have coffee with you or do you set them free and let them live their lives? >> they live with me by which i amy when i have written a final draft and i am editing that not just when i am writing but taking my son to his guitar lessons and waiting for my daughter to be finished swimming. they constantly live with me and so they become very real people who thought and it is a cliche but they occupy a natural state in my life. but once the book is done, and then they are gone. i know they don't belong to me anymore because of a

buddy will have their own idea and anticipation of the characters and it will be out to the public and people take great ownership of them. i will give you a very dramatic example when i wrote my first novel there is a character that is the main character who is a boy who goes into afghanistan and brings them back to the united states. during the book signing this lady walked up to me and said powell is as the boy doing? [laughter] and i said i saw that she was serious i said you know, , it is a novel. [laughter] is not real and she looked at me and i could tell she was not going to have it. she said you just tell him i am praying for him.

[laughter] that is when i realized these characters do not belong to me anymore. [laughter] >> one of my favorite lines in the book you say the creative process. >> the first person to ask a question seven because i got the book when it came out and i devoured it. so who do you steal from? >> i don't mean actually steel. [laughter] >> there it is up part and

how repressed they have been because she is such a modern woman. and then in the '70s but she is a poet and fiercely sexual creature and a very brazen and very outspoken outspoken, extremely intelligent, insightful, i terrible mother, a devoted mother, and extremely talented. and does not cower before anybody.

but she says right team is inactive theory with any piece of beautiful writing you will find all manners because that is taking things that do not belong to you. i am not saying plagiarism but it is his work is plagiarism but what she means and what i mean is as horrible as it sounds, you cannot write from a vacuum and make things up out of the blueprint you have seen something or have heard something or have observed something that struck you as interesting and you incorporate that into your writing. and the characters are

things that i felt personally so things i felt all the time but from other people that i come across and then to see them intriguing. >> i just love the way that you put that. if you think your medical that has the creative writing process and how? >> with my a medical training without sleep being a whole lot. [laughter] >> that is journalism.

[laughter] >> and it taught me to persevere because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. with enacting of perseverance. i really compartmentalize my life very well. i was not very happy. i have tremendous respect for the profession itself but it just was not me. i was writing to escape facilites kept those parts of my life separate but that said there is medical stuff happening. even with the illnesses so my training does come in handy to tell stories. >> i am wondering how your book has been received in afghanistan and if it has

raised in a controversy there? >> i see my first book did not my second book indicts doubt the third book will politically it is probably the least political but if you have lived in exile over two decades and all this stuff happens in the homeland. and then to have opinions and some of those will be good and some not so good. so my sense with the more liberal professional afghan a groundswell of support for my book that talks about things end afghanistan and then more open in to discuss the issues that my novel

raised but that perhaps mower religious members of the committee not adapt it wasn't adequate but may be kept quiet it was unethical to the idea of writing and to shy away then you really should not be in the business because your job really is to write about things that upset people. my book did create a dialogue a lot.

>> other questions? >> i was going to ask you about the controversy over targetted killings over civilians come and casualties and resentment of america. when you go back in the afghan community at large, and you find growing resentment despite the mutual sacrifices by americans and afghans to try to find some kind of peace? >> with people i have spoken today have a new ones view of the american involvement they are the nomadic people of marino that they have the

empire so there is no history of welcoming the foreign troops to the afghan soil. [laughter] but among many afghans with nato and the u.s. presence is a safeguard in against the doomsday scenario against the completes unraveling of a war and the chaos we saw in the '90s. that has been expressed to me over and over in early on in the campaign it was fairly solid in the majority of afghans supported the presence now if has been a compromise to some extent the last few years because of the things that you mentioned and the targeted attacks that had collateral damage because of the air strikes and certain in

sensitivities that have been in afghanistan the urinating on the bodies and the acheron and certainly the others did not help at all and that was a disaster so there was a gradual erosion of that support but even today despite everything that has happened i think many afghans do feel a sense of trepidation. not because they like to have foreigners on there land but i think with some legitimacy concerns how prepared the afghan state is can it pulled together to do the primary job for its population with a bit of a

questionable notion right now and the jury is out. >> it is a sense that we have fairly or unfairly that political leadership has not grown to the task to see the best example and a difficult relationship, to put it mildly with american leaders and we don't see candidates emerging although apparently there will be a large field of candidates in this coming election but we don't get the rise of homegrown candidates who seem to be carrying the mantle. >> that is why this is a story right now at least that does not get that much traction but actually i happen to think is pretty critical in the future of afghanistan we have a future

presidential election coming up in 2016 and the question of who the candidate is and who may win the election is important but equally important is how the election is carried out. will they be non-violent? and reasonably fair with the afghan public? the government that emerges from that election perceived as having legitimacy? if the answer is no, i worry that is the trigger for political instability that could unravel into violence. it is a critical period

coming up next year. >> host: you just brought out this book and i don't know if you're already working on other ideas for your next book you could share spec if anybody has an idea. [laughter] now is the time to tell me. i just want to survive my books tour then open my mind in the fall. >> you have written about fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and generations of families. should we assume? >> it is partly because and i have said this in the past two others because when i grew up in afghanistan it is very, very difficult to

state the role that they play how you see yourself as a person and how you understand your place you don't see yourself necessarily as isolated as an individual but as ascend ascend, cousin, a brother, a grandson, a family is how you make sense of your world and and how you might want -- a understand your identity and the fact forget about literature but of the great experiences of life are contained within this family of love, i regret, forgiveness reconciliation, a duty, a sacrifice so to me it is an endless source of fascination and one that has always spoken to me. i don't know what happens next but it is entirely possible. >> if you had been a girl.

[laughter] of your generation would have you had the education and the opportunity? >> i happen to grow up in afghanistan and fortunately got to see the final few years of an era of what many afghans now would call the golden era. i remember how startled if i was when i told somebody in france that was from afghanistan and they had no idea where it was it had never heard of it. i feel privileged i got to live in that period didn't retrospect before the taliban, drug-trafficking, t aliban and, and it was culture and influx of modernization and i will go

overboard but it was making its way and to see if it was a great place to grow up the sounds funny but it was from my perspective and don't mistake that and it was a poor country even than so i think if i was born a girl i certainly would have been educated my mother was vice principal of a very large high-school and there version many professional women in the family so i don't think it would have been a problem. we need to get back to those days and that is one of the key things of the future of the afghanistan is the education of women it is not a secret to raise yourself out of poverty to empower women and i have said this

has to be a right to it cannot be a bargaining chip the future of afghanistan is crucial and is not negotiable. [applause] >> you can see for all of us, me personally, and everyone, this has been a very special time to hear your thoughts how you create these wonderful works of fiction and this is the best of all. so for those who have not had the chance, the book is "and the mountains echoed" and it is extraordinary and compelling and a morality

play over generations set in this place but also in california with this team that is universal to all of us. >> i appreciate this parker did not say this backstage and i have learned so much from your program and i am an admirer of yours and i am -- you're terrific you do when they tell me you would do the interview i was floored. it is a privilege. [applause]

>> we will pave talking about the end to logical collection he was trained as an end in junior born in 1896 and a rigidly born in hungary but entomology was his hobby but he was a serious entomologist and he would collect specimens at an ray h. then by 1957 the smithsonian national nazareth national museum knew about the specimen collection and items which were transferred

from russia and then they were interested in this and realized he had a library as well so he started to advocate for the library to be purchased by the state. it took about two years of negotiations and purchased for a large amount of money but it was certainly worth it and they actually paid to have the shipping in 1959. there is the difference between titles because it is a scientific collection there are a lot of journalists. there is a large amount of individual volumes within one titled ranging between 1476 through the 1950's so i was sure you the highlights of the collection. it is very hard to select because there are so many extended items. this is a fragment of the

oldest piece in the collection of every single item and this is an illustration by one of the most prolific german writers in the 14th century and also durbin and catholic and an illustration from his natural history budget for the manuscript it is a typed version. and the images self portrays in sex but we thought that was different that we will look at later on. >> this is from an interesting person but nobody knows anything about

it he was a naturalist and and a painter to translate into french and published 1781 and you kids see it is a different process this is an engraving and the illustrations are hand-painted. this is an awful interesting text these are scarab beetles. at the beginning which is unusual for his era mentions the men and many animals which is the insect the opera for life and therefore capable of suffering pain and in showing pleasure the

borer beetle deals a death. this is a very interesting item i have and the collection and this is a set that was designed for children so i first published 1799 through 1870 in each of them have an engraving each between five and 10 pages to teach children about science. this inveigling to fix the aristocratic figure teaching children with natural science and the background is what we would call the curiosity cabinet with the specimens showing exotic places and a fascination of the world and exploration

that is prevalent during the 19th century. these are not hand colored and it makes it such a vibrant piece. but that these are the illustrations but this was published between 17:86 a.m. and 1788? >> this is a an engraving but obviously my dedication with have been mandatory for this type of details in the other thing to mention is the insects obviously were all deceased and as happened. generally they were

collected in large timbers and the artist would paint them and the engraving would be made for the process then you could see we're the plate to actually is. this is printed and one of our rare pieces. a two volume set. but with the descriptive entomology in the united states and he also would find -- funds a society in the united states and there are many awards named from him and there are all sorts of frontier areas all over the country that collect many specimens along the way

and he is also at times the specimen collection was from europe and many people try to classify there collections and this is one of the first volumes published an american insects only. . .