The Gardener of Lashkar Gah

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The extraordinary story of the Afghan family who built a garden under occupation, fought the Taliban and suffered during Britain's disastrous withdrawal from Kabul. The 20-year war fought by the US and its allies in Afghanistan is the longest war of the 21st century. It brought both opportunity and tragedy for those who were forced to live through it and reshaped the future of the Middle East. Its brutal and sudden end, marked by the withdrawal of British and American troops virtually overnight in August 2021, saw the Taliban recapture the country in what may come to be regarded as one of the worst foreign policy failures of the past hundred years. With the withdrawal came upheaval and torment for many Afghans who had loyally served alongside Nato forces for many years and were left to fend for themselves at the gates of Kabul airport. This is the story of one such family. The Gardener of Lashkar Gah follows the extraordinary journey of Shaista Gul, a kind, middle-aged man who one day began to build a garden inside a British base in Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand Province. For the next seven years, his garden grew into a famous oasis in a war-torn province, as the British and the Taliban fought. Illiterate, Shaista and his wife were also able to get their son Jamal an education, and he became an interpreter for the British army - one of the hidden heroes of the war in the Middle East that claimed so many lives. Their story is extraordinary, in that the Guls, more so than many others, paid a very high price for their loyalty. Larisa Brown - Defence Editor for The Sunday Times, award-winning journalist and a campaigner for the interpreters of Afghanistan - has spent years with the family to tell their story. In heartwarming and beautifully human prose, she unspools this story of courage, hope and sacrifice like a novel - with the beauty of the garden and the hopes and dreams of the family counterpointed with the violence, anger and chaos raging in Afghanistan at this time. For readers of The Beekeeper of Aleppo and No Way Out. The scandalous betrayal of many of the interpreters and helpers of the British and American armies is still being revealed, and this is an extraordinary and unique insight into one family's bittersweet experience of the end of the disastorous 'War on Terror'.