Afghan Views/american Visions with Tamim Ansary

Program Description

After listening to callers on a morning radio talk show urging that Afghanistan be nuked or otherwise destroyed on September 12, 2002, Tamim Ansary wrote an e-mail that changed the course of his life. Ansary received unexpected international fame after sending this e-mail to twenty friends comparing the Taliban to Nazis and his Afghan people to Jews in concentration camps. Born in Afghanistan, he left at age 16 and has lived the majority of his life in the United States. Humble and soft-spoken, he said in a USA Today article, “I’m situated peculiarly on a fence between two worlds that can’t see each other-and I can feel both.” In this program he reflects his thoughts and experiences in the months since 9-11.

He is a columnist for Encarta and his newly released memoir is titled West of Kabul, East of New York (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2002).

Program Number: 2945            Host: Michael Toms               Interview Date: 5/28/2002