The “matal” or proverb in Mataloona: Pukhtun Proverbs and Mizh: A Frontier Classic (Oxford University Press, 2020) that I find the most delightfully emblematic of the value of a book such as this, is “(don’t be like) the frog that climbed a clod and said he saw Kabul.” The saying not only captures the dynamic […]
“A shock of unruly hair, curls tumbling down his neck. Heavy lips with a suggestive cast under a straight, immodest nose running directly into a prominent brow, his head set in its characteristic leftward tilt.” This is how historian Paddy Docherty describes the stone bust of Alexander the Great in the British Museum, in his […]