(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[film] The Kabul bookstore, Shah Mohammad Rais, has had a documentary team hanging in tow last week. The circus at Lillehammer is also attached to films.
- We are underway, and we have received development money from TV 2, confirms project manager Odd Syse to Ny Tid.
A more extensive money application has been sent to the TV channel. Free Word is also a current source of funding. Syse says that the point of departure for the film is a wonder of what went wrong.
- Is it possible to tell this in a different way? Can we get to the core, understand something more, he asks.
The bookseller's first wife, Aziza Rais, who currently lives in Canada, has already been interviewed and recorded. She supports the family history. From what Ny Tid experiences, she feels cheated, and thinks Åsne Seierstad is not a good person.
She tells the TV team that the award-winning Norwegian journalist has misunderstood situations and exploited their hospitality to the utmost. The worst, according to Aziza Rais, must have been Seierstad's portrayal of private matters. Aziza was the headmaster of a school in Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power. After the Bookstore in Kabul came out, she fled to Canada. She has not seen several of her sons in over two years. She doesn't feel safe, she says.
Odd Syse also wants to follow the bookseller to Pakistan and Afghanistan – and gets help from both social anthropologists and Afghans to understand what has happened.
- Åsne and the bookseller have a totally different starting point and they talk past each other. When his son and wife Suraya can stand on the stage in Lillehammer this week and say that what Åsne has done is worse than the Taliban, it is difficult for us to understand. What is he really talking about? We will use our questions about what and why as a starting point, says Syse.
Colleague Kaare Skard is also concerned with how this is observed from the sidelines:
- What is really happening? Is it a circus? A freak show? Åsne has stepped over and not done his job, but in the wake of that, it is a story that has not come out well enough. Where do you really lose each other, Skard asks.
If the financing of the film goes well, Syse and Skard hope it can be shown to the public next spring. Rais has now decided not to pursue financial proceedings against Åsne Seierstad.
Rais' second wife:
- Åsne stands in the way
Ny Tid talks to Suraya Rais before the couple traveled to Lillehammer this week.
[oslo] Book to Åsne Seierstad forcing the Rais family away from Kabul. Over the past year, they have lived a life of shallow life.- We can not go back to Kabul. We are threatened, says Suraya Rais.
- Have you read "The Bookstore in Kabul"?
- No, I can not read. Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to go to school.
Suraya Rais does not smile. Two of her youngsters run around a hotel in Oslo and raise, while the youngest is in a hospital in Stockholm. The oldest daughter lives in Canada with Rais say first wife, and has not seen mother say in two years. Next night, her words from the scene at Lillehammer will characterize the TV 2 news. Wednesday is referenced in all channels. How tired he is now.
- I got a home teacher in Afghanistan, but could not learn to read because of the book.
- But you know what's in it?
- I have received the right excerpt, my husband has explained what is written there. I do not want to hear more about it. I'm getting sick.
Suraya victory Åsne stands in the way and closes for her dreams.
- And if you were to write a book, what would you write about then?
- Then I would write about the poorest, Afghan women. We had a girl in our house who worked to earn money for her children. Åsne did not write a word about her. I would have written about them. So they could get help. We lack schools, hospitals. Everything. There is far too little attention paid to problems. They must write as it really is, she asks. n
