Afghanistan Memoir

What were you doing when you were 22? Where were you in the world? What did you want to do with your life? Ben Parkinson was a six-foot-four-inch paratrooper. He was in Afghanistan fighting for his country. He wanted to always be a soldier, to be a father and to get home in one piece. But we don't always get what we want. So the question is: how do we react when that happens? Easy: you find something new to fight for.

Ian Edwards, a physiotherapist, and his partner, Anne (a midwife), set out in 1983 to work in Russian occupied Afghanistan. Communication lines in and out of the country are poor in those days. He is under the impression that he will work in a rehabilitation unit with an orthopaedic surgeon. Instead, upon arrival, he finds out that he is in charge of the first physiotherapy training program and school in the country - a program and school that don't yet exist. After four years of hard work, Ian is burnt out and returns to Australia in ill health.

In the early days of the Afghanistan war, Jeff Stern was scouring the streets of Kabul for a big story. He was accompanied by a driver, Aimal, who had ambitions of his own: to get rich off the sudden infusion of foreign attention and cash. In this gripping adventure story, Stern writes of how he and Aimal navigated an environment full of guns and danger and opportunity, and how they forged a deep bond. Then Stern got a call that changed everything.