The Taliban Shuffle: I felt parts of myself slipping away.

I wrote “The Taliban Shuffle” as a comedy precisely because we witnessed so much tragedy, and the only way to bear it was with a dose of dark humor. I knew people who were killed, who were kidnapped. We all did. The longer I was there, the more times I had to wash blood and whatever else off the bottom of my shoes, the more I felt parts of myself slipping away.

I wrote the book because I was furious with all that had gone wrong in these countries that I had come to love, and because absurdity was the only frame that helped me make sense of what I saw: a military operation dubbed Operation Turtle, a Tarts-and-Talibs-themed party. My greatest wish is that the movie will remind people about Afghanistan, currently in a perilous state and almost forgotten by the world’s media. Maybe more people will start talking about a holistic approach to the region rather than the Whack-a-Terrorist game we seem to be playing. And maybe more people will read the book, which as everyone knows is “always better than the movie.”

Kim Barker, a metro reporter at The Times, is the author of “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/books/review/my-kabubble-starring-tina-fey.html