Today, debut Afghan author Dezh Azaad was supposed to be landing in New York from Germany to celebrate the launch of his picture book The Carpet: An Afghan Family Story (Abrams).
The often harsh bureaucracy of migration kept that from happening.
Dezh Azaad’s beautiful book shows the reader how the carpet is the center of Afghan family life. His words and the illustrations of Nan Cao also tell us how the presence of a carpet and all it symbolizes keeps the people of the Afghan diaspora strong.
The young Afghan immigrant narrator says, “Though I’m small, I know it’s wrong, to never fit, never belong. The carpet keeps me strong.”
In the author’s note, Dezh explains that the incorrect association with 9/11 unjustly follows Afghans around the world. “My parents were witnesses to this shift, so swift; this construction of an identity they cannot even imagine as their own.”
He continues, “I wrote this book to share what we are really about: family, not war.”
But the stigma that Dezh hopes to fight with this book has kept the author from his audience. Despite starting the Visa process a year ago, his permission to enter the US still has not materialized.
I ask you to help launch Dezh Azaad’s book.
Share a link to the book
Purchase the book
Let’s raise our voices for Dezh and loving Afghan families worldwide.
Book Giveaway
Thanks to a donation from fellow author Nelly Buchet, 117 copies of The Carpet: An Afghan Family Story will go out to ALL those that entered the giveaway in April ’23!!
Thank you for everything!
Thank Y-O-U!