The Shadows of the Narrow Alley of Diwan

Isher Das on a subject Afghan literature has barely touched: what has happened to Afghanistan's Hindus and Sikhs over the course of its history. Where they appear at all, he writes, it is as a set of stock phrases — the Hindu's house, the Hindu sorcerer, the Hindu infidel, the Hindu's shop, the Hindu's garden — and the few writers who have taken up the subject properly have not been free of error, as with the song Dokhtar-e Sardar, wrongly tied to a girl of the Sikh community on no foundation at all. Few have troubled to clear the dust of sectarian hostility off these lives and let the facts show. Text in Dari/Persian.

Author: ایشر داس

Original title: سایه های کوچه تنگی دیوان