INTRODUCTION
Growing up as I did in Muslim Afghanistan, I was exposed early on to a
narrative of world history quite different from the one that schoolchildren
in Europe and the Americas routinely hear. At the time, however, it didn't
shape my thinking, because I read history for fun, and in Farsi there
wasn't much to read except boring textbooks. At my reading level, all the
good stuff was in English.
My earliest favorite was the highly entertaining Child's History of the
World by a man named V. V. Hillyer. It wasn't till I reread that book as an
adult, many years later, that I realized how shockingly Eurocentric it was,
how riddled with casual racism. I failed to notice these features as a child
because Hillyer told a good story.
When I was nine or ten, the historian Arnold Toynbee passed through
our tiny town of Lashkargah on a journey, and someone told him of a
history-loving little bookworm of an Afghan kid living there. Toynbee was
interested and invited me to tea, so I sat with the florid, old British gen-
tleman, giving shy, monosyllabic answers to his kindly questions. The only
thing I noticed about the great historian was his curious habit of keeping
his handkerchief in his sleeve.
When we parted, however, Toynbee gave me a gift: Hendrick Willem
Van Loon's The Story of Mankind. The title alone thrilled me-the idea
that all of"mankind" had a single story. Why, I was part of"mankind" my-
self, so this might be my story, in a sense, or at least might situate me in
the one big story shared by all! I gulped that book down and loved it, and
the Western narrative of world history became my framework ever after.
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