Monuments Woman

After channeling Redd Foxx while nearly choking to death, George talks to Laura about her jaunt to Zabul province and her quest to find historic sites to preserve.

Laura hires an intrepid and seasoned photographer to shoot Afghanistan’s heritage sites. As it turns out, this is no easy mission, as Robert Nickelsberg tells us in his own words.

After Armenia, Laura heads to a dig in Syria. In between stories of wild dogs and being detained by police, she teaches us a thing or two about Mesopotamian civilizations.

After her cat survives a fight with a venomous snake in her front yard, Laura reminisces about an Urartian archaeological dig in Armenia in the 1990s and an unexpected marriage proposal.

So how does one exactly become an archaeologist? Laura’s answer transports us to the 1990s to graduate school in a gritty New York and digs in broiling Cyprus and a newly independent Armenia.

With Kabul's internet at a slow drip and telecom companies losing staff and clients left and right, Laura and George manage somehow to connect with an Afghan colleague and friend. Jamal stayed in Kabul after the Taliban took over, and has a story to tell.

The Taliban are racing towards the gates of Kabul. Everyone is heading for the exits, even Afghan friends Laura and George thought would never leave. They reminisce about Laura's life in the confines of the US Embassy and the city just beyond the compound.

The discussion of the atmospheric Afghan north continues as Laura takes us on a sweep of its archaeological history. She uses words like "silverback" and "tumuli" that George had to look up and has now added to his everyday vocabulary.

Laura and George head to the north of Afghanistan, where archaeological riches abound and challenges mount as the once rebellious north comes under Taliban control.

Laura had an idea: a book on heritage work across Afghanistan, that tells the stories of how Afghans live and observe the archaeology and history around them. This book has become a document of what might be lost in the years ahead, now that the Taliban have taken over the country.