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Today I have another remarkable story for you about a book created out of the diaries and recordings left by a loved one. A story that tells the remarkable double life of an American woman named Jean Heringman Willacy. 

Sue Heringman –  I was going through her papers and found this incredible treasure trove of detailed diaries of her life in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and with those diaries there was also incredible photographs and there were drawings by Afghan refugee children and I think most priceless were cassette tapes that she made of recordings of when she was out and about in Afghanistan and also in the refugee camps and finding all of those things, I felt that it was really important to get them into a book and to get the book. 

That is her daughter Sue and yes, compiling all that material into a book is a great idea. Sometimes it’s easier said than done. The final nudge to get going on this project came from the last entry she found in her mothers diary. Here are her words read by an artificial voice actor. 

Quote read by voice actor – I have a lifetime of memories and experiences during my years in Afghanistan and would deeply love seeing something rewarding from those days.

Sue Heringman – So I really felt I owed it to Jean and to her adopted extended Afghan family to make every effort to transcribe all this diary material, which in the first draft ran to 600 pages, so you can imagine.

And that’s how it began. Sue, not unlike her mother, has led a life filled with international experiences. Born in Los Angeles, she attended High School in Arizona and college at the University of Iowa. She followed her mother to the UK, where attended college in London and that’s where she lives now. 

Sue Heringman – When my mother came to live in the UK, then I went to the University of London and following that I was in Spain working for the University of Southern California, so that’s me and I live in the UK now, not far from where my mother used to live, so it’s really nice.

If that’s a bit confusing don’t worry about it. My Goal was to show you that these women are not afraid to travel and when you have the heart of a wanderlust, and adventurer, then exciting things are going to happen.  

Sue Heringman – This was about 1967. She was traveling to the Hindu kush mountains and just arrived there and she fell in love with the country and also I have to say was an Englishman who was a fur trader in Kabul at the time and so that’s where she wanted to settle and make her home, so she lived in Afghanistan up until these first, the Soviet coup, which was in 1978, the Czar revolution, and she was one of the few foreign eyewitnesses to that military communist coup. She stayed on, yeah, afterwards for another year until 1979 when the Soviets then invaded Afghanistan, so there’s a lot of relevant material in the book.

You can say that again. Eye-witness accounts and photographs of the communist coup, Live recordings from the streets of Kabul, a first-hand experience of what it was like living in a Soviet puppet state. I would say that is some pretty interesting stuff. Let me backup for a second. In that last soundbite you heard her say “She was traveling to the Hindu kush mountains”. This mountain range straddles the borders between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India  and she just happened to be going there? 

Sue Heringman – Yeah, when she first went, when she first went, Kabul was a completely different place. It was considered to be the Paris of Central Asia and girls could wear mini skirts and women could work, even be judges, and so that happened up until the communist invasion, Soviet invasion, and then everything changed, of course, and that’s when my mother went to Pakistan

It was a different time. And, if you’re going to visit Pakistan you may as well drop in on the refugee camps and talk to some of the people living the life of a refugee in exile. 

Sue Heringman – I don’t know many people who would say, I dream of going to the camps in Pakistan, sheltering on the border with Afghanistan, and to help those people who have been fleeing for their lives, and that’s basically what she did. She wasn’t affiliated to anybody, any group, NGO, and she just went about it quietly in her own way, befriending people, sponsoring people, and doing the best that she could. 

For someone like me, who’s never ventured far from the good ole US of A, Jean’s story of courage and adventure is truly eye-opening, and if you’re thinking Jean was a young Wayfarer out sowing some youthful roots you would be gravely mistaken. 

Sue Heringman – Well, the amazing thing was her age, and she was 60 when she went into the camps, and she, when she first went to Afghanistan, she was 50, and so, yeah, not many women would do that, and particularly, she lived in some of the camps.

Did you get that? She lived in some of the camps and while she was there she interviewed women and lived out her dreams of travel and photography. 

Sue Heringman – My mother had over 3,000 slides. She had drawings by these Afghan refugee children of their wartime experiences. And my mother’s greatest regret was that she couldn’t go back to Afghanistan after the evasion.

This is just a snapshot of the experiences documented in her book and I hope I’m doing it justice. Sue Heringman’s mom was a pretty incredible person and if you’ll allow me one quick addition to her legacy I also want to point out that she once worked with Afghan women to make embroidered coats. I don’t know if you remember these Afghan coats but they were very popular in the late ’60’s. In the U.K one of them was called the ”Penny Lane” coat.

Sue Heringman – The hippies loved them, the embroidered Afghan coats, and the embroidery was what my mother was involved with, helping these widows, and she exported them and made sure that the proceeds went directly to the women.

Did early Beatle fans wear an Embroidered Afghan coat made by her mother and she other Afghan ladies while strolling down Abbey road, I really don’t know, maybe but I think you will enjoy getting to know Jean Heringman in a book that paints a portrait of some real people in a very different time. Well, different in some ways and very much the same in others. 

Sue Heringman – Jean makes us care deeply about the real people in the book. You’ve got Dr. Ghulam facing deportation from Canada. You’ve got Soraya in Germany trapped in a clash of cultures and red tape bureaucracy. And you have Habiba, a midwife, who is receiving death threats in the camps. So, Jean makes you care for these people and what happens to them. So, hopefully, that will help readers have increased awareness and empathy for not just their plight, but refugees worldwide. To be a refugee, Dr. Ghulam wrote, more than losing your country, more than losing your history and your culture, you lose the right to choose your way of life.

Before we wrap up here I wanted to share one more thing about Sue because publishing a book can seem like an impossible task for some people but it was kind of perfect for her. As a retired Spanish and English Teacher and translator she was always interested in writing and that is the skill that helps bring to life the amazing woman that until now we never knew. Here is Sue with a final takeaway for you.

Sue Heringman – Jean was able to overcome her own huge self-doubt. She always felt that she was too old to be able to make a difference. But that gave her the courage and determination to become the fierce foe she did when she was fighting the tyranny of bureaucracy or the staunch ally of all whom she befriended. And so, it’s important, I think, for us to take Jean’s inspirational example that no matter how limited one is in age or ability, there’s always some small thing that we can do to help whose world has just been turned upside down, even if it is just giving hope.

Care to take a trip back in time without leaving the country? Check out he Keeper of Families: Jean Heringman Willacy’s Afghan Diaries by Sue Heringman and for even more of the archives she uncovered you can check visit the University of Nebraska’s Chriss Library, they have the huge collection of Afghan material, secondary only to Afghanistan and its where you can find this book and all the rest of this amazing material where it can be studied and appreciated for years to come. And that will do it for this edition of Newsgram from Webtalkradio.com. 

Sue Heringman was recently on the Books on Air podcast hosted by Suzanne Harris. 

The post The Keeper of Families appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.