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Remembering Nancy Hatch Dupree 2: Nancy in the Words of Others

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Remembering Nancy Hatch Dupree 2: Nancy in the Words of Others Remembering Nancy Hatch Dupree 2: Nancy in the words of others Author : AAN Team Published: 21 October 2017 Downloaded: 5 September 2018 Download URL: https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/remembering-nancy-hatch-dupree-2-nancy-in-the-words-of-others/?format=pdf It is 40 days since the historian, archivist and activist on behalf of Afghans, Nancy Hatch Dupree, died, aged 89. She had spent decades of her life in Afghanistan or, like many Afghans, in exile in neighbouring Pakistan. She was the author of guidebooks on Afghanistan and a publisher of books. Then, first with her husband, Louis, and, after he died in 1989, by herself, Nancy amassed the most extensive archive of documents of the last forty years. Those 100,000 documents are now housed in a special building, known as the Afghanistan Collection at Kabul University (ACKU). Last night, in London, friends and colleagues met to celebrate Nancy’s life and mark her passing. Here, we publish some of the tributes that were made that evening. 1 / 12 Our first despatch to mark Nancy’s ‘fortieth day’, a republishing of an interview she gave in 2007, can be read here. See also AAN’s obituary for her and our report about the opening of the AFKU here. Shoaib Sharifi, journalist My first exposure to the name ‘Nancy Dupree’ goes back 18 years to 1998 when I joined Voice of Sharia, the official name of Radio Afghanistan under the Taliban. At a time when the world thought of Afghanistan as in one of its darkest eras and against all odds, as a newly recruited intern, I was assigned to introduce Afghanistan, its art and culture to the world via Radio Voice of Sharia’s English Programme. The editor of foreign languages at Voice of Sharia, an educated and dedicated Taleban official, handed me an overly used book and gave me my job description in two sentences: “This is a historical guide to Afghanistan written by a foreigner. It talks about the golden days of Afghanistan. Read this!” Nothing more, nothing less. 2 / 12 Nancy’s legendary guide to Afghanistan: published in 1970 and still the go-to guide. And with Nancy Dupree’s book An Historical Guide to Afghanistan, not only did I get a year-long approved written script to start my career in media with, but I also re-discovered the golden days of my country. I found in it the tales that my grandma had told me as bed-time stories, but this time they were told and endorsed by a foreigner. Nancy’s historical guide to Afghanistan was the first non-text book I had ever read, the first book that introduced my own country to me, a teenager brought up in war, who had experienced nothing but gloom and conflict. Nancy’s half a century work on Afghanistan history and culture captured the image of the golden days of Afghanistan, preserved it and then presented it to new generation, a generation that had seen nothing but misery. Her work strengthened the younger Afghan generation’s sense of pride in our golden past, and gave a reason to be optimistic for a glorious future for us in/for Afghanistan. 3 / 12 A mural of her appeared on a Kabul T-wall 48 hours after her death with the message, “My hero,” on top. This was something that Kabul and Kabulis hadn’t seen for quite some time, the picture of a real hero, uncontested and non-controversial. Nancy’s life and death proved wrong the Afghan proverb which says, “We don't have living heroes or dead villains.” She also proved wrong the accepted definition of what it means to be a present-day Afghan hero. We now have a proven case that has broken through all the usual limitations: to be a hero, you do no need to be from a certain faction, or represent a particular faith group, quite oddly and surprisingly, you do not even need to be a man. You simply need to be Nancy Dupree with a sustaining love for the country and its people. Nassim Jawad, former director, Austrian Relief Committee for Afghanistan in Pakistan I knew Nancy and her late husband Louis Dupree for many years, especially from the time when Afghan refugees were pouring into Pakistan in their thousands and both Nancy and Louis were heavily engaged in helping refugees, while maintaining neutrality and integrity in a place that was packed with foreign spies from countries around the world. Nancy and Louis helped preserve our literature and thereby our culture, reminding Afghans that cultural integrity will eventually help us become a free society again. Their home in North Carolina, which I had the privilege to visit in the 1980s, was filled with their notebooks from their journeys beginning in the 1950s and 1960s and textbooks, journals, internationally published literature and books on Afghanistan from all over the world. When Louis passed away in the 1990s, Nancy sold her house, transferred all the literature to a regional library with the condition that as soon the situation permitted, it should be transferred to an Afghan library. She promised to spend the rest of her life in Afghanistan and with Afghans, serving our dear country. And she did so, as aside from short trips to the US, attending medical check ups etc, she spent her last years permanently in Afghanistan. Nancy has been a true Afghan and I always wished we had a few dedicated Afghans like Nancy – we would have been much better off. She has left a huge vacuum behind. However, she worked hard in the last 10 to 15 years to train, build capacities and empower Afghans to take on the challenges and take responsibility for their own affairs. During my last visit in Kabul, I met some of the great young Afghans, Nancy’s students, who I believe will continue in her path. As the Afghan proverb goes: “Nancy has been framed in the mirror of our hearts…” and will remain there forever and Afghans will not forget her. She has passed away, but her spirit will guide many bright young Afghans to follow the path and make Afghanistan once again a great country. 4 / 12 Andrew Wilder, Vice-President United States Institute for Peace, Asia Programmes My first memory of meeting Nancy was in Peshawar around 1990 at the first Louis Dupree memorial lecture that she organized to honour her husband. I had the good fortune to know and interact with Nancy off on since then, although I must admit that many of these interactions involved Nancy scolding me. For example, during the 1990s she was constantly scolding many of us NGO workers for not consistently submitting our NGO reports for her collection of grey literature at the ACBAR Resource and Information Center (ARIC). When I was at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, AREU (2002-2005) in Kabul, she was extremely persistent in her requests that we provide a regular supply of readable publications in Dari and Pashto for her innovative and invaluable project to provide box libraries to communities all over Afghanistan. I feel very fortunate that during a visit to Kabul in early September, and thanks to an email from Jolyon Leslie about Nancy’s condition, I had the opportunity to have a final visit with her in the hospital just one and a half days before she died. Although she was very frail, her passion for preserving and educating a new generation of Afghans about their history and culture was alive and well. It was fitting that our conversation ended with her scolding me for not recently visiting her pride and joy, not to mention her lasting legacy -- the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University. While on my way to Kabul airport a few days after Nancy died, I was very pleased to see a beautiful image of her transforming one of the ugly cement blast walls at Massud Circle into a work of art. 5 / 12 Nancy in the stacks at the ACKU Credit: Joel van Houdt Sippi Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, development worker In 2000 I had already been working extensively for a few years with women inside Afghanistan. I was about to start managing a programme providing independent gender advice to the aid community as a whole. I decided to check in with Nancy who used to run ARIC from an office in a leafy suburb of Peshawar. We met in her office where my eye was drawn left and right and up and down by books, small artefacts, postcards and posters – all fascinating. For a tiny lady I had heard she could be very intimidating but we hit it off straight away, found our ideas were exactly on the same page and became friends. In those days the aid community was small, so we all had time to have long discussions on issues of concern or our plans and dreams. She also loved cats. I will never forget, at the height of Taliban oppression of women, she and I were involved in a research project together. I walked over to her home with my dog. We sat calmly discussing a Taliban edict banning women from work as at least ten of Nancy’s cats sat 6 / 12 around us and stared at my well-behaved dog. Once the Taliban fell, Afghanistan was deluged by expatriates and Nancy became the shrine everyone wanted to visit. We kept in touch once in a while and her incredible mind kept track of who we all were. I was always amazed that she remembered every single one of us.
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