Daniel in the copper shop in the Khan al Khalili in Cairo, October, 1999
My friend and journalist colleague, Daniel del Castillo, was in Afghanistan on Sept. 11 doing research and taking photos for stories for his publication, “The Chronicle of Higher Education.”
I met Daniel in Egypt last year. He is a friend of Michele’s and although he is half Lebanese and half Spanish and speaks fluent Arabic, he was born and raised in St. Paul, Minn. He generously spent a week with us in Cairo showing us around. He knows volumns about Islam, having studied in Cairo for two years and then later in Beirut where he lives now with his wife, Renae.
He has been an inspiration for me ever since I first met him. I have kept touch by e-mail and have enjoyed following his career as a journalist.
I had some ominous (in hindsight) e-mails right before he traveled to Pakistan, saying he was going “behind the Islamic curtain” and would be unavailable until he re-emerged sometime around Sept. 18.
I was so relieved to read his e-mail that he was out of Afghanistan, back in Pakistan and on his way home to Beirut. He said he had been writing furiously ever since, resulting in two stories available on the web along with some amazing photos from “behind the Islamic curtain.”
I have been reading everything I could get my hands on about Islam to try to understand all of this and I wrote Daniel that his stories have helped me understand more than anything else. They are told from the persepctive of looking at higher education in that part of the world and it is a little chilling to read how the Taliban’s influence is so widespread.
It feels a little like wishful thinking that this was a perpetrated by a tiny radical sect.
“Pakistan’s Islamic colleges provide
the Taliban’s spiritual fire” with photos
Sept. 21, 2001
FAMILY TIMES columns from
the Dells Events for the weeks
following the attacks
What do we tell the children?
Be careful who is blamed for terrorism