‘Grandmother of Afghanistan’ dies in Kabul
▶ Historian Nancy Hatch Dupree leaves huge archive for the country
An American historian who spent decades in Afghanistan trying to preserve the heritage of the war-torn country died yesterday, aged 90.
The Afghan government said Nancy Hatch Dupree, who arrived in the country in 1962 and spent much of her life collecting and documenting artefacts, died in a Kabul hospital.
She amassed a vast collection of books, maps, photos and rare recordings of folk music, all now housed at a centre she founded at Kabul University.
Dupree also wrote five guidebooks and with her husband, Louis Dupree, authored the definitive book on Afghanistan, an encyclopaedic tome about the country they adopted.
She lamented the fact that young Afghans, many of whom had grown up as refugees in neighbouring countries, knew little about their history.
“So many young Afghans know more about the histories of the countries where they lived as refugees than their own country’s history,” Dupree said. “It makes me sad because their own history is so rich.”
So she founded the Afghan Centre at Kabul University in 2006, where she set up a large library that could be accessed online from universities including Herat, Kandahar and Jalalabad.
Dupree was born in 1927 in Kerala, where her American parents were working on rural development projects, and spent most of her childhood there. She arrived in Afghanistan as the wife of a diplomat.
Years later, she met archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Dupree – also American and also married – when she asked him for help with her first guidebook on Afghanistan. Their love affair caused a scandal but they wed and stayed in the country for more than a decade.
Nancy wrote guidebooks and Louis uncovered prehistoric settlements, and the couple visited and documented historical sites all over the country.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Louis was jailed as a suspected spy for the CIA. Rather than return to the US, Nancy joined thousands of Afghan exiles in a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, where he eventually joined her.
During their time there, she realised how easily unique historical documents about Afghanistan could be lost forever.
They began to collect everything they could find on the country’s history and culture, including the Soviet invasion, the Mujahideen and the Taliban.
It was just as well. In the looting after the Soviet invasion, many priceless books were sold for fuel or food wrapping.
Louis died in 1989, just a month after the Soviets left Afghanistan, but Nancy carried on collecting. By 1999, she had amassed 7,739 titles written in Pashto, Dari and several European languages.
She returned to Kabul in 2005, smuggling in her precious collection in 300 plastic fertiliser sacks. Two years later, it was installed in Kabul University.
Dupree also launched a mobile library that took thousands of books, including easy-toread volumes in Pashto and Dari, to remote communities, often on the backs of donkeys.
She was dubbed “honorary grandmother of Afghanistan”, and news of her death prompted hundreds of messages from Afghans on social media.
The centre she founded said: “We stand in homage to a woman of exemplary grace, dedication, humour and humanity.”
Apart from visits to her home in Louis’ native North Carolina, Dupree remained in Kabul, even though it was no longer the peaceful city of her youth.
“Kabul is grim now, all these concrete walls and barriers and razor wire. It is not my Kabul,” she said.
But she had no intention of leaving. She is survived by her daughter.