Lorelei to host Skype interview
Published 12:00 am Sunday, April 12, 2015
When Laura Weeks opened her business on Washington Street in 2006, she expected an intimate clientele would shop at her small independent bookstore, but she did not anticipate her community connection would flourish to the point of her patrons offering ideas for book events.
Weeks is the owner of Lorelei Books, and at 7 p.m. Tuesday she will host a Skype event.
“Robyn Lea approached me about hosting a Skype author event with Nadia Hashimi because she wanted to both promote a great novelist and her local bookstore,” Weeks said.
Hashimi is the author of “The Pearl That Broke Its Shell,” an international bestseller, which focuses on the lives of two Afghani women who lived generations apart and the common connection they both share.
“There is something about this book that got to me,” Lea said.
“I was in high school when all this was happening in Afghanistan.”
The www.amnesty.org.uk website states women’s rights in the country had seen progression during the 20th century, but in the 1970s things began to change, and when the country became occupied by communist Soviet troops, US-led international forces and militant groups including the Islamic Taliban, women became oppressed and even abused.
“These were intelligent, productive women who were doctors, lawyers and engineers, and when the Taliban took over, women became nothing. They would even kill female infants,” Lea said.
Hashimi was born and raised in New York and now lives in suburban Washington D.C. She and her husband are both doctors and they have three children.
Hashimi was able to visit Afghanistan in 2002 when her family returned for the first time since leaving in the 1970s, Lea said.
“I think if people attend the Skype event, they will learn something about Afghanistan, about the culture and what it is like today,” she said.
“I’m excited, and Nadia is excited about doing the Skype event. She has also done this with book clubs,” Lea said.
“Although I’m Lorelei Books’ only employee, customers like Robyn keep me from feeling alone in my endeavor to reach out to the community,” Weeks said.