ProPublica reporter and former South Asia bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune Kim Barker discusses her new book, “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” The memoir chronicles her experiences covering conflicts in the two countries.
After 9/11, Barker’s editors at the Chicago Tribune were looking for reporters to send overseas to cover the conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“I had very little experience in general in going anywhere,” Barker said. “I grew up in Montana and Wyoming, and I had never even been to Europe before I went to Pakistan and Afghanistan for the first time.
What surprised Barker was how humorous her experiences turned out to be.
“After I got there, I realized really quickly how funny it could be,” Barker said. “And you’re not talking about typical humor. It’s more like dark humor. It’s more like the absurd humor you find in something like ‘M*A*S*H.’”
Barker said after spending significant amounts of time in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, a favorite emerged.
“I think the reason I fell in love with Afghanistan almost immediately was a lot to do with the people, a lot to do with the strangeness of it all,” Barker said. “I fell less in love with Pakistan just because it was frankly much more normal. It just felt like Islamabad could be a capitol anywhere in the world.”
Though it gave her an advantage at times, being a female reporter was not always easy. She said she was often groped or grabbed in crowded settings, but she found her ways to cope.
“I started punching people who grabbed me,” Barker said. “It was effective. I did manage to hit them in the face very well.”
