"This book is narrative fiction. It tells you all you ever wanted to know about Afghanistan. Each chapter is about my adventures in war-ravaged Afghanistan where the short-sightedness, the incompetence, the idiocy and the ignorance of people who were supposed to fund and supervise my training projects in a girls' school, or to guard and protect me, turned out to be my worst enemies, while quite a few Afghans accepted me as one of their own. Each loosely-connected chapter deals with different aspects of the history, the language, the customs, the religion and the superstitions of Afghanistan, with specific regard to Pashtuns. Each chapter is about real-life characters whose adventures, joy and happiness, and whose tragedy I witnessed in Afghanistan over the past 9 years, or I had enough adventures and I saw enough joy and happiness and I witnessed far too much tragedy and suffering to create the heroes of my stories. After all, Zarbalistan is pure fiction. Like in old fairy tails, there are also evil characters in my stories. Alas, they were flesh and blood creatures, vile monsters, evil people who failed to uphold the values of their nation and to deliver the promises of their government.

They let me down just as much as they failed to win the hearts and minds of the Afghans. Our paths crossed several times. actually, one too many times." Zammis Schein 2013.