In conversation with , Samina Vabo Ansari, at Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam

Something is shifting in the world.

What once felt stable is beginning to crack.

Old stories no longer hold.

For too long, many worlds have reached us filtered through conflict, reduced to a dateline, a threat assessment, a refugee statistic. When the Almond Trees Bloom: Alchemising War, Crisis, and Chaos is a powerful and haunting book that cuts to the heart of what it means to endure extreme upheaval, what the author calls “the permanent system of war”, and to be transformed by it.

Moving between poetry and testimony, the personal and the political, Samina Vabo Ansari writes from the epicentre of Afghanistan’s wars, weaving together memory, geopolitical insight and mysticism into a narrative that is as intimate as it is universal. Far more than a story of exile or conflict, the book explores what happens when entire systems, nations, institutions, identities, collapse under the weight of truth, and how the insight forged in extreme circumstances can be carried forward into responsible action and mature leadership.

The almond tree blooms in the cold, before anyone is ready, because that is its nature. This book is written in that same defiance.