Local cafe owner publishes book of life in Afghanistan

Ahmad Popalyar is a Muslim man inspired to tell Americans and Muslims his story about America, Afghanistan and the propaganda behind both.

Popalyar, the owner of Stefano’s Ice Cafe in Bloomington, along with his co-worker Delores Bell, wrote his stories of life in Afghanistan – stories they decided needed to be told.

Bell told Popalyar he could tell his story and she would write it out for him.

Within days, Popalyar agreed. Bell encouraged Popalyar to tell the story of the life he left behind in Afghanistan for his children, who Bell said she believes will one day want to know.

“I just got a scratch pad and started writing in longhand what he told me,” Bell said. “I thought it would be eight or 10 pages of very interesting stuff. The more he told me about it, the more I wanted to hear about the situation.”

Popalyar’s words became chapters of his and Bell’s co-authored book “The Destruction of Invasion and its Side Effects.” Pages on invasions of the Russians and the Taliban, Afghanistan and America all appear in the book.

“He has one thing that I think is just great – that we do not appreciate what we have and the freedom that we have to do whatever we want and go wherever we want to go,” Bell said.

Along with Popalyar’s memoirs is an explanation of these freedoms that are misunderstood throughout the Middle East.

These misunderstandings, Popalyar said, need to be cleared by a Muslim American spokesman to those living in the Middle East.

“They have an obligation to tell the truth about the people of the United States and how they treat other people,” Popalyar said. “They just have so much propaganda against the United States, but none of it is true.”

After a year of writing, the book was published and is now available to the public.
Sophomore Rohan Bhagwat said the book needed to be written because the idea behind it is powerful.

“The perception of the U.S. around the world is incredibly negative, and any small effort to make that perception a more positive one will do the USA a lot of good,” Bhagwat said.

Bhagwat’s parents are both from India. He said stories from parents’ countries, like those in Popalyar’s book, need to be preserved.

“A lot of things get lost in the American culture that we wouldn’t know about if we didn’t have our parents telling us stories and their past experiences,” he said.

Although Popalyar worked for The Herald Times for 14 years in advertising, he never wrote a story about his life in Afghanistan. Popalyar said he is excited to have his first book published, but drumming up old memories was not easy for him.

“The entire country was totally destroyed,” he said. “And the people totally lost their family, they lost their land, they lost everything. Some of them don’t have any family at all.”

Bell wrote a short story about her life growing up on a farm in the 1930s for her grandchildren and said Popalyar’s story needed to be told.

“I cried several times when he was telling me stuff,” she said. “Poor people over there have had nothing but wars and killing. I watched the news all the time and I think how terrible it is, but until you have talked to someone or read what someone who has been there firsthand tells you, you really, really don’t know.”