The Valediction Three Nights of Desmond

Afghanistan was an American crusade to win the war against the “Evil Soviet Empire” and remake the world in its own image.

This goes right to the heart of understanding the destiny of the Western Dream. Instead of a dream the US is caught in a nightmare. Now Americans long for a spiritual regeneration away from the vision of war as an honorable sacrifice to a vision of peace that serves all. No one seems able to make the process move in the right direction. We assimilated a profound understanding over four decades of how to envision moving from war to peace that is now in our novelized memoir, The Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond at the Kabul Hotel.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary titled, The Arms Race and the Economy, A Delicate Balance. In 1981 they had acquired the first visas to enter Afghanistan granted to an American TV crew. Following their news story for the CBS, they produced a documentary (Afghanistan Between Three Worlds) for PBS and in 1983 they returned to Kabul for ABC Nightline with Harvard Negotiation Project director, Roger Fisher. Starting in 1992 through 1995 they worked on the film version of their experience under contract to Oliver Stone. In 1998 they started collaborating with Afghan human rights expert Sima Wali. Along with Wali, they contributed to the Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future project published by Palgrave Macmillan (2002). In 2002 they filmed Wali's first return to Kabul since her exile in 1978 and produced a film about that journey titled The Woman in Exile Returns. Their book, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), lays bare why it was inevitable that the Soviet Union and the U.S. should end up in Afghanistan. Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011), lays out the contradictions of America’s AfPak strategy. Their novel The Voice, published first in 2000 and republished in 2012, is the esoteric side of their Afghan experience. Since then they have continued to research and publish articles.