The story of one family's past - and Afghanistan's search for a future.As Hamida is drawn deeper into her country's present, other members of her family come to life for us -- her great-grandfather the Sufi mystic, her poetess grandmother who urged women to unveil, her great-uncle who wrote the first democratic constitution, her brace cousin Bahodine who paid for his views with his life. In her family's past she finds the story of Afghanistan itself.She finds its future in people like the American Beautician teaching women a new kind of independence and the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization -- in the form of a giant Sleeping Buddha.

Hamida Ghafour was born in Kabul and grew up in Toronto after her parents fled the Russian invasion when she was a small child. She returned to her homeland in the summer of 2003 to cover the reconstruction era for the London Daily Telegraph and Globe and Mail. Her experiences and her family’s unique history are the basis of The Sleeping Buddha. Hamida was a reporter for the Globe and Mail’s London bureau. She now lives in Amman, Jordon.

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