Sonia Nassery Cole - Will I Live Tomorrow?: One Womans Mission to Create an Anti-Taliban Film in War-Torn Afghanistan

PRAISE FOR WILL I LIVE TOMORROW?

Sonia Cole took an extraordinary journey, at great personal risk, to tell one of the most important stories of our time. Her powerful act of conscience is a contribution to all our lives.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, New York Times bestselling author

The courage, dedication, and passion that it took for this story to be written is beyond compare especially for a woman to have put her life in extreme danger, with no assurance of coming out of it alive. All for the love of her country and its people. I cannot imagine it, and yet after having known Sonia Cole more than a decade, I am not totally surprised. An amazing read, with beautiful illustrations in the midst of despair. I am proud to call her my friend....

NATALIE COLE, Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, and performer

With great determination to expose the dangers of womens lives in Afghanistan, the author returned to her native country. She courageously placed herself in harms way in order to speak for all the women who struggle daily to survive. This tale of desperation and hope is a compelling read.

TERRY SEMEL, former chairman and CEO,
Yahoo!; former chairman and CEO, Warner Bros.

Will I Live Tomorrow? is an amazing account of turning a dream into a reality. Film making is difficult under the best of circumstances. Will I Live Tomorrow? chronicles the account of Sonia Cole who had to be part-filmmaker, part-politician, part-psychologist, and part-general in order to pull off a miracle in pursuit of an artistic endeavor.

ROGER BIRNBAUM, co-chairman and CEO,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.

Sonia Cole recounts the making of her film The Black Tulip, the first feature film ever made by a woman in war zone Afghanistan and one of the first films made in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban. Its a dramatic story she tells with great passion.

PETER L. BERGEN, author, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad

War films are not typically made in war zones. At great risk, we told a story about the real-life terrors of living inside the war in Afghanistan while enduring those actual fears and dangers ourselves.

DAVID MCFARLAND, director of photography, The Black Tulip

A gripping eyewitness account of todays Afghanistan killing fields that resonates for anyone who has followed the tragic struggle that has gone on continuously since 1979. Sonia Nassery Cole gives a touching and detailed account of the filming of her multiple-award-winning film, The Black Tulip. The book is a firsthand narrative of a harrowing adventure within a death-defying experience amid the flames and fanaticism of the Taliban war on the US military presence and the NATO alliance, which are now destined to disappear from this desperate and tormented country.

CHARLES W. STROUD, co-founder and governing director, Afghanistan World Foundation

Will I Live Tomorrow? is defining our future. A brilliant and riveting work that warns the world if people of conscious and reason will not act for the sake of justice, Afghan history and culture will be hijacked by the Taliban under the name of Islam and zapped out like the Buddhas of Central Afghanistan. Brave, powerful, and a revelatory piece that determines post 2014 of Afghanistan.

FARID YOUNOS, author, university lecturer,
womens rights activist, and Afghan-American television personality

SONIA NASSERY COLE

BenBella Books, Inc. | Dallas, Texas

Copyright 2013 by Sonia Nassery Cole

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.
10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite 530
Dallas, TX 75231
www.benbellabooks.com
Send feedback to

First e-book edition: October 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cole, Sonia Nassery
Will I live tomorrow?: the making of The black tulip / by Sonia Nassery Cole
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
(trade paper: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-9395-2941-1 (ebook)
1. Black tulip (Motion picture) I. Title.
PN1997.2.B583C66 2013
791.4372dc23
2013013608

Editing by Erin Kelley
Copyediting by Annie Gottlieb
Proofreading by Jenny Bridges and Michael Fedison
Cover design by Sarah Dombrowsky
Text design and composition by Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.
Printed by Bang Printing

Distributed by Perseus Distribution
perseusdistribution.com

To place orders through Perseus Distribution:
Tel: 800-343-4499
Fax: 800-351-5073
E-mail:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. Ill meet you there.

JALAL AD-DIN BALKHI (RUMI)

Translated by Coleman Barks

To the memory of my father,
Sarwar Nassery,
and to the people of Afghanistan,
with love.

If you dont know Sonia Cole, youre about to meet her in these pages. For those of us who already know her, everything written here is just a gentle reminder of exactly who she is: a fierce advocate for Afghanistan and what the country could and should be, based on her own rich and poignant history there; a devoted mother who takes pride in a son well raised; a filmmaker who made financial sacrifices and took personal risks to realize a creative vision she had been harboring for years; and a loyal and delightful friend who listens almost as intensely as she laughs.

At one point in here youll find Sonia saying, Believe me, I am a very fragile personafraid of brutality and disgusted by it... As this book will demonstrate, dont believe that thought for a moment. While Sonia may be disgusted with brutality, she is far from a fragile person. Shes a survivor with some hard-won victories, as this book so amply demonstrates.

Timothy L. OBrien,
Publisher, Bloomberg View

This is the true story of how and why I, a woman alone, decided to go inside the inferno of post-9/11 Afghanistan to make a movie and reveal the naked truth about what was happening to the people of Afghanistanin the middle of raging war, a presidential election, bombings, and bloody attacks by the Taliban. I did what I did not from an artistic inclination or to acquire fame and fortune, but out of a long-brewing desire to stand up for my people, who were being destroyed by war, political manipulations, and the brutal and subhuman powers contending for control of the country. For this, I spent a fortune and put my life at risk.