Abdul Rashid Benish

Abdul Rashid Benish is an Afghan writer living in Fremont, California.

Background

Abdul Rashid Benish was born in the year 1921 into a well-known family in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan. His father, Abdul Qayoom, was a prestigious village elder in the Kodaman municipality of northern Afghanistan. However, when King Nader Shah's government took over in 1929, they sent Abdul Qayoom to prison and seized all his property - all without a court decision. In addition, they forced Abdul Rashid Benish and his brothers out of school. Abdul Rashid’s mother and siblings were forced to take shelter with their uncle. Even though Abdul Rashid Benish was unable to attend school, he still continued his education at home. Under his uncle’s supervision, Abdul Rashid Benish studied and excelled in all subjects, especially writing and calligraphy.

Career

It was fifteen years later, at the age of 23, that Abdul Rashid Benish first became employed at the Afghan Central Bank as a writer. This was the beginning of a very successful career. In the next 25 years, Abdul Rashid Benish rose to the post of personnel chief, while continuing to expand his knowledge through outside education courses. In 1966, he became vice-president of Qaraqul, a large fur manufacturing company in Kabul. With this post he took innumerable business trips to both Europe and America, where he perfected his English. Six years later, in 1972, Abdul Rashid Benish took the post of vice-president for the national insurance company of Afghanistan, where he’d work for twelve years.

Relocation

In the year 1978, when the communist government took power, Abdul Rashid Benish resigned from his post as vice-president. Three years later, like thousands of other Afghans, he and his family fled Afghanistan amid the Afghan-Soviet War. They settled in the United States, in a lesser-known city in the state of California named Fremont. Later, Fremont was to become home to one of the largest Afghan communities in the United States.

Writing

It was here that Abdul Rashid Benish began publishing his essays and short stories in Afghan newspapers. His work was very instructive and reminiscent of life in Afghanistan. The Afghan community became very fond of his work and immense talent. After gaining such popularity, Abdul Rashid Benish decided to publish a collection of his short stories. In 2001, he published “Baraka ha hey Benish” (Sparks of Vision). The book became highly regarded among Afghans in both the United States and Europe. Recently in 2005, Abdul Rashid Benish published a translation of the one hundred hadiths of Sahey Bukhari by Ustad Ehrari. This book has been entirely handwritten by Abdul Rashid Benish in his calligraphy style writing. Today, he diligently continues his work and hopes to publish more books in the coming years.