Captain Edward Zellem is the award-winning author of three bilingual English-Dari and English-Pashto books of Afghan Proverbs published in 15 languages.

He is a U.S. Navy officer and trained Dari speaker, and spent a year and a half embedded on native Afghan teams in Afghanistan. This included a year inside Afghanistan's Presidential Palace.

While in Afghanistan, Captain Zellem became fascinated with the way Afghans use Proverbs in their daily conversations. He began collecting and translating them, and used them every day with Afghans in his professional and personal life.

After students at a local Kabul high school offered to create illustrations, he decided to publish his collection and share it with the world.

His books were discovered in 2012 by Film Annex/Bitlanders founder and president Francesco Rulli, and he invited Captain Zellem to begin writing for Film Annex.

The Afghan Proverbs books are easily available in over 100 countries in both paperback and e-book. Learn more at http://www.afghansayings.com or follow on Twitter @afghansayings.

The views expressed by Captain Zellem in this forum are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense.