Captain Edward Zellem served as a United States Navy officer for 30 years, has lived in six countries and has visited at least 50 others.
[3][5] He was a University of Virginia football player, spent time in New Zealand and Thailand, and then joined the Navy to continue to see the world.
[3] In 2009, he was selected by the United States Department of Defense for a program called Afghan Hands, which was created in September 2009 to develop military and senior civilian experts specializing in Afghanistan and Pakistan's languages, cultures, processes and challenges.
[5][7] The room is known as the Presidential Information Coordination Center (PICC), which Zellem co-founded and co-directed with Afghan Army Brigadier General Sakhi Ahmadzai.
He envisioned an organization of "experts who speak the local language, are culturally attuned, and are focused on the problem for an extended period of time".
[6] Eventually, the faculty of Marefat High School in Kabul—where both boys and girls attend in separate classrooms—heard about the book and wanted to contribute by illustrating, transcribing, typesetting, editing, and distributing the collection.
[3][6] They wanted to use original art by their eighth- and ninth-graders [9][11] and Aziz Royesh, the high school's cultural officer, edited the content.
[11] Eventually, the State Department gave a $66,000 grant to Marefat High School [6] and the book was published by a local Kabul printing house,[3] Afghan-owned and operated Karwan Press.
Zellem gave a copyright license to Marefat High School to republish and sell the book for profit in Afghanistan.
[17] Edward Zellem's second book, "Afghan Proverbs Illustrated", was published in October 2012 and is designed for children and new readers[3][18] After readers in many countries asked for bilingual translations in their own languages, the original English-Dari edition of "Afghan Proverbs Illustrated" was published in German-Dari, French-Dari and Russian-Dari editions.
[20][21] Zellem has said that a number of Afghan American readers told him that his books helped them and their families to practice their Dari and reconnect with their homeland's culture.