Pavel Pawlusha Novotný
After his formative years living in one of Prague’s residential areas, Pavel Novotný (*1969) studied macroeconomics and later religious studies. His nickname, Pawluscha, was born in Russia, where he worked on construction sites in the late 1980s. He temporarily worked as a grave digger, dispatcher and copywriter and tried to make it as a musician but had no success. Since the mid-1990s, he has made a living as a journalist. He reported on the last stage of the Balkan Wars and later got the chance to visit dozens of countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The restless reporter has worked and written for many Czech media outlets.
Why Allah Created the Kalashnikov
March 2023, 216 pages
Why did Allah create the Kalashnikov? What makes the Taliban laugh, where in the world are we seeing the return of Jesus, and what led practising Jews with manicured payouts to start doing business with American sex symbol Kim Kardashian? Pavel Novotný, known as Pawluscha, has travelled the Middle East and Asia as a journalist for years. He was in Egypt at the beginning of the Arab Spring, and after getting arrested, he managed to move secret police agents so much that they brought him a chair to sit on. He has visited an Islamic school on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan, where the founder of the Taliban is dubiously rumoured to have studied. He has ridden in an armoured vehicle with Western soldiers in Afghanistan and watched Indian soap operas with a swaggering village cleric.
In Israel, he talked to veterans who, even in their old age, marvelled that they had won the 1973 war with the Arabs. He once spent so much time sitting in the office of the Palestinian foreign minister that he managed to interview the minister, which picked up once more. He also chilled at the Muslim Brotherhood camp in Cairo and interviewed a Hamas spokesman at a secret location in Gaza, learning nothing but what he already knew.
