“…..We’d shoot them right there in front of their families. Let them see. Let them remember who they
were ,where they belonged”. He was almost panting now. “Sometimes, we broke down their doors and went inside their homes. And…I’d…I’d sweep the barrel of my machine gun around the room and fire and fire until the smoke blinded me.” He leaned towards me, like a man about to share a great secret. “ You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘liberating’ until you’ve done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you’re doing God’s work. It’s breathtaking.” ……………….He said it fondly, like a man telling of a great party he’d attended. “We left the bodies in the streets,…………We left them for the dogs.Dog meat for dogs. ………..” The above is a Talib leader’s description of the Hazara massacre in Mazar-I-Sharif and is an excerpt from
The Kite Runner by
Khaled Hosseini. Why am I writing about a book that was first published in 2003 and which most people have read already? Well, though the book had been sitting in my collection for a long
time, I actually got to reading it only now. I don’t remember reading any book that has
virtually talked to me like this has. I think I was somewhat similarly shell closeted after reading
The Exodus by
Leon Uris, but that was actually a very long time back and the impressions cast by Uris were on a then immature mind. Hosseini has struck me in a very different way and at a very different age. This is an unforgettable story of betrayal and (only partial) redemption. There is an off chance that at least one of you who reads this piece may not have read the book and is motivated to do so now, and that would make this effort worthwhile. This is a debut book by an Afghanistan born Pashtun who took political asylum in the USA in 1980. He is a doctor and lives in California.
The story stretches around the life of Amir, the protagonist, for twenty five years, starting from the time he was twelve years old. It is a tour de force that takes us from Kabul to Jalalabad to Peshawar and then to Fremont, California, then again to Peshawar and Kabul and Islamabad and finally back to California.
Amir is a self confessed coward and it is on that count that the book throws up many challenges. How would have one reacted when placed in similar situations?. Like the time Amir is witness to Hassan, who is his servant/friend/….??/ kite runner being sodomized by Aseef the school bully, while two other bullies kept him pinned down to the ground. Or the time when the Russian soldier demanded half an hour with a young mother and threatened to put a bullet into the skull of anybody who tried to obstruct him from doing so. And finally when Amir was required to go back to Taliban ruled Kabul to retrieve Hassan’s orphaned son, with only a negligible chance of success and of coming back alive.
The book must also be read for some stark realities. At one point during his journey back in Afghanistan, Amir remarks to Farid his escort cum driver that he feels like a tourist in his own country, and Farid replies,
“You probably lived in a big……house…..Your father drove an American car. You had servants, probably Hazaras .Your parents……….threw fancy mehmanis ,so their friends would come over to drink and boast about their travels to Europe or America.” …….. He pointed to an old man dressed in rag clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. “That’s the real Afghanistan….You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.” The two spend a night en route to Kabul in Farid’s brother Wahid’s house and are fed the food meant for the family. Amir overhears this conversation between the couple the following morning,
“-----nothing left for the children.” “ We’re hungry but we’re not savages! He’s a guest! What was I supposed to do?” There are many references to the gender bias in Afghani society,
Baba knew how lethal idle talk could prove to a young woman’s prospects of marrying well. Afghan men, especially those from reputable families were fickle creatures. A whisper here, an insinuation there, and they fled like startled birds. And
Every woman needed a husband .Even if he did silence the song in her. This is a story of cowardice and courage, of deceit and honesty, and of jealousy and sacrifice. This is a story of tenderness and truth despite the painful shattering of lives. This is a story that no book lover can afford to miss.