Living the Dream

In Afghanistan, the darkest night of the year is called yelda.  It was tradition to stay up late and tell stories.  But this yelda is different for Amir.  He has a chance at a new beginning since he has a new kind of love in his life.  He has even told Baba.    Hosseini relies heavily on the symbolism of the new dawn, but the reader is wondering if this is another way for Amir to run away.  It is 1985, Amir has aced his generals college classes and he helps his father in the flea market, perhaps just to spend more time around his new love.

Baba reminds Amir to be true to the pride and honor of Pashtan ways with women. “Just don’t embarrass me…” he says.   (P153)    The market is a known place for gathering gossip, so Amir needs to be careful.  The reader knows this through the narration.  But there are subtleties added, for instance, if Amir asks Soraya a direct question,  and she answers, then , “we’d be chatting….this was teetering dangerously  on the verge of gossip material…I was not fully aware of the Afghan double standard  that favored my gender… by Afghan standards, my question had been bold.” (P154-155)  She answers, and Amir finds out they are related.  Ah…yes, one can marry one’s cousin in Afghan’s tradition.  Another visit with Soraya and her father happens upon them and it is not a good thing.  Soraya is sullied by Afghani standards, already.  He says to Amir, “You are a decent boy, I really believe that but…. Even decent boys need reminding some times.” (p161)  The relationship’s ardor is cooled because Baba gets ill.  Sometimes dark nights are not finished until there is a bit more darkness.

Amir thinks, “I wanted to ask him [the doctor] how I was supposed to live with that word “suspicious,” for two weeks.  How was I supposed eat, work, study?  How could he send me home with that word?” (p163)  Knowing Hosseini as well as I do now, I know that this is important to the whole story.  It is setting me up, I think, to become more suspicious, to look at what is going on, more closely…perhaps even go back and do some rereading.

Another phrase that stands out, “It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names.” (p164)   Ah, monsters, with many names.

What is positive is that the relationship between Amir and Baba immediately changes.  “I remember that period as a time of many “firsts…” (p166)  and then Baba has a seizure and Amir says, “Shhh, Baba jan, I’m here.  Your son is right here.” (o167)

Another phrase immediately sticks out in this chapter:  “You shouldn’t have burdened yourselves.  All of you …” he says to his visitors.  (p168)  Baba recovers enough to go home and when Amir lifts him up he describes Baba:  “His shoulder blade felt like a bird’s wing under my fingers.” (p170)  Baba is wounded in more than just this, methinks.

Baba tells Amir to go and ask General Taheri for his daughter’s hand.  As they prepare to go to Taheri’s, Amir thinks of “all the empty spaces Baba would leave behind when he was gone, and I made myself think of something else.” (p171)  Amir knows about empty spaces people can leave behind.  It requires the reader, who is totally involved by now, to think of some of their own empty spaces.

We all have those times that are dark; some darker than others.  We feel alone.  I am reminded of a story that really made me understand aloneness…..We all know who mother Theresa was…and what she was to the world.  Yet, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, she wrote about being  weary of a familiarity with a different view of Christ; an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, - Listen and do not hear - the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me - that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

Is it a part of human experience…that every human being has these times?  Do we honor those empty spaces, or do we go on forever longing for some fulfillment, some filling, of those places?  I have empty spaces, indeed…holes in my soul where people and places used to reside.  I have grown used to them though and I honor them, then step around them.  Like crying, for me, if I ever sunk into them, I may never stop.  I am careful about time and space and place when I honor them.  I believe that they have the ability to grab hold and keep me in that place of despair and loneliness.  I can not imagine those dark places of those who have, and are, truly suffering.

Tags: Good Reading //