Living the Dream

I am opened with compassion through Hosseini’s storytelling.  The book has put names and faces to Afghanistan.  I begin to understand the heritage, the land, what the Afghani has lost, how they have suffered and how they suffer yet.

Amidst the social upheaval, there is pure magic in the complexities of psychological insight, the arc of the story from beginning to end, and   Hosseini’s dear, real voice, drawing the reader in until we feel what it is he wants us to feel:  Compassion, yes, compassion.

We all have stood at the corner of our own dark alleys.  Only our memories, as we have scripted them, hold those memories as fact.  We have been the lamb, some of us.  We have seen the eyes of the lamb.  This book has been another Passion Play.  We have been borne into something sacred.

Hosseini has said that the book is not autobiographical, and yet Hosseini comes from a prominent family in Kabul.  His father was a diplomat.  His mother was a teacher.  He says there is no childhood memory that haunts him other than that he felt guilty about his privilege.  And yet, all writing carries bits and pieces of us, as writers.  There is a sacred entwining in such a book as this, between the write, the reader and his characters.   I believe Hosseini’s true nature is exposed in this book, as is the reader’s as one relates to his writing.  We all know tragedy, tragedies, and we know better, the trgedy of Afghanistan through Hosseini’s voice.

The book is broad and humane.  The characters live.  The Persian words come alive for us, in deeper contest.  I was thirsting for more and found I spent a great deal of time researching Afghanistan, not just the history, nor the wars, nor the religions, but the sights and sounds and smells.  I began at that corner, staring down an ally.  I have come out into the field of sky where kites are flying.

The characters are all intriguing and real.  The relationships are complex, as real relationships are.  Hosseini approached them all with such compassion and caring, as if, and I expect they did become, if they were not already, people he knew dearly.  There is such humility.

The theme of guilt, redemption, sin, atonement, shame, is deep and the reader is willingly drawn in to tread the waters until there is saving.  There is deception, despair, disappointment and unification of characters within it all.  The reader is given cause to know their own.  Hosseini knows his people, all people, well.

The unrequited paternal love is the impetus for the story.    Our worst behaviors come from servitude, inequality, paternalistic ownership, and beyond this…Brotherly “love.  Who of us has not known culpability and shame?  Who of us has not witnessed aggression, brutality, hostility and violence of some kind?

We know bits and pieces of the Taliban.  We know those men’s sadism, and inhumanity to man.  We come to know more of them, as well, and that they are not the real people of Afghanistan, nor the real Muslims.  We know them to be Assefs, to be bullies, to be beyond that everyday forgiveness.

Everyone has a past that is living and breathing, betimes.  We have had to face them down in order to have a present and a future.  We know the need for loyalty, forgiveness, friendship, redemption, sacrifice, understanding of races, cultures, differences and similarities.  We know Love as Redemption.

This is a story that will stay with me for a very long time.  Prior to this reading, Afghanistan was a place on the map, and I admit, I didn’t quite have it ‘placed’.   I have been taken on a walk, with Amir, with Hosseini to the last forty years of Afghanistan and its people.  I have been asked, as a reader, to look at basic humanness of us all.  We are all human, we are complex, we are both defined and crippled by tradition; all the same, in different ways.  I am more clear about the struggles of Afghanistan and why we are there to help them…the real Afghani, and I no longer automatically think of bin Laden  but more:  I know more of Afghani traditions, struggles,;  the real faces.  And the message?  When we turn away from our self-pity, and self-interests, and self-imposed misery, we have a chance for absolution.

The Christ-like character of Hassan is a role model for us.  “For you a thousand times over.”  He was sacrificed.  He had his Judas’.  He was, indeed, the lamb of the story.  The story had no frills.  It was raw and real.  There are graphic scenes, but perhaps we needed to read it, after we were well-tuned to love the characters.  It was not a newspaper or newsman’s report.  The violence is more real than he could write it, I am sure:  A thousand times, a thousand Hassans.

I can tell you, I am going to read “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, by Hosseini, next, in which Hosseini tells his story from women’s perspectives.  I will take a break.  I am not, nor really ever will be, done with Amir and Hassan yet.  Like the story, ending with Sohrab’s dear smile:  “It was only a smile, nothing more.  It didn’t make anything all right.  Only a smile.  A tiny thing.  A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight.” (p391)

Tags: Good Reading //