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)

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We move up to 2002.  Soraya’s father has been called to a position in Afghanistan.  Her mother is living with them.  Amir and Soraya have opened a clinic  in Rawalpindi the week before.  Amir has his prayers memorized.  There are half a dozen kites flying in the sky to celebrate the Afghani New years.  Sohrab has not yet spoken a word to them.  His silence hurt but they never gave up.

“I remember the way our father checked the wind was to kick up dust with his sandal, see which way the wind blew it…did I ever tell you your father was the best kit runner in Wazir Akbar Khan?  Maybe of all Kabul?  …they said he chased the kites shadow…But they didn’t know him like I did.  Your father wasn’t chasing any shadows.  He just…knew.”  (p387)    Amir sets the kite off and the two,

Sohrab and Amir turn their heads up and watch.  This is such an important symbolism.

Sohrab takes the string from Amir.  There is a green kite that is going to compete.  Amir says, “Watch, Sohrab, I’m going to try one of your father’s favorite tricks, the old lift-and-dive.”  Sohrab watches, face flushed, eyes alert for the first time.  (p389)   The spool rolled in Sohrab’s  palms…and suddenly Amir sees Hassan’s hands, hears a crow caw,  and Amir slips into his childhood until the voice of Ali is heard in his head, calling them home.   Sohrab cuts the green kite and the “last time I had felt a rush like this was that day in the winter of 1975, just after I cut the last kite, when I spotted Baba on our rooftop, clapping, beaming (p390)  “…..I looked down a Sohrab.  One corner of his mouth had curled up just so.” (p391)

“Do you want me to run that kite for you,” Amir asks, and Sohrab nods.

“For you, a thousand times over.” Amir says and chases the kite.

What an ending to a perfect book.  Amir has rescued Sohrab.  He has not only atoned for his sins, but he has saved all of them, even Soraya.  As well, Sohrab has been their savior as well.  Amir has faced his past and is now turned, face up, to his future.  His future assures Sohrab of one.

Evils of history can repeat itself, over and over down oru liens, if we do not govern ourselves with compassion.  When the past declares and acts our war in our present, the only prisoner is our future.   Once Amir has stopped merely ‘not wanting to have blood on his hands,’ he can make use of those hands. He does just that when he teaches Sohrab about kite fighting.

When Amir and Sohrab fight the blue kite, the story finally comes full circle. The sport takes Amir back to the moment before everything changed, when Hassan had not been raped and they were just two boys having fun together. He says, “I was twelve again.” Now that Amir has forgiven himself, kite fighting reminds him of pleasure instead of pain. In the ultimate moment of circularity, Amir runs the kite for Sohrab just as Hassan ran his last kite for him half a century before. Finally Amir understands what it is like to be as loyal and loving as Hassan, and can truthfully repeat Hassan’s words, “For you, a thousand times over.”

The kite is now a symbol of Amir’s good, fatherly wishes for Sohrab. He wants to bring him joy, opportunity, a sense of security, and the will to live again, if only this were as easy as bringing him the kite. The last time Amir went to find a kite, he ended up turning his back on Hassan for good by running away from the scene of his rape. This is why the novel’s last words, “I ran,” are so meaningful. Even though Amir’s story has made a circle metaphorically speaking, it has not ended where it began. Amir is running in a positive way, away from Sohrab physically but toward him emotionally. He is finally running with freedom in his heart instead of fear.

The story is Amir’s absolution.

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Sohrab goes with Amir to America. Amir describes it, “…lifting him from certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty.” (p375)

Hosseini projects himself in the book, on page 376: “I learned that , in America, you don’t reveal the ending of the movie, and if you do, you will be scorned and made to apologize profusely for having committed the sin of Spoiling The end. In Afghanistan, the ending was all that mattered.” There is certainly a dénouement here.

There is a tiny miracle, Amir calls it, when Soraya is introduced to Sohrab and Amir glimpses her as “the mother she might have been, had her own womb not betrayed her.” (p377) And, Amir still has demons of his own that are still keeping him awake: memories. “Your father was a man torn between two halves.” Rahib Khan had written. He stares at the picture and it is as if he says goodbye to all the hurt. “That last thought brought no sing with it…I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with fanfare or epiphany, but with pain gathering its things , packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.” (p378 - 379)

Amir finally stands up for Hassan’s blood line, with Soraya’s father when he asks what should be said about the Hazara boy living with them. Amir says, “It’s alright…you see, General Sahib, my father slept with his servant’s wife. She bore him a son named Hassan. Hassan is dead now. That boy sleeping on the couch is Hassan’s son. He’s my nephew. That’s what you tell people when they ask….You will never again refer to him as ‘Hazara Boy’ in my presence.” Finally, Amir gathers up his courage and does what he should have always done.

“It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the VOLUME knob on life. Silence is pushing the OFF button. Shutting it down. All of it… It was a silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.” (p380 - 381) Amir knows silence very well and thus will honor Sohrab’s silence.

Amir’s character brings Sohrab to us like the wounded child he is. Hosseini does his work well, here. Amir tells the reader that Sohrab “didn’t so much live with us as occupy space… noticed how people hardly seemed to see him, like he wasn’t there at all…walked like he was afraid…as if not to stir the air around him… I had my own dreams for Sohrab.” (p381)

He speaks of the Twin Towers coming down and the time the world changed and he gets as involved as he can and hints at the hardships that the American Afghanistan people went through afterwards. Sohrab represents the new Afghanistan.

I can not imagine what all Middle Eastern People have gone through, right here in America (and Canada) due to misunderstandings about extremism and the real Middle eastern theology and philosophy. I am including, here, the STATEMENT OF OMAR ASHMAWY to the Judiciary Committee.

“One could accurately say that the misconceptions and misunderstandings that plague the Islamic community are almost entirely the result of the extremist movement within Islam. The perception of Islam as a violent, intolerant, anti-western religion has been created by the minority extremist component of Islam and then perpetuated by the attention that they receive in the Western media and by other Western power blocks. Islam, in spirit and in practice, is a religion of inclusion, of peace, and of mercy. Its followers are taught to be kind and tolerant to all people, regardless of race, color, ethnicity, or religion. Perhaps more than any other faith, Islam can be said to propound a truly universal philosophy that is accepting of all people, religions, and ideas. The Koran, the holy book of Islam, could not be more explicit in its command, “There shall be no compulsion in religion.” This single line embodies the spirit of Islam - a faith that acknowledges and strengthens the nobility of the individual, while simultaneously embracing the importance and power of community.

Extremists have distorted this true image of universalism in the eyes of the world. In the United States, their acts of violence and fanatic intolerance have tragically marred the perceptions Americans have of Islam. Though the doctrines they espouse are wholly incompatible with the teachings of Islam, and run contrary to the very foundations of the faith and its traditions, these terrorists have managed to partially succeed in their goal to alienate Americans from the Muslim community - thus making leaders on both sides mistakenly believe that cooperation is, at best, a difficult venture. They have succeeded in making the American people unnecessarily wary of any association with Islam. This alienation and wariness is extremely harmful to both America and its Muslim communities - and to the Islamic world as a whole.

No good can ever come from blatant misconceptions of truth. The fear that has been generated by these extremist entities has given rise to an alarmist atmosphere in this country towards Islam and its followers. This fear has found a foothold in every aspect of American society - from the government down to the American people. Moreover, there has been no significant attempt by anyone in a visible public office to emphasize the fact that these extremists are acting under contrary to Islam.

Extremism, by definition, is a force contrary to freedom, liberty, and justice. Islamic extremism is no different than any other form of ideological extremism. They believe that they are justified in attempting to force their belief system on others. In their eyes, moderate Muslims, who cringe at the blood and pain caused by such extreme elements, are considered renegades of Islam - nonbelievers and enemies of the religion. Within this extreme movement, as with all types of extremism, there is only room for one set of thoughts, one opinion, one vision. Extremism poses its greatest danger to the Islamic community - stifling its diversity and its multifaceted and multinational character. It is a threat to the freedom and liberty of the community, and thus to the very community itself; for what community can truly survive staunch intolerance and lack of free thought?

Islam is struggling with this extremist movement world-wide. In this country however, the difficulties faced by moderate Muslims are particularly unique. There is no question that moderate Muslims make up the vast majority of Muslims in this country and world-wide, with followers of extremist movements a fraction of the population. Yet, the amount of attention received by each group is inversely proportionate to its size. The media and other sources of public information concentrate excessively on the extremist element of Islam, and give little to no time to the moderate Muslim voice.

While this can be explained by pointing out that it is the extreme element who poses a conceivable danger and therefore somehow deserves the majority of the media attention, this answer does not take into consideration the full scope of the problem. It is this attention that Muslim extremists have been able to draw, to the exclusion of all else, that presents America and American Muslims with their most significant problem.

Unless the moderate Muslim voice is given sufficient attention and is allowed time and a significant forum, it is unreasonable to expect that voice to be able to overcome any extreme Muslim element present in this country. Moreover, the continued focus on Muslim extremists without properly placing them in the context of the larger Muslim community, will further alienate American Muslims by reinforcing a belief that America is only interested in weakening Islam. Allowing this belief to perpetuate would be, at best, an invitation for further misunderstandings on all sides - an event that be would detrimental to all.

In summary, Islam, perhaps the most misunderstood religion in the world, has suffered as much as its people from ignorance and foreign occupation. Islam, like the rest of the world, faces a new challenge, the rise of extremism; however, this challenge is not exclusive to Islam; it is being faced by every nation and every religion. It is a phenomenon which is altering the thought and action of every part of the world. It is a phenomenon which can conceivably lead to the fall of governments, deviate mankind from the course of God, and destroy many of the most cherished democratic ideals. Islam is not a militant religion, but a religion of peace, mercy, and love for all people.

Unfortunately, like everything else, when man uses something he distorts it. The religion of Islam is no exception. However, true Islam joins Judaism and Christianity in its call for love, mercy and justice.

As Americans we must never forget the value we place on freedom and liberty, and at no time can America, in its possible responses to extremism, allow the Muslim community in this nation or abroad to suffer any injustices. We must remember to place extremism in the context of the broader community. To do otherwise would only place this great nation in the same category as those very extremists we are trying to fight. Intolerance and injustice at the hand of any entity even for an admirable cause is repugnant to all that we as Americans, and I as a Muslim, hold to be true.”

- ISLAMIC EXTREMISM AND THE MODERATE MUSLIM VOICE: FIVE YEARS AFTER THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING
U.S. SENATE JUDICIARY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, TERRORISM, AND GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
STATEMENT OF OMAR ASHMAWY
MATERIALS PREPARED BY: OMAR ASHMAWY AND SEIFELDIN ASHMAWY - http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/ashmawy.htm

If this book has done one thing, it has had me question what I truly know about anything about the Middle East; to look at my posturing, uneducated, view of what has gone on, what is still going on, and to build empathy for those who are our brothers and sisters, and, mostly, the plight of the innocent victims because of war. I have need of being silent, until I begin to understand even a small bit, through empathic holistic view that all is not as it seems, as it is recorded, as it is offered by news media, and even books. God forgive me for NOT knowing more for myself.

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Amir character talks about how this time, he can not run away.  He knows how much his redemption is tied to Sohrab.    “There will be no floating away.  There will be no other reality tonight.” Hosseini helps the reader know how close to death Sohrab is:  “…I hear the paper flapping of their wings.” (p363)

It is fitting, then, that Sohrab survives, but only after Amir does something he has not done for fifteen years: He prays (The prayer itself, besides being an obvious literary symbol for redemption, is another acknowledgement of Amir’s past and Afghani heritage. It is, indeed, the final step in his redemption.  He ends his prayer:   “I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I’d always feared they would.” (p364)

Amir sleeps beside Sohrab and whn he wakes, he is struck by a memory of what he saw when he found Sohrab:  “…and his eyes, still half open but lightless.”  Amir knows the suffering this boy has to be going through.   A doctor arrives with drops of Sohrab’s blood on his mask.  Amir breaks into prayer and begins to make promises:    I will beg…I will fast.  And the doctor says Sohrab cut deeply and had many transfusions but he will live.  “…I have taken his hands and I have brought them up to my face.  I weep my relief into this stranger’s small, meaty hands and says nothing….” (p367)

Ah, when you want something more for someone else before yourself…there is a key here to redemption.  The reader suddenly remembers that Amir must now face having his own face reconstructed…remember, his upper lip is so scarred that he looks like a harelip.  Amir has not once prayed about that.    Amir goes to Sohrab, “…his white face…a curious numbness washes over me, the same numbness a man might feel seconds alter after he has swerved his car and barely avoided a head-on collision.”  Ah, yes, had Sohrab not been spared, and if Amir did not feel like his prayers had something to do with Sohrab’s survival, and that God has listened….one can not imagine Amir’s continued suffering.  The boy had to survive.  Amir is very aware of man as savior.  He has a dream about a man in a mask who saved Sohrab’s life…when the man, in his dream, removes the mask, it is Mr. Andrews.  (p368)  The psyche knows when it has been forgiven.

Sohrab does not do well.  The boy has been so brutalized, and so very wounded, even the day before that, he barely speaks and never smiles. “He held my glance, then looked away, his face set like some stone.  His eyes still lightless, I saw, vacant, the way I had found them when I had pulled him out of the bathtub.” (p371)  Sohrab begins reading Hassan’s favorite story to Sohrab:  A touching tender moment in the book.  Sohrab tells Amir, finally that he is tired of everything, and Amir is given a tremendous flashback.  “There was a band of sunlight on the bed between us, and, for just a moment, the ashen gray face looking at me from the other side of it was a  dear ringer for Hassan’s, not the Hassan I played marbles with…not the Hassan I chased….but the Hassan I saw alive for the last time, dragging his belongings behind Ali in a warm summer downpour, stuffing them in the trunk of Baba’s car while I watched through the rain-soaked window of my room.”  (p372-373)  Sorhab says all he wants is his old life back, and Amir realizes that he would too, but it cannot be but he tells Sohrab that the Visa has been given to him.  “Can you forgive me?”  Amir waits for Sohrab to give him back a sense of worthiness by accepting to come with him to America.  Amir senses he has to prove his worthiness through this child.  Amir’s character describes Sohrab as a “guest” as if he were the visitation of Christ, the reader identifies, this.  It is also interesting that he then says, “I left the room …unaware that almost a year would pass before I would hear Sohrab speak another word.”  (p375)  I believe Amir knows the feeling of an unresponsive God, as well as the Son.

Who of us have not felt forsaken, betimes?

False Light

I am in love with sunny days

and you knew it:

You, with broad brown brow

who drew your hand over the sun~

Hands, I drew to my breast

so my heart might know the touch of you

as you ticked out your time

between here and there

Before I saw stars widen around the irises

of your eyes when you knew

what I knew

scrumbling behind the little clouds

were storms I had never thought

could be possible

you stole my absolute obsession

with songs of birds

and I became a moth

batting myself against false light

©Carol Desjarlais

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Amir calls Soraya and has   unloaded the secrets that have haunted him.  Of course, she agrees to let Sohrab come to America and be their son..  A childless woman, who is not so by choice, would never turn down the opportunity to mother.   They go to the American embassy.  There is a picture of Les Miserables on the wall.  It does not bode well, knowing Hosseini’s use of symbolism.

At the embassy, they meet with a man who holds Sohrab and Amir’s fate in his hands.    Amir has to tell a few white lies rather than tell the full details of why his jaw is wired, whether he is a practicing Muslim, and it does no good.  He is told to give it up, that there are many reasons that the government of Afghanistan will never let him take Sohrab to America:  Two main ones are that there is no proof his parents are dead, he would need the cooperation of Afghanistan and the Taliban.  Amir feels resentful being told to give it up and Amir reacts by saying, “Do you have children, Mr. Andrews?”  Mr. Andrews blinks and is silent.  Amir then says, “  I thought so…They ought to put someone in your chair who knows what it’s like to want a child.” (p348)  As Amir turns to leave, Mr. Andrews gets his voice back and gives Amir a business card of someone he can contact.  Amir abruptly leaves the office and as he passes Mr. Andrew’s secretary, he tells the secretary that her boss could use some manners, to which she replies, “Poor Ray, he hasn’t been the same since his daughter died….suicide.”(349)

Sohrab does not speak of how he feels about this proclamation that he might not be able to go to American with Amir.  Mr. Andrews had warned Amir about making promises:  “It’s dangerous business, making promises to kids.” (p348)  What Sohrab’s reaction is, is to go to the bath and scrub and scrub and scrub.  Amir talks to Soraya and she tells him that she has pulled some strings.  A lawyer meets them the next day but the answer he gives Amir is almost the same as what Mr. Andrews had said.  He can think of only one way and that is to put Sohrab in an orphanage for a short while and file an adoption petition, but it would take two years.  They speak in English.   He  tells Amir he would have to stay in Pakistan  and Sohrab would have to be in the orphanage for two years.

When they get back to the hotel, Amir tells Sohrab the outcome.   “You promised you’d never put me in one of those places.”  Amir begs and then cries himself to sleep.  (P358-359)  Amir falls to sleep as well and is wakened by a call from Soyara.  She has gotten good news.  They can get Sohrab a Humanitarian Visa.    Amir jumps up and calls for Sohrab to tell him the good news.

Sohrab has attempted suicide, in the bathroom, with the razor Amir used to shave to meet with the lawyer.  “They said I was still screaming when the ambulance arrived.” (p361)  The key to Amir’s redemption now lies with Sohrab’s survival.

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