Living the Dream

Pakeezah

Amir and Sohrab go to the “hem of the mountain”, Daman-e-Koh.  He hears a Hindi song and he remembers it from a movie.  Pakeeza, movie 1971 .  I know that Hosseini does not ever add anything that is not pertinent to the theme.

This movie is about the pure of heart (Pakeezah) Nargis (Meena Kumari) who was brought up by brothel madame Nawabjaan (Veena). Unable to break away from the vicious circle, Nargis grows up and becomes a beautiful and popular dancer/singer Sahibjaan. Aristocratic Salim Ahmed Khan (Raaj Kumar) is enthralled by Sahibjaan’s beauty and innocence, and eventually convinces her to elope with him, which she does. But trials and tribulations await Sahibjaan as she is recognized by men wherever she goes in the company of Salim. When Salim re-names her “Pakeezah” and takes her to a priest to be legally married, she refuses, and returns to the brothel. Salim eventually decides to marry someone else, and invites Sahibjaan to dance at his wedding, Sahibjaan agrees to this, not knowing that many secrets will be revealed at this wedding.

Meena Kumari’s best-known 1971 classic ‘Pakeezah’ rated a number of mentions. The plot is a classic courtesan tale set in Lucknow at the turn of the last century. Dancer and courtesan Nargis (Meena Kumari) dreams of escaping her dishonourable life but is rejected by the family of her husband and dies giving birth to a daughter. The daughter, Sahibjaan (also played by Kumari), repeats her mother’s life cycle. “Ashok Kumar gazing at Meena Kumari’s feet in the train is such a tender thought,” said Behroze “it is romance in the true sense of the word”. The cinematography is colourful and lavish and Pakeezah features Sahibjaan dancing at her lover’s wedding on shards of glass before it all dramatically comes to a close.

Of course, the mention of the song, and the movie is important.  The last scene in the clip shows the dancer dancing on shards of glass and her feet getting bloodier and bloodier.  In researching this, one knows there is more blood atonement.  There is a niggling sense of Amir having gone to America and what was said earlier in the book about America being the whore, by Assef.   Amir has returned, to atone for the sins of his father.  The reader knows that all of this will come in to play within the theme of the next part of the book.

A hawk, known by me as a messenger, circles the sky and neither Amir or Sohrab have ever seen a hawk in the area before.  Amir is prompted to confess, “Your father and I were brothers.” (p337)  “I did not want to hide anything, anymore…we had the same father…we weren’t supposed to be brothers.” (p338)  Sohrab asks, “Did your father love you and my father equally?” to which Amir says, “I think he loved us equally but differently.”  “Was he ashamed of my father?”  “No…I think he was ashamed of himself.” (p338)

Amir goes on to tell Sohrab about America, and asks if Sohrab had thought about his request to have Sohrab come and live with him there.  “What is you get tired of me?  What if your wife doesn’t like me?”  Of course, Sohrab would have such questions.  We can only imagine who has tired of him.  Amir makes a promise to never let Sohrab go to an orphanage again and Sohrab agrees to go home to America with Amir.

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Islamabad looks so beautiful in its contrast to Kabul.  “…Islamabad was the city Kabul could have become someday. (p326)  the reader is grateful for this momentary stop in a beautiful place.  “No bloodstains on the wall,” thinks Amir.  (p327)  It is here that Farid heads back home, with a gift from Amir that will take care of his family for a long time:   “A little over two thousand dollars.” (p327)  The children in Farid’s home will not be hungry for a time.  He turns back to the room and wonders what on earth he is going to do with the kind of hunger Sohrab has.   Amir goes to sleep wondering “…what I’d do with the wounded little boy lying on the bed, though a part of me already knew.” (p328)

The reader thinks it could not get much worse.  The reader is wrong.  Atonement, for Amir, has a long way to go.  I remember hearing, once, decades ago, that when we do that ‘one thing we were meant to do”, we are done with this life.’  Hosseini could have ended the book with the fight between Assef and Amir, and faded to bright light and the reader would have guessed the end.  But, it is as if Hosseini is teaching us something deep and deeper, yet, about atonement.  There is more to be done.  Amir is not finished.  The reader knows that Amir must do more than save Sohrab.  He must raise and heal Sohrab, and in healing Sohrab, he will heal the child within.

When he wakes he cannot find Sohrab.  Amir becomes wild and runs  desperately searching for Sohrab.  Another Taxi driver (like some guardian angel, like Farid was) intercedes and helps.  “I will drive you because I am a father like you.” (p331)  They drive all over the city and do not find him.  He calls the police and “beneath the official questions, and unofficial one:  Who the hell cared about another dead Afghan kid?” (p331)  They find Sohrab at a Mosque.  (Very much Jesus, as a boy, whose parents could not find him and he was at the temple about his Father’s business.)

Sohrab asks Amir if he misses his parents, and there is a tender moment of remembering.  “I’m starting to forget their faces, ” Sohrab says, “Is that bad?”  I immediately went through the lost people in my life.  I recalled their faces as sharply as I could, I tried to recall their smell, their voices, and I wept with the closeness I felt.

Amir hands Sohrab the picture Rahim Khan gave him.  Sohrab traces his finger over the picture.  He thinks, as he watches the child, “There are a lot of children of Afghanistan, but little childhood.”    The light of the mosque fell on the picture. (p333)

“Will God put me in hell for what I did to that man?”  and he flinches as Amir tries to reach out to him.  Amir tell him “Nay, of course not,’ wanting to “pull him close, hold him, tell him the world had been unkind to him, not the other way around.” (p334)  “I couldn’t save your father the way he saved me.” says Amir.  “Why did people want to hurt my father…He was never mean to anyone,” says Sohrab.  “That is what I am trying to tell you, Sohrab jan.  That there are bad people in this world, and sometimes people stay bad.” (p334)  He tells him Hassan would be proud of his son to which Sohrab states that he is glad he can not see the ones who care for him because “I don’t want them to see me…I’m so dirty….and full of sin.” (p335)

The most tender moment of this is when Sohrab allows Amir to draw him into his arms and Sohrab weeps on Amir’s chest.  “A kinship exists between people who’ve fed from the same breast.  Now, as the boy’s pain soaked through my shirt, I saw  that a kinship had taken root  between us too.  What had happened  in that room with Assef had irrevocably bound us.” (p335-336) As it did with Hassan and he, as well.

“Would you like to come and live in America with me and my wife?”  “He didn’t answer.  He sobbed in my shirt and I let him.” (p336)

”A child’s self-image is forming continually, and is very shaky,” Dr. Epstein added. ”They tend to blow some things up out of all proportion. And their sense of guilt is much stronger and more moralistic than in adults. So the idea of getting caught doing something bad, in the child’s mind, may mean to them that they will always be seen as bad, or if they’re embarrassed, that they’ll never attain their dignity again.” - By DANIEL GOLEMAN, New York Times

“Unhealthy guilt, sometimes called neurotic or debilitating guilt, is a pervasive sense of responsibility for others’ pain that is not resolved, despite efforts to atone. Healthy guilt inspires a person to behave in the best interests of him- or herself and others and make amends when any wrong is done. Unhealthy guilt stifles a person’s natural expression of self and prohibits intimacy with others….the child sees his or her identity as defective, and may feel powerless to atone for any wrongdoings. This identity can be carried into adulthood, creating a sense of debilitating guilt.” - Dianne K. Daeg de Mott, Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence

Amir’s gentleness comes from KNOWING what guilt and shame feels like and the fear that can imbed itself in one’s soul.

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“The Taliban have friends here.  They will start looking for you.”  The reader knows, as does Amir, they already know where he is.  Farid is absolutely unwavering in his new loyalty for Amir and says he will help Amir and Sohrab escape.  “For you, a thousand times over.” (p319)  the reader weeps at such statement.  What are we, readers, willing to do a thousand times over?

Sohrab is restless and emotionally half-dead from what he has been through.  Amir suggest they play panjpar, a card game similar to poker, and the reader remembers this was something that Amir and Hassan did on a cold night before the kite-flying contest.  They had warmed themselves under a blanket, and now, his own psyche wants closeness with Sohrab and this is something he simply thinks of.  “I feel sorry for you, because I am a grand master at panjpar.  World renowned,” Amir jests, and then tells Sohrab that he and his father used to play this fame.  (p320)  Their life is symbolic of a poker game, yes, indeed it is.

In any poker game, you have to know when to take a chance, when to give up, and not to jump at first chance, as well.  You have to consider your backup, what the other might have in their hand to play, and, you cannot sit back all the time and do nothing so life passes you by and you get caught with a whole lot of points, you will owe, in your hand.  You have to persevere and accept that you cannot win all the time.  Each time we take a risk, we become wiser, and should be able to avoid similar mistakes.  Oh, it can be frustrating but with every hand you are dealt, you gain experience.  Poker is not just a game of luck.  It requires skill.  You have to do your part.  Even when you are holding pocket aces, there is no assurance that you’ve got it made.  Someone else might have the same, happens, and top it with a higher card.  That Amir plays this game at this point of the story is important.  Does he have the game figured out?  He jested about being master, knowing full well, its all in the cards, to some point, and the other point is that he has to have courage and take the risk to get out with Sohrab.

As they play, he asks Sohrab if his father ever spoke of him and Sohrab says the inevitable:  “that you were the best friend he ever had.” (p321)  If that does not spur Amir on, nothing can.  No one can be courageous all the time.  But, sometimes there are things outside ourselves that we need to be courageous for.   He wants to be friends with Sohrab, but Sohrab has not been communicating verbally.  What Sohrab does with this statement is to go to the window, “forehead pressed to the glass, fists buried in his armpits.”  (p321)  This is a gesture of refusal, but why?  …Because, Sohrab does not trust, and why should he.  There have been other promises, the kindness of Assef was a wicked kind of gentleness.  What else has Sohrab known to trust in?  He folds his arms in a gesture of self- reliance.  He is, I would definitely think, afraid to trust.

Amir finds out that keeping this wish to do what is best for Sohrab is not going to be even a slightly easy thing.  The family who Rahim Khan said would take Sorhab, are not, were never, real people.   (p323)  As well, Amir is getting paranoid about every bearded man.  Hosseini gives the reader hope , “Blood is a powerful thing.”  (p324)  As well, Amir wants nothing more than to be good again.  He has to save Sohrab.  The cards are laid out.

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Amir begins to gain consciousness as they race to the hospital.  He wants to say something, he knows, to this boy, and then he remembers and wants to thank Sohrab.  “I am wrestling the bear.” He thinks.  (p309)  All he is conscious of, at this point, is pain and fog and coming in and out of consciousness, and a boy that reminds him of bells.

There has been a surgery to wire his jaws, a ruptured spleen, seven broken ribs causing a punctured lung, lacerations, and broken teeth.  One bad laceration is on his face, his lip, cut down the middle…”There will be a scar.” (p311)  Heartsick, the reader immediately knows that for some atonements one must suffer some same things we are in need of atonement for.

He finally reaches over to the boy who has sat every day with him as he recovers and thanks him for saving his life. (p312)  When he is asked what happened in the room, all Amir says is “We both got what we deserved.” (p313)  An envelop is passed over to Amir, from Rahim Khan and all it contains is a key to a safe box with money for Amir and Sohrab,  and a letter.

Rahim Khan begs Amir’s forgiveness saying that he always knew what happened to Hassan and how troubled Amir was.    He says he knows Amir is suffering because “A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”  He goes on to say that Baba had suffered; torn between wanting to show Hassan the same love as Amir and so showed neither of them and set up the orphanage as a way to redeem himself.    “Forgive me if you wish.  But most important, forgive yourself….”You father, like you, was a tortured soul.” (p315)

Amir begins to become more aware of others in the hospital room, and visitors.  There is a Taliban that comes in regularly, not to visit anyone, simply comes in, looks a long time at Amir, and then goes out.  The reader’s angst is heightened.  We are not given a break.  Amir knows something is going on with Sohrab as well…he does nothing but look at his hands.

The reader is devastated, relieved, sorrowing, hopeful, all at once.  But there is a huge sense of angst….what have I to go through to be forgiven for things I have done…what has already happened that might have had recompense?  Is it the same for all?

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It is Assef, making true his statement, earlier in the book, about payback.

“There is a very real chance that I was going to render Soraya a biwa, a widow…this isn’t you, Amir, part of me said.  You’re gutless///and that’s not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you’ve never lied to yourself about it.  Not about that.” Amir’s need to right things with Hassan overpowers his cowardess.  He soon let’s us know that it did not go well.  “…unaware that it would be the last bit of solid food I would eat for a long time.” (p288)  Aseff enters the sitting room a servant has brought Amir to, and there is still blood from the stonings on his clothing.  He tells Amir he can take off his Taliban disguise but a guard rips off the beard.  He then describes what is worse than the stoning, for the reader.

“August 1998…we left them for the dogs, you know… door to door we went…let them remember who they were, where they belonged…sweeping the barrel of my machine gun…until  he smoke blinded me…you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘liberating’ until you’ve done that…knowing you’re doing God’s work.”  The Hazara Massacre …Hassan…. (p290)  It knew that the way Hosseini writes and how he has this undercurrent of forgiveness, atonement, denial…that Assef would want to kill his victim so he would not tell.  How relieved he must have been to kill Hassan…the one who could have had him stoned for the rape.  No evidence…except Amir, and the reader is gripped by a true fear…..

“How is that whore these days,” he says of America and then adds the Talib feeling for those who abandoned the country…” a treason. (p291)  Knowing Assef is judge jury and execution here, the angst builds, as Hosseini would have it.

But, at this point, Amir is caught in his need to get Sorab away from this monster.  When the guard brings him, the reader’s heart breaks, yet again.  “…footfalls, and the jingle of bells with each step… reminded me…the bell around ..monkey’s neck had made the same jingling sound…a boy dressed in loose, sapphire blue…the resemblance was breathtaking, disorienting.” (p292)  Hassan’s fate becomes a metonymy for the history of Afghanistan, but Hassan produces a life beyond his own, for “the boy had his father’s round moon face… the same Chinese doll face of [Amir’s] childhood… Sohrab looked down at his feet, but kept stealing shy, furtive glances at [Amir]. The man’s hand slid up and down the boy’s belly. Up and down, slowly, gently…” (Hosseini 293-294).   That a monster can be gentle is like a python sliding up your body to your throat that is its ultimate desire.  Assef continues to tell of his gruesome ‘mission’ and finally Amir says”

“What mission is that…stoning, adulterers, raping children, flogging women for wearing high heels … massacring Hazaras, …all in the name of  Islam?”(p297 - 298)

His reply, “Someone has to take out the garbage.” (p298)

“I want the boy,” says Amir and Sohrab’s eyes “…were slaughter sheep’s eyes.”  Amir knows those eyes a thousand times over, does he not?  Assef shoves Sohrab at Amir and he is hurt falling on a table edge as it tips over, brass ball feet up in the air  “Go, take him, ” and the reader knows he will never let him go so easily… “We made it s far as the door.” (p300)  Assef calls to the guards and tells them to stand behind the closed door while he finishes off ‘some old business’ , for no reason to come in, and to let whomever wins pass because only one is going to live.  “If it’s him, you let him pass,” orders Assef.  (p301)

“I don’t know if I gave Assef a good fight.  I don’t think I did.  How could I have?  That was the first time I’d fought anyone. “(p301)  Amir is beaten badly….the reader is involved in the fight…waiting to know, wanting to know but not wanting to read it.

“Sohrab screaming…my jaw…brass knuckles…choking on own teeth…ribs snapping….left eye…snapping sound….Sohrab screaming…gasping for air….snapping sound…Sohrab screaming…biting…nose…snapping sound…Sohrab screaming…” (p302)  My body was broken - just how badly, I wouldn’t find out until later -but I felt healed.  Healed at last.”  Then the end.  That, I’ll take to my grave. Then…..a thin voice…’please no more’…..he’s inseparable from that thing…he tucks it in the waist of his pants everywhere he goes… ‘no more’.” (p303)  The brss balls from the table legs.  A slingshot is aimed at Assef’s face.  A thwiiiiit sound.  Assef screaming and “…he put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago…vitreous fluid…Assef screaming.” (P304-305)  They run out past the gaping guards and out to Farid’s vehicle.  He passes out.

It is over…or is it.  Evil such as Assefs have a way of coming back from the dead, or near dead.  I have to put the book down for days.  I can’t bear this…it is so real…it is real…there are Assefs and Hassans and Amirs and Sorhabs….. and Afghanistans and Americas and wars and victims.  I know that there has to be more forgiveness, more wounded people…persons…Sorhab.

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