The characters are very well portrayed, with a lot of depth. Taking for example Amir, we get to see how he struggles, first with the fact that he seems to his father a bad son (because he’s more interested in books and writing rather than some more masculine stuff), and, after what happened to Hassan, with his cowardice. We can see he is not a bad person but he has only made some bad choices, choices he wishes (and in the end manages) to redeem somehow. Hassan is impressive by his unwavering love for Amir, he stands up for himself no matter what and he also takes the blame on himself when he is unjustly framed. After more than 20 years when he gets to write a letter to Amir, his feeling are the very same, loving and forgiving. It sort of takes a very special person to behave like that when only ten years old or less. One of the most interesting characters in the book was Amir’s father, his Baba (Persian word for father). It is the kind of man whose true face is seen in the hour of need. In the beginning, while he was rich, he did help poor people, having even built an orphanage, but one cannot help feeling he is sort of mistreating his son. However when they leave Afghanistan he is the only one in a bus full of people who takes a stand when a Russian soldier wants to rape a woman, even when he’s threatened with being shot. When they reach America he refuses to live on welfare and gets a job at a gas station, working many hours a day. He is the sort of man who fights for what he needs and stands up to his beliefs, and one can only admire him for that. His relationship with his son gets a lot closer than in the old days too. We get a sort of explanation at the end of the book about why he might have been showing his son so little love: because he was a tormented man, having to have two sons under the same roof and being able to openly show his affection only to one of them, the one he considered the weaker between the two.

I really like the way the book ended. Realistically but with a ray of hope. The author could have gone the way of “they lived happily ever after”, but didn’t. He stopped to consider both the cultural shock and the emotional scars a kid can get after going through as many things as Sohrab did, which in my eyes is a good thing that lends authenticity to the book.

The book is very well written. It made me flinch while reading about the horrors in Afghanistan. It sort of makes one see in a different way what they hear in the news about that area. Because even though what reaches us are only numbers (“x people killed in an explosion” and such) they are all people with families and stories just like people from any other part of the world (yes, reason always tells us every person from anywhere is a person like you or me, but actually feeling it is sort of hard when we’re thinking of people that far away and from that different a culture; I don’t know, perhaps it only happens to me). One cannot help feeling sorry for all the destruction that has taken place in Afghanistan and for the so many people (especially children) whose lives have been ruined by the war. It strangely made me think of Gone With the Wind, where after the war the life people knew before was no more, only the ruins of it. We get to see the very same thing here, only this time it is contemporary to us which makes it even more awful.

On the whole, I fully recommend this book. There is more to it than the characters’ story, it’s a chance to find out some things about a different way of living and thinking, granted to make you look at Afghanistan with different eyes.

Some quotes:

“But you want a real show, you should have been with me in Mazar. August 1998, that was.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We left them out for the dogs, you know.”

I saw what he was getting at.

He stood up, paced around the sofa once, twice. Sat down again. He spoke rapidly. “Door to door we went, calling for the men and the boys. 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 toward 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 kissed the prayer beads, tilted his head. [...]

I had read about the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif in the papers. It had happened just after the Taliban took over Mazar, one of the last cities to fall. [...]

“Door-to-door. We only rested for food and prayer,” the Talib said. He said it fondly, like a man telling of a great party he’d attended. “We left the bodies in the streets, and if their families tried to sneak out to drag them back into their homes, we’d shoot them too. We left them in the streets for days. We left them for the dogs. Dog meat for dogs.” He crushed his cigarette. Rubbed his eyes with tremulous hands.

————–

I throw my makeshift jai-namaz, my prayer rug, on the floor and I get on my knees, lower my forehead to the ground, my tears soaking through the sheet. I bow to the west. Then I remember I haven’t prayed for over fifteen years. I have long forgotten the words. But it doesn’t matter, I will utter those few words I still remember: La illaha il Allah, Muhammad u rasul ullah. There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger. I see now that Baba was wrong, there is a God, there always had been. I see Him here, in the eyes of the people in this corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him, not the white masjid with its bright diamond lights and towering minarets. There is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need, I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is. I bow to the west and kiss the ground and promise that I will do zakat, I will do namaz, I will fast during Ramadan and when Ramadan has passed I will go on fasting, I will commit to memory every last word of His holy book, and I will set on a pilgrimage to that sweltering city in the desert and bow before the Ka’bah too. I will do all of this and I will think of Him every day from this day on if He only grants me this one wish: My hands are stained with Hassan’s blood; I pray God doesn’t let them get stained with the blood of his boy too.

The first quote makes me feel really grateful I’m lucky enough to “see” horrors like these only in books…

Written by the same author:
A Thousand Splendid Suns

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