Arriving at the truth through fiction
While reportage allows you to see disasters as they happen, fiction can reveal the complexity of a situation. Some novels on Afghanistan that help the reader arrive at a deeper understanding of what’s happening there
As I look at images of people desperate to flee a country captured by the Taliban, I remember the kindness I received when I visited Kabul in 2017 for the South Asian Youth Conference. It hurts to think of the suffering that the Afghans are going through. Wishes for their well-being arise spontaneously in my heart and I find myself seeking refuge in prayer. This essay is a gesture of solidarity. Fiction can help us cut through realpolitik and ground ourselves in something subtler: empathy. Our day-to-day realities might be different from the people we read about but these stories teach us to bear witness to their hardships and grace.
Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner (2003) was the first book that gave me insights into the Afghans and their culture. Set in Kabul, it is the story of two close friends — Amir and Hassan — against the backdrop of the Soviet invasion, and the rise of the Taliban. One of its most striking moments puts Baba — Amir’s father — in the spotlight. He is a businessman who prepares to leave for the United States with Amir. On their way out, they have to travel in a crowded truck with several others. Among them is a family — a woman, her husband, and their child. This truck is stopped by a Russian soldier, who wants “a half hour with the lady in the back of the truck” before he allows the vehicle to pass. Baba is aghast. When the Russian soldier threatens to shoot him, Baba says that he would take a thousand of his bullets before he’d let “this indecency take place.”
Baba is a fictional character but there are many such heroes in real life. If you are looking for evidence, read Rajmohan Gandhi’s book Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to
Mountbatten (2013). He has recorded stories of people who displayed “insaniyat amidst insanity” during India’s Partition in 1947.
Fiction from Afghanistan will reveal to you that being male might offer some advantages but there is no perpetual immunity from the machinery of war. Atiq Rahimi’s novel Earth and Ashes (2002) tells the story of Dastaguir and his grandson Yassin. The fiveyear-old loses his hearing when his village, Abqul, is bombed by Russian soldiers. Yassin also loses his mother, grandmother, uncle, aunt and cousins during this attack. His father, Murad, works at a coal mine, and comes home to visit occasionally. Yassin does not know that he cannot hear. He tells Dastaguir, “Grandfather, have the Russians come and taken away everyone’s voice? What do they do with all the voices? Why did you let them take away your voice? If you hadn’t, would they’ve killed you? Grandma didn’t give them her voice and she’s dead.” Dastaguir has no clue how to comfort the little one.
Life in Afghanistan is even more brutal for boys if they are gay. Nemat Sadat’s novel, The Carpet Weaver (2019), set in the 1970s and 1980s, revolves around the character of Kanishka Nurzada who is in love with his childhood friend Maihan. They are bullied and sexually abused when their peers learn about this forbidden relationship. When Kanishka and his family enter Balochistan as refugees, they are forced to weave carpets at a camp where he is later raped by Tor Gul, the man in charge of the camp. Kanishka does not want to antagonize him, and put his own family in danger before they reach the US. In Sadat’s book, the US represents freedom. Kanishka knows that his own people might execute him for his desires because they are viewed as un-Islamic. Zaki jaan, a character in the novel says, “The one thing I know is that Allah never forgives sodomy... We can’t let any of our boys become a kuni.”
Nicolas Wild’s graphic novels Kabul Disco Vol1: How I Managed Not to Be Abducted in Afghanistan (2018) and Kabul Disco Vol2: How I Managed Not to Get Addicted to Opium in Afghanistan (2018) are woven around the story of a French comic artist who is hired by a communications agency in Kabul. They want him to produce comics to explain the Afghan constitution to children. The agency is run by people from France and Argentina.
Wild offers a satirical take on expats who treat Afghanistan as a “land of contracts” and spend much of their time going to parties with other expats. These serve as spaces to network and negotiate newer contracts.
Read together, these books can help you piece together what has led Afghanistan to its present situation. Asylum in the US or any Western country is no guarantee of safety as Nadia Hashimi explores in her novel The Sky at Our Feet (2018). Jason D, the protagonist, has an American name but that does nothing to hide his Afghan heritage or assuage his fear when his mother, “an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan”, faces the threat of deportation.
The narrator writes, “My mother is standing in front of the television, listening to the news anchor. He’s talking about a rally against people who are in this country illegally. I see a picture of people shouting and waving signs around. The signs say things like America for Americans and Go Home.” Where will the Afghans go? When will they know peace? These questions unsettle my heart, and I seek refuge, yet again, in prayer.