2022, 288 p.
Much of our awareness of Afghanistan comes from twenty-first century events: the detonation of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. troops after 9/11 and the protests against the presence of Australian troops in such a misguided, downright wrong war, and then the chaotic recapture of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021. This book takes us even further back to life before the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the rise of the Mujahadeen - a life which, for middle- and upper-class Afghanis could be cultured, intellectual and free from want.
The book focuses on brother and sister Henna and Hamid, and the man who will become Henna's husband, Rahim. Henna and Hamid are the youngest of four children, and the two older sisters have married and moved away. Henna and Hamid are both well-educated, with Henna planning on becoming a teacher, while Hamid's interests are more theological and philosophical. However, being the youngest daughter of a wealthy family, the prospect of marriage is drawing closer and becoming more inevitable. Lawyer Ramid and his family come to her parents seeking marriage, which she knows will close doors to her options in the future, but her quiet resistance at first turns into acquiescence. Hamid knows that he is losing his closest friend, but he acquiesces as well. Family and tradition hold a firm grip on their futures.
The book is divided into three parts: Herat, War and Exile. Herat is the 'before' time, as Henna and Rahim marry and have their first child in a steady, middle-class milieu underpinned by family loyalties and devotion to Islam. 'War' brings the assassination of the President, the stirring of the mujahadeen resistance and the invasion of the Soviets. Although the family is not overtly political, Rahim knows, as a prosecutor, that he has to be careful with his words and circumspect in his loyalties. He is arrested and beaten for a slight involvement with the mujahadeen, and it is only through the influence of his contacts that he is released. None of them know it (although we, as readers 40 years lager do), but worse is to come than the Soviet invasion and the appropriation of their property. They flee the country before all of this happens.
This leads to the third part, Exile, where Hamid flees to Iran where he works at a menial job in a kitchen, and Rahim and Henna leave for India where they gradually move from place to place until they seek asylum in Australia. We now in Australia are so conscious of 'grounds for seeking asylum', and Ghani is largely silent about the bureaucratic process that made it possible for them to come here. Hamid tries to go to India, too, but he is rejected at the airport and returns to Iran. Once here, Rahim and Henna decide to start their own small tailoring business in the garage. Rahim cannot find work as a lawyer, but they are both grateful for a safe country.
The story is told in short alternating chapters, which I always find a bit of a cop-out. Having said that, I have recently read two books with inordinately long chapters and I found those oppressive, and these short chapters were a relief. It is told in the present tense throughout. Although the book's sympathies lie mainly with Henna, I think, it also rounded out the characters of the men in her life. Her brother genuinely loved her, and although it was an arranged - or at least, mediated- marriage, Rahim and Henna came to love each other two through their mutual dependence in a world that seemed to have lost all its certainties: home, profession, family. Many books about Middle Eastern Islamic women portray the men in their lives as tyrants, but neither of these men were, although viewed from a distance they may have appeared to be.
No translator is mentioned, so I think that this book must have been written in English. It is simply written, with a poetic lilt. It conveys well a sense of yearning for a disappeared past, and a stoic acceptance of negotiating a new life from a maelstrom of war and political instability. I wonder if I would have such endurance.
My rating: 7/10
Read because: CAE bookgroup selection. Unfortunately I missed the discussion because I had been in contact with COVID and feared giving it to my older Bookgroup friends.
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