Love that she's walking in high heels across the rocky terrain

Mariam is an illegitimate child who is forced to marry Rasheed, an abusive husband at age 15. Rasheed is an ugly, cruel man who breaks Mariam’s spirit time and again. Laila is an attractive girl who lives just up the street. She is born to educated, liberal parents and enjoys the freedoms Mariam is restricted from. She has a boyfriend, but their plans to marry get derailed when he has to leave the country and move to Pakistan as a refugee. Although he offers to marry Laila and take her with him, she opts to stay back with her parents who need her.

During the wars of the 1980’s and 1990’s, a rocket destroys Laila’s home and family. Finding herself alone and pregnant with her boyfriend’s child, she decides to accept Rasheed’s offer of marriage and becomes his second wife. The story then deals with how Mariam and Laila form an almost impossible friendship, and how they support each other through all their travails.

My Review:

A Thousand Splendid Suns does a wonderful job of giving glimpses and insight into the daily life in Afghanistan through the eyes of two very different women who become friends and allies.

I was very apprehensive to pick up this book. I hadn’t much liked “The Kite Runner”, and all that I read about this book made me feel it would be a tear-jerker, overly emotional kind of novel. The sort I normally try to avoid.

Anyway, I did eventually read it, and I must admit that I loved this one so much better than The Kite Runner. I really loved the 2 main characters. They are not spineless at all, but each show maturity and strength in the midst of unimaginable hardships. The ending of the book is superb, redemptive, and hopeful.

Khaled Hosseini paints a stark picture of what it means to be a woman in a culture where they are valued only for how well they keep a house, and how many sons they produce. A culture where they are subject to the whims of men. Those that value them as worthwhile human beings are welcome oases – they seem to be the exceptions in their world, rather than the norm.

To my surprise, there were also some subtle humorous passages in the book.

There is a hilarious aside in the book about a painter who is forced to draw pants on his paintings of flamingos to hide their “nudity”. I also loved reading about how people worked around the Taliban ban on TVs by burying it in the garden during raids.

What horrified me in the novel was the actuality of how rubbish daily life really was under the Taliban regime – no TV, no cinema, no books (apart from Islamic religious texts), no kite flying, full burqas, no cosmetic use, women could not travel without a man to escort them. What on earth did people do for recreation? I mean all the simple pleasures of life were taken away.

I am not even looking at this from a gender perspective. Life would have been hellish for men too, I am sure.

There are some nice bits of Islamic poetry and songs scattered through the novel, which I loved.

I will be posting a longer poem in a separate post, but I thought I would end this review with an excerpt from this shorter, very lovely ghazal that was included in this book, and which epitomizes its very spirit. This ghazal is by someone called Hafez:

Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not,
Hovels shall turn to rose garden, grieve not,
If a flood should arrive to drown all that’s alive,
Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not.

In short, this book is every bit as splendid as the title suggests. Go read!

Let me get something straight first, I am in no way a professional book reviewer. I like to say what pops into my head without hesitation, making it short and simple, some might like it and other won’t, however in the end I think we can all agree that Hosseni’s book was overall a good one.

I always wanted to read the Kite runner but I never got the chance. Not that I was busy with anything, but I always try to step away from novels that gain a lot of popularity in certain times, let it rest a bet and then come back to it so I can read it in my own terms & reflections.

Now we come to the novel itself. The first part of course went extremely well. It was enjoyable, fun.. heartbreaking and complex at the same time. Not complex in the sense of the story itself, but in the characters’ sprits if you know what I’m saying. Hosseni managed to present us with a beautiful image of relationships; Amir’s relationship with Hassan, his father and Rahim Khan as well. The description of Kabul in the seventies is magnificent to the extent that you can even “smell” the famous Lamb Kabob from the novel pages itself.. at least I did.

The second part of the book was kind hazy for me. Everything was in it’s right order but in some sort of way I was expecting more. For those who read the book I wanna talk about the guilt issue. It was kinda cold, never changing. I was expecting more memories, more emotions and maybe .. maybe a broken plate or two. I do understand for a fact that this is the real world, that nothing should always happen in a dramatic way, but sometimes adding spices won’t do any harm to the realistic vision of the novel.

I guess a lot of people have struggled with the ending, and I must admit I did as well.. at first. It left me wanting more, and that’s why I purchased the movie. The motion picture was good and it can stand on its own, but I knew that for me to accept the ending I should read the novel again… and I did. I kept reviewing every single detail in a new light, and reconsidering the use of words again and again so the second time I closed the book, I was finally content. And if you must ask, no… I wasn’t forcing myself to accept the ending. I just feel that with every author, there is a reason why he ended his book the way it appears, and that’s what I was trying to figure out.

My Rating: 3.9/5

I wish I had more to entertain you with, my life is quite boring. Which you have probably already know. With school along with two part-time jobs, I rarely have time to do much of anything. On my days off I don’t have a lot of much to do, other than homework, laundry and other such painful tasks. This week, I work everyday other day that I don’t have booked off. Funnn. I wish winter’s in Canada were nicer/warmer, especially in Edmonton. E-town = shitstown. I want to work on my photography portfolio. I also need to help Bryn with her modelling portfolio as well. Seeing money doesn’t like being around me, I don’t have lights or a backdrop for her. So we have to improvise, I have no idea how this will work out :/. Anywhoozil, tonight I work 6-10 at Dairy Queen. It looks like it may be dead, so there is a possibility I might leave early. I hate leaving early but I also hate wasting my time doing nothing.

Tomorrow is Remembrance day, a big day for Canada. No school tomorrow, though I do work at the auction at 2. Time + time and a half woot! Sadly I won’t get to sleep in long, I have to bus to pretty much the other side of the city so I could meet up with Randy so he could drive me. We’ll see how the buses run tomorrow. I also have a load of english homework to finish for thursday. I am really not looking forward to any of this. Firstly, I must write a short response journal for the first four chapters of The Kite Runner, I have never done this before, so I am at a lost as to what is expected of me. I also have to finish reading the next three or four chapters of the book and write out questions and concerns related to the chapters. In order for our group to discuss it. Lord do I hate english. I despise how it is a required course to graduate. If you know of any helpful sites for these, it’d be much appreciated.

“Vanatorul de zmeie”

Khaled  Hosseini

      Am ales intr-o zi cartea asta dupa nume, imi suna interesant… si nu stiu de ce insa aveam senzatia ca cineva imi spusese ca e o carte buna… sau auzisem pe undeva... hmm. Oricum m-am pomenit cu cartea in mana si uite ca din curiozitate am zis hai sa citesc cateva pagini sa vedem despre ce e vorba. Din acea clipa am inceput sa o citesc peste tot, in metrou, in pauzele alea de 5 minute la cursuri sau cand aveam jumatate de ora libera intre doua cursuri… in fine, in orce moment liber. Culmea e ca nu sunt una care se omoara cu cititul si cu atat mai putin una care sa citeasca o carte care nu iti ofera nici macar o emotie. Insa cartea asta, nu stiu poatesunt eu exagerata sau poate ca m-a impresionat in mod particular, insa e cea mai buna carte pe care am citit-o vreodata.  Binenteles dupa ce am terminat de citit cartea mi-am descarcat filmul… e mai mult o sinteza a cartii si nu reda foarte bine unele aspecte insa e bine facut, mi-a placut.

Una dintre frazele care mi-a ramas intiparita in minte?  “In tara asta (California) pana si insectele se grabesc”

By Khaled Hosseini.

For two years or more, I have had this book, stuffed on my shelf and I haven’t done more than to read a few pages.  For some reason I took it down and started to read it a couple of days ago and I couldn’t put it down.

Although a work of fiction, it really isn’t.  It is more a contemporary historical work, with an old-fashioned storyteller style.

I have been stumped lately.  Not blocked because when you are preparing a manuscript for any publication, you aren’t really creating something new, you are going over what has already been written and you are refining it.  Hopefully.

Perhaps to say there is nothing ‘new’ is wrong.  You are doing so, even in the rewriting.

Where I have been stumped is the ‘why’ of my stories, especially those written for “The Zar Tales” and also the novel, “Tin Hinan”.  They are written in the framework of cultural issues and a place I have no experience or knowledge.  But that didn’t seem to stop me and I wondered about the ‘why’.

I borrowed from my experiences in Belly Dancing, but that is just part of the issue of the ‘why’.

Reading “The Kite Runner” I fell under the spell of what Hosseini was doing: he was weaving a wonderful, elaborate, moral and timely ‘tale’:  Perhaps the Persians, the vastness of the history and literature, the poets Rumi, Khayyam, Beydel, Hafez, the Shahnamah, (book of 10th century Persian heroes) can turn our hearts and minds from the horrors of what Afghanistan and those parts of the Middle East have become to us in the West.  It is more than terrorism.  These writers and stories are part of the heartbeat of humanity that knows no walls.

“If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother.  But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting….”

(from the Shahnamah, a story about Rostam and his long-lost son, Sohrab who he mortally wounds in battle.)

For writers, for those of us who write fiction, it is good to dip into history and other cultures.  The richness and beauty of these things can only add to our attempts.

(Funny. In writing one of the final chapters of  “The Zar Tale”, I took the sense of  “Now is the time gone for meeting” in the poetry of the stumped, second-rate Emir, who finally (after ten centuries of mulling over the same three  opening lines) gets it together in his indictment of the three Mullahs.  Then his poetry soars and he is able to complete it.  I must have read something of the Shahnamah somewhere, but I don’t remember.  It’s funny how the mind holds onto something in secret and then gives forth when needed.

“Take to delight the presence

That from this two-way abode

We would not meet each other

Once we pass through.

For our chance meeting is but

A reflection of life’s mysteries

Not to be counted upon,

But to acknowledge the wonder.

But!

You have barred our spirits from Paradise!

You, and your One God, have condemned us

To wander the earth inconsolable to human kindness.

Now is the time for our answer!

Now is the time for the quick slash

Of a sword!

Now we delight  we will not

Meet again

Once you pass through this

Vale of tears you have created.

Heaven or Hell-

You have made it the same!”

–From “The Zar Tales”

And perhaps the real reason of the ‘why’ is that humanity suffers the same issues all over the map. When we do read and understand at a deeper level these human issues, we begun to understand ourselves.

If the upshot of all this means  our writing is fuller, the colors richer, well, that is good. When  we understand that alien cultures are no barriers to the human heart and compassion…well, that is even better.

Lady Nyo

I’ve learnt two things today:

1. Don’t go shopping in Sainsburys on a Friday, it’s very bad for ones level of calm.

I’d managed to put off the grocery shopping all week as I’ve been so busy sewing. I should have just spent ten minutes doing it online but I never got around to it. It was only when I heard the smallest Mutterer telling her dad on the phone how she’d had porridge for breakfast and tea that day, that I realised that I couldn’t put off going any longer.  The car park was completely full so I spent ages trying to find a space and the supermarket itself was full of people dithering or chatting in the middle of the aisles so it took me twice as long as normal to get what I needed. I did treat myself to a couple of dvds though to cheer myself up, “The Kite Runner” and “Pay It Forward”. There’s been a lot of talk recently on some blogs I follow (Sew Scrumptious and Amberlife) about Paying It Forward, so it will be good to watch the film again.

2. Don’t try chasing ducks around a muddy garden when you’re wearing a tight skirt, it makes the job of catching them much more difficult.

Our neighbours have gone away for the weekend and we’re ducksitting. Mr Mutterer hasn’t been feeling too good so I thought I’d let him rest and go and put the ducks to bed by myself. What a stupid idea that was! We’ve been spoilt with our ducks and the fact they can easily be herded into their house at night. Next doors ducks are much more mischievous and have to be trapped in a corner of the garden/cardboard box combo. Easy when there’s two of you, downright impossible when there’s just one. My first attempt saw four ducks scatter in every direction possible and me diving into the middle to catch duck number five. I put her safely in the house and went of to try and get the others. My gosh those ducks are fast, much faster than ours. They found so many ways to outrun me that I had to return home to get our big fishing net to try and catch them. By the time I got back, duck number 1 had got out of the house and was giggling along with the rest of them. So I’m there in my nice black skirt and wellies, its beginning to rain so I can’t see through my glasses, the ground underfoot is very slippery, and I’m almost certain the old folks in the bungalow across the road are having a really good laugh at me. I’m quite nifty with the net, even though I say it myself, and determined not to be beaten I managed to catch two straight away. Three left. One hid behind the duck house. One went in the pond. And one was nowhere to be seen. Oh great! I tackled the one in the pond first. It flapped and struggled and completely soaked me…but I caught it. I chased the one out from behind the house and netted it before it knew what was happening. But where on earth had the last one gone? I searched everywhere. The garden isn’t huge and I couldn’t work out where she had gone. Then I saw a flash of white squeezing through a hole in the fence. I dashed over and grabbed a leg just in time. If she had manged to get through she’d have been trapped in a gap of a few inches between the willow fence and the wall behind it which runs the length of the garden and I’d never have got her out. I’ve learnt my lesson. Tomorrow I’m taking the little Mutterers and my stepson for back-up.

In comparison, our menagerie have been a delight today. Our cuckoo Maran hen Lisa has taken a liking to Annie the lamb and has given herself the job of personal groomer. Any speck of dirt on Annie’s fleece is swiftly removed by a peck from Lisa. Yesterday she tried cleaning the mud from Annie’s nostrils which Annie didn’t seem to mind at all, but todays pecking was more focussed around her private parts and from her reaction I can only guess it hurt a lot!

Annie is getting heavier by the day so I hope that means she’s eating in between bottles. I did sneak up the garden path earlier to see what she was up to and she was eating out of the chicken food trough! I can’t stand up and hold her now as she’s just too big, but she’s more than happy to sit on my lap on the garden bench and snuggle up to my neck like she did when she was tiny. I in turn do the same to her, she is so warm and snuggly and she has a very warm comforting smell. I think she must miss this attention now she’s outside on her own all the time.

I feel like I’ve hardly seen her this week with all the sewing I’ve been doing.  I’ve finished the fourth bear made from my Saints and Pinners fabrics. A very colourful bunch I’m sure you’ll agree. Fran at Saints and Pinners loved them and will be posting a picture on their own blog.

I’ve been invited to sell my bears via a new website which will be selling selected handmade items from the UK. They launch the website at the end of November so I will tell you all about it properly once it’s up and running. But in the meantime I can show you my first bear I’ve made for them. She (it has to be a she, it’s so pretty) is going to be the prize for their first monthly competition. I have also had to write a little bit about my bears, and set a multiple choice question and answer for the competition…and no I’m not telling you what it is, you’ll have to wait! All I can say is that the answer is found on my website, so hopefully it will be a good (and free) way of advertising what I make. So here’s the prize, a lovely bear made from Cath Kidston fabric…isn’t she adorable?

Productivity will come to me sometimes in waves, gallons, buckets. It’ll just swamp me and overwhelm me and all I can do is ride it out and leave a trail of finished things in my wake.

Today I am having One of Those Days, and it’s great. I was just outside with the dogs, and did horse/cat chores; one benefit of my dad being away is that I have the roam of the land. I can do my mother a favor and do chores, which I like to do when it’s nice outside.

It’s great to do what I like in my own house. My mom is less stressed because dad isn’t here dirtying up the house, and I can be relied upon to keep our living space decent-looking. With dad here, it’s like, it’s going to get shitted up anyway, so what’s the point of picking up?

But that’s neither here nor there, because I am having a Productive Day.

I’ve got the card table set up in front of the couch and am going to put some of The Wiz on so I can hear my thoughts without singing them. I’m going to memorize some more as I finish my English assignment with the New Yorker and then chop away at my Kite Runner essay. Then it’s lines, for the rest of the day, and once Michelle and mom get home I’ll put away groceries.

I’m going to get my coffee and get started. I’ve got a lot to do– laundry and dishes on top of school and college essays, too– but I’m ready for it.

It’s just another One of Those Days.

I watched Kite Runner, the movie directed by Marc Foster and based on Khaled Hosseini’s book by the same title, recently. It had such a raw quality to it that it set me thinking about fate, honor and circumstances, as perceived by the characters as well as us, in general.

The interesting part of the movie is that it keeps the scenes, the characters and the emotions very real, no overdramatization. The truth and the unrevealed circumstances are so overwhelming that underplaying it was the best tactic could have been used, while taking the story forward.

In the backdrop of the talibanization of Afganistan, the story unfolds – the strange friendship between the protagonist and the servant’s son; the reality of the father of the protagonist who has an illicit affair, and his attempt to keep his honor by ensuring the child grew up as his servants’, in his own backyard; their journey across the seas seeking refuge in America and going from being a landlord to a gas station owner; the servant and his son are left behind to fend the family house; the protagonist and his wife not having a child; the protagonist’s trek back to Afganistan to reclaim the lost friendship, only to realize that the servant’s son was in fact his own half-brother and that all that is left of their relationship is his nephew in an orphanage; his genuine attempt to take the child back home – and ends where it all began, flying kites!

Worth a watch, I must say…

Two days after I finished Uwem Akpan’s “Say You’re One of Them”, Oprah Winfrey selected this collection of short stories as part of her popular book club. As a reader, I personally hate to have my literary consumption tattooed with giant “O”s on the cover but I generally support the arguably most influential woman in modern history’s attempt to get people to read good books. Akpan joins the rest of Winfrey’s literati entourage: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Faulkner, Leo Tolstoy, and Toni Morrison to name a few.

I’m curious to how Winfrey’s devotees, usually middle class women, will react to possibly the most violent, morally-challenging books I have ever read. In fact, whether you read “Say You’re One of Them” on lazy Sunday mornings, on your lunch breaks, or a few minutes before bed time, I should warn the prospective reader that there is no “good” time to read Akpan’s horrific tales.

Prior to reading “Say You’re One of Them,” I considered Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” the most violent, though poignant, social commentary I have read. It also contained, in my opinion the worst literary death, in which a minor character, young Stanislovas, falls asleep from exhaustion and malnutrition after hours at his place of illegal employment and is eaten alive by rats (please let me know of a worse literary fate.) Akpan’s protagnists, all of which are children, now vie for this terrible distinction as they face an adult world of ethnic  and religious violence, rape, prostitution, drug use, AIDS, poverty, and hunger.

When Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” first debuted, I was in the awkward position of hating a novel that everyone and their grandma adored.  To say you hated “The Kite Runner” in 2003-2004 was akin to declaring you considered drowning kittens as a hobby. I still maintain that Hosseini’s prose and structure are amateurish at best and the novel simply capitalizes on a contemporary event. Whether, intentional or unintentional, the popularity of “The Kite Runner” among Americans is in part due to its complicity with the American invasion of Afghanistan. I worried similarly that Akpan’s work would suffer the same trappings. It does not. Akpan is a talented writer and one I hope to follow as I age.

Cover of Persepolis (Pantheon, 2007); image courtesy of shelflove.wordpress.com

When I saw the film version of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, it was a pretty rad time to be a feminist moviegoer. In the last month of 2007 and the first month of 2008, this movie came out, along with Juno and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Having just completed a girls’ studies course, I was ecstatic that three different movies, each from a different country, were released with complex, resilient protagonists who were girls and young women.

Two of these movies earned Oscar nominations a few months later. Juno won Best Screenplay. Persepolis was nominated for Best Animated Feature, but unfortunately lost to Ratatouille. 4 Months, which documents the harrowing day of one college student trying to procure an illegal abortion for her roommate during the last years of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s in Romania, won the Palme D’Or at Cannes earlier in 2007, but failed to receive any nominations. For some reason. Perhaps it escaped nomination as a technicality, but I don’t understand why no one, particularly writer-director Cristian Mungiu or lead actress Anamaria Marinca, got any Academy recognition. Perhaps because it lacked the allegorical importance of No Country For Old Men or There Will Be Blood and cut to very real (and tremendously gendered) issues facing real people in the real world, many of whom reside in developing nations. 

But it is really no matter. No Country, There Will Be Blood, Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There were but more examples of what a very fine time this particular two-month period was for movies. But 4 Months was easily my favorite movie of that year. The movie whose source material will be the focus of this post was a very close second.

Having seen the movie upon its U.S. release, some context has changed considerably upon revisiting Satrapi’s autobiography about coming of age inside and outside of Iran from the late 70s to the early 90s, a time period where the country witnessed the fall of the Shah (aided by the United States), the swift and crushing oppression of its citizens by Islamic extremists, a devastating eight-year war with Iraq, and the neighboring country’s launch of the Persian Gulf War. In late 2007, we were still living under the Bush Administration, so the country’s positioning as part of the ”axis of evil” was in my mind, but being pretty ignorant about the country’s political history and our involvement with it past the Iran-Contra Affair, Bush’s branding of the country read more as a promise that the United States were, in fact, going to try and spread democracy by force to all of the Middle East, snatching up its real or imagined WMDs and drain its oil resources in the process. And I knew about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and was disgusted by his views on the Holocaust and heartened by the student protests around his adminstration, but was not yet aware of just what a dangerous despot he is.     

This was, of course, before this year’s highly controversial presidential election, which Ahmadinejad “won” by a suspiciously high margain over rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, an Independent reformist. At the time, what seemed more present in our minds in the states was what Twitter was doing to help cover and contextualize the civic protests and how quickly mainstream broadcast news was going to incorporate the still-emergent micro-blogging site’s Tweets into their 24-hour cycle, regardless of how accurate they were. 

As a result, I was a little jaded by the “Twitter users coverage of the Iran election is going to change news reporting” angle many seemed to be taking and instead wanted to know more about how the election was fraudulent, why certain people (specifically journalists, protesters, students, and politicians) were being arrested, what the stakes were, who was doing a good job covering this news story, and, most importantly, what circumstances led to the current iteration of Iran. Remembering that local branches of Barnes & Noble were donating proceeds to the Paramount upon purchase last weekend, shilling out my money to the big box chain for the sake of preserving a historical movie theater seemed as a good an opportunity to buy the book that may provide answers.

And, I’ll be honest. Reading the book left me with more questions than anything else (a similar feeling came over me when reading Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, two books whose timelines stretch past the 70s-90s, but contain a considerable overlap in terms of time with Persepolis, focusing on what was going on with ordinary people in Afghanistan, another contentious Middle Eastern country that borders Iran). It was hard not to check some ugly American tendencies I have toward Islamic traditions — particularly toward its views on marriage, sexuality, gender politics, and dress. At the same time, I was incredulous of how pro-West rhetoric and ideology, alongside our smuggled trinkets of popular culture, could possibly reform a nation, or at least save a person.

Luckily, Satrapi is skeptical of both and, like me and other feminists from all over the world, has a lot to negotiate. She grapples with these issues head-on. She argues with teachers against the physical restrictions and societal double standards that come with the hijab and the burka (sidenote: I know that Faegheh Shirazi, who teaches Middle Eastern Studies at UT and rejects traditional Islamic dress, has written and taught courses on gender and clothing in the Middle East, but any other suggestions for further reading are welcome). She watches her female peers grow up to only want marriage and children, in large part because these are the only things their nation’s leaders believe define their worth. Particularly poignant for this co-habitator, she regrets getting married to a man named Reza because they could not legally live together (or even walk the street) without proof of marriage, dissolving the marriage and leaving for France.

Marjane and friends reject the hijab; image courtesy of rand.org

Satrapi is a smart rebel who reads constantly, thinks clearly, and never backs down from an argument. She yells at authority figures who bully her or deny that there are any political prisoners in Iran after learning about the loss of her grandfather, who was son and prime minister to the ousted king (a tie that Satrapi suggests is not uncommon).

College student Satrapi damns the man; image courtesy of butterfliesandbears.wordpress.com

Luckily for Satrapi, she gets through all of this with the love and support of her politically aware and resistant parents, their friends, and one rad paternal grandma. Not so luckily, she also knows and meets lots of folks who suffered for speaking up, speaking out, or just living in the wrong house during an aerial bombing. Something tells me that many Iranians could recount similar tales of horror.

Satrapi also learns that the ways of the West are not always ideal, either. While a pre-pubescent in Iran, she hangs Iron Maiden posters on her wall her parents smuggle from a vacation in Turkey when the government lifted border restrictions. She defiantly walks around her neighborhood, blaring Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” from her Walkman while sporting a Michael Jackson pin. But noting that their daughter’s rebelliousness is hardly a phase and that escalating conflict with Iraq could mean the imprisonment or death of their mouthy teen, her parents send her to live with a friend of her mother’s in Vienna.

Still from the film; image courtesy of whatsontv.co.uk

Satrapi finishes high school, barely scraping by as she finds odd jobs, dates dumb boys, takes a lot of drugs, and runs into authority figures who want her to tow the line and behave. She also falls in with a group of radical misfits who dabble with nihilism, Marxism, hair dye, and punk. While Satrapi initially finds a home with these punks and new wave kids, she soon discovers their privilege has made them cowardly, pretentious, self-righteous, entitled, and lazy. Her outsider status also makes her cool, her Austrian peers clearly jealous by what she has seen and experienced without really processing the weight of it between drags off their joints and skims through their copies of the Marx-Engels Reader in their well-appointed bedrooms. It’s small wonder that, when Satrapi finally returns home to Iran after she finishes high school homeless and afflicted with bronchitis, she washes off a punk stencil from her bedroom wall. And while she’s sad that her mother gave away her cassette tapes, she probably wasn’t going to listen to them anyway. She would’ve kept the Kim Wilde tape, however.

So, ultimately, I do feel this revisit of Persepolis helped clarify my feelings about the state of Iran. It also left me with several questions and a need to know more. Ultimately, though, it left me with the sense of universality that exists between people, especially tough, smart women and girls, while at the same time recognizing the particularities that inform their realities. And continues to inform them. Back in June, Satrapi spoke out against the election results with filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalba. Something tells me that her grandmother, who passed away shortly after Satrapi moved to France at the close of the book, would be proud.

Quality time with grandma; image courtesy of rwor.org

*This review contains spoilers. Come to think of it, practically all of my reviews do.*

Even I–who usually tries to steer clear of the groupthink of bestseller lists and the like–was vaguely familiar with Hosseini and his book The Kite Runner. Its major selling point for me was that it was about Afghanistan, a country I know little about except that which is fed to us via news services. Apparently this book has sold over 10 million copies, and that doesn’t include me, as I bought The Kite Runner secondhand. Hosseini has written one subsequent novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I am now fairly eager to read.

The Kite Runner opens in Kabul in the 1960s, and we are introduced to an all-male family setup consisting of the patriarch Baba, his young son Amir (the novel’s narrator), adult servant Ali, and his young son Hassan. Amir’s mother died in childbirth and Hassan’s ran away shortly after his birth, so there are no women present. The opening section details the fairly idyllic life of Amir in 1960s Kabul, which I was surprised to find was nothing like the Kabul of more recent times. It seems that for the wealthy at least, Afghanistan was a pleasant place to live as late as 50 years ago. This is one of the great joys of reading for me–to discover people, places and times I had not known existed, to read history brought to life in narrative form. This is where The Kite Runner excels, for Hosseini creates a vivid picture of that time and place.

The story mainly concerns the exploits of Amir and Hassan, who are so close as to be virtually brothers, with one important difference: Amir is a Pashtun and Hassan a Hazara. I had heard the word Pashtun before but couldn’t have told you what it referred to, so herein lies the other great power of narrative fiction: it can be educational. Basically, the Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims and the Hazaras Shi’a, but in Afghanistan it appears that the Pashtuns are very much in command, and the Hazaras a despised underclass. That’s the limit of my current understanding on the matter. As a short aside, I question the value of organised religion (be it Islam, Christianity or whatever) if it can create such divides between people (Sunnis and Shias, Catholics and Protestants) that it becomes possible to butcher the other group in the name of God.  But I digress. Amir and Hassan have a great love for each other, but as we discover, it is more sacrifice on the part of the Hazara boy, and more demand on the part of the Pashtun. Here the author creates a useful microcosm of the wider issue.

This is a book with an epic sweep that is actually quite old-fashioned. It reminded me of the novels of John Irving and writers of his ilk (and era). There are no postmodern conundrums here. The book covers nearly thirty years in time, and charts the demise of the more modern Afghanistan at the hands of various aggressors: first reformists, then the Soviets, then the Northern Alliance, and finally the Taliban. Some of this is brought to life quite spectacularly. In a memorable scene where Baba and his son flee Kabul, they are forced to hide inside a petrol tanker along with many others. One boy dies as a result of the fumes, and his father shoots himself in the head in despair. I’ve missed out one of the most important scenes in the book, where Amir and Hassan win a kite-flying contest that gives the book its name, but you can read that for yourself.

The middle section of the book is possibly the weakest, as it is set in America and covers about twenty years in little more than 100 pages. The main focus here is the slow demise of Baba, Amir’s father. While it is true that Baba comes to life in this section, there is little else of interest here and the fleamarkets of San Fernando’s Afghan community aren’t quite as interesting as the events occurring in the mother country at the same time. Baba dies, Amir grows up and marries an Afghan woman called Soraya, and they try to have children. And fail. Amir becomes a mediocre writer, and now I know why I am reminded of John Irving here! The situation is a little like that in The World According to Garp. Quite similar, in fact. There it is: Hosseini has replicated a mode of writing that flourished in the US in the 60s and 70s, with spectacular (for him) success.

I found the final section quite riveting but somewhat predictable. Amir grows comfortable in his life in the US, forgetting all about his friend Hassan whom he left more than 20 years before. But when an old family friend summons him to Pakistan in June 2001, it all comes flooding back. One of the interesting things about this book is that the narrator, Amir, is something of a coward, and his self-loathing is in itself loathsome. At least, I found it so. What we get here is a heartfelt but cliched quest for redemption, in which Amir must right the wrongs of his childhood, where he allowed Hassan to be brutally raped by a local bully by the name of Assef. Hassan has died at the hands of the Taliban, but his eight year old son Sohrab still lives, albeit barely, in Kabul.

I won’t go through all the details of this, but suffice to say that it became blatantly obvious to me that Sohrab would be adopted by the childless Amir and Soraya at least 100 pages before it played out. The ins and outs of how this comes to pass are, admittedly, quite interesting, but in another cruel twist, Amir must confront the very same Assef that raped his friend Hassan to win the boy’s freedom. And the son himself commits an act in Amir’s defence that mirrors something his father almost did decades before. It’s warm, it’s heartfelt, but it’s all awfully convenient for the plot’s arc. To be sure, the novel’s conclusion does not play out in stereotypical fashion, and there is no glossing over the ongoing problems for all concerned, but at the heart of this novel there is an antiquated structure: a quest for redemption in which fate (or God?) appears to be pulling at the actors’ strings (but of course it’s just Hosseini).

I can see why this novel has sold 10 million copies. It’s essentially a feel good novel, despite some very graphic content. And its also very safe politically in its pro-America, anti-Taliban rhetoric. This is not to say that I have anything nice to say about the Taliban, but simply that this book appeared at a time when the tension between Americans and Afghans would have been at its zenith, and that this novel placates and soothes the reader. Everything, it seems to be saying, will work out in the end. Somehow, sometime, it will work out.

Practically everyone I know has read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and as a result feels deep sympathy for Afghans trapped under the Taliban. That widespread feeling allowed President Obama to portray Afghanistan as “the good war” during his election campaign, I suspect. The Taliban is a vicious and ignorant movement. But it does not follow that we are doing good because we fight them.

As I have pondered our war in Afghanistan, I have thought often of Imperial Reckoning, a book I read earlier this year. It chronicles the British government’s fight against Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s.  I have read other troubling books about colonialism, such as King Leopold’s Ghost, which tells of the Belgian Congo and its exploitation. I had thought British colonizers were more enlightened. That turns out not to be true.

The Mau Mau were violent terrorists, who murdered and intimidated anyone who failed to fully support them in their campaign to drive out the British. The British government thought to create a well-ordered apartheid in Kenya, much like South Africa, where whites and blacks lived in unequal peace. Determined to fight for their vision of law and order, the government made a great deal of Mau Mau brutality and savagery—of which there was certainly much to be made.

The fight did not go easily. The government found itself enmeshed in a battle not just with a few revolutionaries, but with the entire Kikuyu population. Many thousands died in concentration camps (about which British authorities apparently destroyed the evidence.) Ultimately the government locked up or detained the entire Kikuyu population, tortured anyone accused of Mau Mau sympathies, and allowed vigilantes to murder at will. In a way they made themselves the mirror image of the Mau Mau. The government prevailed, but only by turning over Kenya to Jomo Kenyatta and leaving the country. Imperial Reckoning suggests that Kenyatta and his political heirs (who still rule the country) have followed in the British tracks.

Historical parallels are slippery. I am not suggesting that America in Afghanistan is anything like Britain in Kenya. The two are vastly different. What I do suggest, though, is that you can focus so much on the awfulness of your opponent, whether the Mau Mau or the Taliban, that you fail to see what you are doing yourself.

The question we have to ask ourselves is not whether the Taliban is bad for Afghanistan, but whether we have the means to offer Afghanis something better. If we fight for ten more years and kill a hundred thousand more young men, will it end well? Will Afghanistan be better off? Will we? Those are very difficult questions, but we have to answer them in the next few weeks.

At the end of 2008 I was pleased to be able to say that I had read around 50 books in the year at the rate of one per week. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve read far fewer books in 2009, and with the year entering its final quarter, I thought it was time to read a couple more. So off I went to the two local secondhand bookstores here in Northam. I’ve got three to read now, but knowing me, I’ll be doing well to end up reading two of them.

Regeneration by Pat Barker – this is about Sigfreid Sassoon in World War One. I’ve had this open for weeks now, but I haven’t gotten around to finishing it yet. Quite compelling reading, but easy to put down, as I discovered.

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini – I’ve definitely heard of this author, but only vaguely. I’ve barely looked at this, but it’s about Afghanistan and I like reading about different cultures. Sold.

Vignettes from the Late Ming translated by Yang Ye – I’m a sucker for anything Chinese, so I was sold on this straight away. It’s a collection of hsaio-p’in, a kind of prose vignette style from the Ming dynasty (17th century). Sold.

On another note, I am working on my novel Yellowcake Springs again. I’ve managed 5000 words so far in these school holidays, and I aim to write another 7000 words in the coming days, taking my ms. to 65,000 words in total. The entire ms. will be around 90,000 in first draft form.

It’s been sometime since I mentioned books which is funny because a) I have just help set up a book (and sewing) club, b) I have been reading plenty and c) I am still doing my Literature degree so naturally books are on my mind.

I spent a bit of time today updating my Goodreads profile, adding some new acquisitions and marking off books that I have read. Here are some of my latest reviews:

**Caution – reviews may contain mild spoilers! **

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I am persevering with this series as I know it has *promise* but I am yet to think it is a literary revelation! I still cannot like Bella as a character – she seems so immature considering she is 18/19 and her fervent self-deprecation is far from charming. Instead, it’s just irritating, like she is fishing for compliments from the reader (which I know sounds weird, but that’s how it seems). Having said that, I did really enjoy Eclipse, much more so than Twilight and New Moon – the Jacob story line certainly is my favourite part of the series and as such, I am sure I will only be disappointed in Breaking Dawn when I come to read it since I know Edward is meant to be The One. One last thing, the casting for Jacob in the films seems to be way off unless they are planning on some CGI tricks. I don’t have anything against Taylor Lautner but he hardly the huge, hulk of a werewolf teenager which is described in this book.

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had to read this for my upcoming Open University course and I loved it. I am sure I read it as a child, although I hadn’t really remembered much of it. It was magical, fun and I ate it up with delight! The story follows a boy called Tom whose brother gets the measles. To protect him, his parents ship him off to his aunt and uncle’s flat where he has to stay in doors in quarantine.

His despair at staying away from his brother for the summer, with no garden to play in and no trees to climb, is quickly halted by discovering a strange garden, only visible to him and only when the grandfather clock strikes thirteen!

In this magical place, he meets Hattie, a little orphan girl who is lonely and unwanted by her cousins and aunt. It is soon clear that Hattie lives in a different time to Tom and yet depite this, their friendship grows.

Each time Tom visits the garden, which for him is every night, time has passed for Hattie meaning she ages in front of Tom’s eyes but without him really noticing.

I am so glad I read this book and look forward to getting into it on my new OU Children’s Literature course.

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the first time I had read any of the Narnia books (I know, it’s a crime…) and I loved it. It was a book I flew through. I can already see why Aslan is such a well-loved character and although the world of Narnia is not completely new to me – I caught snatched of the BBC adaptation which ran when I was a kid and I have also seen the first Disney film, it was great to discover Narnia at its birth and I am excited to read on – I have the whole series.

Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World by Bryan Lee O’Malley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
After the first book, I was left feeling decidedly underwhelmed. I wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was about. However, after reading the second book, my heart is definitely warmed. Sure, the eponymous Scott Pilgrim is a bit of a douchebag, especially when it comes to the girls, but there is something funny and charming about him and the situations he finds himself in are definitely amusing. I am keen to watch the film, especially since I can see Michael Cera bringing a sensitivity to the role and the all-important likability that will mean you are rooting for him to succeed, not fail. I will be reading the next one at some point for sure.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the first book chosen for our club and it was a great way to start. Although I think we all agreed that the book itself was good and worthwhile, there were still some widely differing views. I thought this was a good book but I could not say that I LOVED it. See my thoughts, along with those of some of my book club pals here:

The Kite Runner

View all my reviews >>

Yesterday morning, I bought a book at the Borders located in the Detroit airport terminal.  I started reading it on the plane ride to Minneapolis and by chapter 6, was crying to the point where a very kind stewardess offered me a napkin, which I gratefully accepted.

Here I am now, in Seattle, Washington curled up in my King Size bed compliments of the Quality Inn, tear-stained and heartbroken because I just finished said novel.  It amazes me how a series of ink on a couple hundred sheets of tightly-bound paper can have such an overwhelming effect on me.  I don’t consider reading an escape from reality; I don’t picture myself as a character immersed in whatever fictional setting has been illustrated in my overly imaginative mind.  But I do consider the reading process a really amazing, beautiful adventure.  An adventure which, without fail, is so unbearably bittersweet when it comes to a finish.

One of the greatest feelings in the world is when you’re reading and you suddenly realize that the bulk of pages in your left hand significantly outweighs the evaporating mass in your right.  Then the stack will shrink and shrink and the thinner that end gets, the quicker your heart beats because you know you’re almost done and will probably finish (no matter what time it is) in that sitting.  When I finally get to the finish, euphoria overtakes me, and it’s like crack because I always want more once there’s nothing left.  Some super-edgy PR firm should create a hip, young campaign or public service announcement saying “Reading is my Anti-Drug” or “Drop the pipe. Pick up a book.”

I could only wish to think up an idea, formulate that idea into words, craft words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into stories and stories into works of art that can generate excitement or tears or adrenaline or heartbreak.  It’s such a personal, timeless art.  I love it almost as much as I love music, which speaks to me in a very similar way.

MK poked fun at me for how engrossed I was with A Thousand Splendid Suns.  After all, I did just start reading it yesterday.  What she said was true, “You have the rest of your life to finish that book.”  While this is a completely accurate, reasonable statement, I retorted – I could read for the rest of my life and not ever come close to discovering all the incredible works of literature that would add color and perspective to my life.

I’ve been hurt a fair share of times by insensitive, biting people and their insensitive, biting actions.  But in these situations, I rarely cry.  I rarely express my feelings or confront the wrongdoer.  It’s a personal issue, really.  It’s an odd complex that involves pride, vulnerability, self-awareness etc. I’ve been conflicted about this facet of my personality for years.  I’m a rock (at least on the surface) when it comes to emotions or human interaction or relationships.  I can remain unfazed.

But when I’m watching a movie as simple as Up in 3-D or even reading those shitty, Stephanie Meyer works of vampiric teen fiction, the waterworks start and never turn off. I cry profusely in virtually everything I watch or read, and I’m not remotely ashamed of it.  I guess I feel vicariously through fiction and my imagination is much more powerful than anyone has ever anticipated.  Or maybe it’s my compassion or tendency to put myself in the shoes of a character – usually someone suffering from heartbreak or an innocent party who was blatantly wronged.  I cry in everything.

But I’m not embarrassed.  I love that about myself, and this is why – my crying while reading well-written books or while watching heart-warming films proves that art can change people, move people.  Art can make me feel things that I’m seemingly incapable of feeling in my own life, and for me personally, that’s the most worthwhile use of money, time and emotions.