Essay: Arriving at the truth about Afghanistan 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 Afghans desperate to flee a country captured by the Taliban, I remember the unfailing kindness that I received when I visited Kabul in 2017 for the South Asian Youth Conference. It hurts to think of the immense suffering that the Afghans are going through right now. Wishes for their well-being arise spontaneously in my heart at all times of day and I find myself seeking refuge in prayer. May they be safe and free.
This essay is a gesture of solidarity with the indomitable spirit of the Afghan people. Fiction can help us cut through the obsession with realpolitik and ground ourselves in something much 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, a violent transfer of power from the hands of the Afghan monarchy, a huge exodus of refugees to Pakistan in the neighbourhood and the United States, and the rise of the fearsome Taliban.
Though the plot revolves around Hassan’s loyalty, Amir’s betrayal, and the promise of a belated repentance, one of its most striking moments puts Baba — Amir’s father — in the spotlight. He is a businessman who has little respect for the Soviet invaders and the religious extremists of Afghanistan, so he prepares to leave for the United States with Amir. On their way out, they have to travel in a crowded truck with several other Afghans.
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. He says, “War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.” 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.”
The courage to put his own life at risk to protect a person he does not even know is closely linked to the Pashtun code of honour — Pashtunwali — which requires tribesmen to stand up against injustice, and safeguard women. Afraid that Baba might get killed by the soldier for this impertinence, Amir begs him to sit down. Baba is in no mood to listen. Rather, ashamed of his son’s cowardice, he says, “Haven’t I taught you anything?”
This episode from Hosseini’s novel gives me gooseflesh. It stands as an example of the compassion and fortitude that human beings are capable of. 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.
When the state abdicates its responsibility to look after its people, help comes from unexpected quarters. Canadian novelist Deborah Ellis tells the story of a girl named Parvana in her novel The Breadwinner (2000). Parvana’s family lives in Kabul. Under Taliban rule, her mother is forced to discontinue her job as a writer with a radio station. Her father, a history teacher, is abducted and imprisoned by the Taliban because he was educated in England.
Ellis writes, “Everybody had come to Afghanistan. The Persians came 4000 years ago. Alexander the Great came, too, followed by the Greeks, Arabs, Turks, British, and finally the Soviets… All these people had come to Parvana’s beautiful country to try to take it over, and the Afghans had kicked them all out again!” This pattern has repeated itself most recently with the United States pulling out troops, paving the way for a Taliban takeover.
One day, while escaping a Talib soldier who wants to beat her with a stick for not wearing a burqa, Parvana runs into her former school teacher Mrs Weera. The thoughtful lady brings her home, and finds that Parvana’s mother is falling apart. She needs someone to take charge. Without wasting a minute, Mrs Weera gets a grip on what needs to be done and delegates tasks. She also helps with tidying up the house, and eventually moves in with them.
The adults convince Parvana to disguise herself as a boy so that she can be safe in public, and be a breadwinner for the family until her father returns. She gets a haircut, and wears the clothes that once belonged to her elder brother Hossain who was killed by a land mine when he was 14 years old. After the transformation is complete, Parvana is given a new name and identity. She becomes Kaseem, a cousin from Jalalabad who is supposedly visiting Kabul.
People are forced to innovate when their survival is at stake. This practice of bacha posh is common in some parts of Afghanistan. Parents who do not have sons are known to disguise one of their daughters as a boy so she can move freely in public, attend school, play sports, take up jobs, and serve as an escort for the other sisters since women and girls are not supposed to be out on the streets without a male companion from their family.
In 2013, I met former Afghan parliamentarian Azita Rafaat as part of a conflict transformation and peace-building course in Kathmandu. She used to be a bacha posh (meaning ‘dressed up as a boy’ in the Dari language) when she was a child. When she grew up and had four daughters of her own, an endless stream of taunts from her in-laws made her transform one of her daughters — Mehrangis — into a boy named Mehran. Disguises last only until puberty.
Fiction from Afghanistan will reveal to you that being a boy might offer some advantages but there is no perpetual immunity from the machinery of war. Atiq Rahimi’s novel Earth and Ashes (2002) — which was first published as Khâkestar-o-khâk (1999) in Dari and then translated into English by Erdağ Göknar—tells the story of Dastaguir and his grandson Yassin. The five-year-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 bomb attack. His father, Murad, is alive because he does not live with them. Murad works at a coal mine, and comes home to visit them 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 is heartbroken, and has no clue how to comfort the little one. He tries to find some relief in naswar — powdered tobacco mixed with other substances — and is unsuccessful.
Author Nemat Sadat shows that life in Afghanistan is even more brutal for boys if they are gay. His 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. Instead of punishing the bullies, the teacher shames Kanishka and Maihan for not being “real men.”
This harassment is not unlike what happened in India before Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was read down by the Supreme Court to decriminalize “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” Even after the verdict, many queer people continue to be threatened and harmed. 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 develops a strange relationship with this tyrant. On the one hand, he hates Tor Gul for all the cruelty he unleashes upon people who are no match for him. On the other, Kanishka also craves the sexual pleasure that he can receive only from another man in the absence of Maihan. He begins to view Tor Gul as both his rapist and his lover. He 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 rather than occupation. 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. It’s immoral, impure, unpardonable. And if we let them get their way, then others will find the courage to continue down the path. We can’t let any of our boys become a kuni.”
Jasbir Puar’s book Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007) provides a useful framework to think about how the US and other Western countries have used the language of queer rights to disguise their Islamophobia and justify their interference in the affairs of other countries. It is no secret that, in the days after 9/11, the US War on Terror was sold to American voters using images of Afghan women who needed to be liberated.
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. Diego, one of the founders of this agency, projects himself as a specialist in “war-torn countries.” He has worked in Kosovo and East Timor. The agency also hires guards, drivers, cleaning ladies and cooks to make expat life comfortable.
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.
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, educator and researcher. He is @chintan_connect on Twitter.