It is always a true tale when told from within, and therein lies half the secret of why this book is good, gripping, raw, imagery strong and unforgettable. Layers upon layers of the life as the protagonist knew in a country that was ravaged by wars and marauders since mid seventies in recent times, even apart from the historical ever trampling of the land by various warriors in their path.
Several questions, several interesting points. The nature of caste and the role played by race in the whole caste-class question, and an almost slavery sort of level of relationship of master to servant in most respects except an actual sale of humans involved, for example - very intriguing in that rarely is this structure admitted as a caste, and is then taken for granted, while being usually clothed in terms of race or nationality. Islam is supposed not to have any iota of inequality between men (that women are held and considered inferior is usually swept under a rug and since women rarely are equal and happy on the whole in any society even now this is not questioned except peripherally) - but slavery and rank has ever been a part of most Islamic societies, and the fiercely independent Afghans are no exception in this. This book begins with the whole racial question of Afghanistan and the treatment of one race by another, dominant one, is central to the story, albeit not in a general form but in form of characters. Still, they do speak and give the general facts in their society as they were and in all probability still are.
Funnily enough, the discrimination against Hazara is due to their being of oriental mix; strangely because the moghuls that ruled a large swath of the regions around were Mongols, who settled in India finally but spent a large time in the central Asian regions generally. Not only Changez (mispronounced Genghis in west, while the real name is closer to Chingis in Mongolia where he came from and Changez where he fought to begin his empire base) Khan is revered in the region - several villages claim total descent from him, in that everyone is supposed to have descended from him.
The very name Khan is of Mongol origin, for that matter. And this name being used proudly throughout the region one would think people respected the origin of the name, the race that bequeathed it. Not so. Pastuns, or Pakhtoons or Pathans as named generally, not only look down on the central Asian mixed races of the regions, Hazara amongst them, but treat them in generally horrible way quite often. One is reminded of the now deposed despot in Pakistan "warning" US that Afghans won't accept a leader who is racially closer to Tajik or Kirghiz, not so long ago.
This is played out in a relationship that strikes close to heart of every male of human species in particular - that of childhood buddies, master and servant, brotherhood, threatened by the racial and caste tension around in the society.
Interestingly the villain figure is a half caste from every perspective - with an Afghan Pashtun father and a German mother - who embraces the worst of his heritage by choice, and is described as crazy in a way that goes to the very root of nazi ideology and those that believe and practice it. His German mother disapproves of what this boy has chosen and in fact is unaware of the son's choices, she is in all probability running away as far as she could from the horror of the past of her heritage, and yet it appears in the mindset of the son who has her racial features making him look different. Not that the region - central or south Asia for that matter - lacks light eyed or light haired variety, even before colonial days, but that this particular villain figure of the mixed race boy is very aware of his nazi heritage, his looks and his identity; and he has chosen all that his mother rightly discarded as a horror. And his way of adhering to that choice is by beginning to rape what he considers as males of lesser races. Beginning with little boys.
The main interest of the story must remain with the protagonist however, and his guilt at not saving his friend, his brother that then he was unaware of the relationship with. He never points the finger at his father for not acclaiming the son he had from the servant's wife, though, being the adoring and idolising son who is jealous of the attentions the other boy gets, and attempting to rise to deserve the father's attention.
But the reader must question, was the father such a hero after all, since he stood up to guns for strangers but did nothing to protect his own son from a relationship outside wedlock and had him work as a servant in his house, unschooled and poor? Whatever the guilt of the master's legitimate son, it does not begin to compare with the original sin, that of the father of the two boys who left it to the legitimate son to correct his father's sin by lifelong omission.
The coincidence of the young nazi-inspired boy growing into the sadist taliban leader who is murdering people publicly with any accusations possible, persecuting Hazara people to the extent of going about murdering a whole town (Mazar - e - Sharif massacre of 1998) and still going about using orphans - often those he deliberately made orphans and then hunted out for the purpose - to sodomise just to see them degraded, is perhaps too trite - except this; the ideology of racial persecution and elevating sadism to the level of an ideology to be followed and replacing old faith with this persecution sadism is all too really borrowed from nazi by taliban.
And finally, the women - who are mentioned in the book only fleetingly and not too nicely until the protagonist falls in love, and then finds human contact with his wife to be and her mother. It is almost at the end of his journey of revisiting his past that he gives an account of the mother of the little friend of his childhood that is not dismissive as it is in the beginning, describing her in terms of male lascivious and degrading mindset - still, it is not as comprehending in human terms as it could be, or perhaps it is an exercise he leaves the reader to perform consciously or subconsciously depending on how closed the mind of the reader is, what society the reader belongs to. The protagonist perhaps would rather not go that far from his own roots.
The poor woman married to a servant, her own cousin who married her for a marriage of convenience (convenient for her father and for him, not so much for her in any way one could possibly think of) who is not only handicapped with one leg paralysed in a polio attack and the lower face paralysed too, on top of being the racial dominated Hazara as she is too - she is initially described as far too beautiful to look at only once, and perhaps this is her only crime really in a society so unfriendly to the gentle sex as to brand them with all sorts of allegations if they happen to be attractive and without a powerful protector, indeed a society which turns into the taliban land easily enough with women beaten up by strangers for simply speaking out audibly in process of shopping for their family's need of food.
The poor beautiful woman is described to her own son in horrible terms by soldiers who in all probability were lying, with affirmations of having used her with her complicity. Nevertheless she runs away leaving her secure position in the powerful household. And yet, if sex was all she desired and she could have had everything she needed from the master of the household including the protection she lacked, and respectable married life with children, with only one proviso - to continue as the servant's wife and a servant herself while in reality being the mother of child of the master, and perhaps his concubine for life too. This is what she ran away from leaving her newborn son to his legal father, one who might or might not have known about the truth of the son's blood - he had enough evidence to know, but might not wish to and to what purpose after all since the master would not acknowledge the second son by the servant and so the little boy was for the servant to bring up after all, and to protect to the best of his abilities?
The mother returned to find her son and had a few years with his family at the end of her life, and it speaks volumes for the Hazara code and conduct that while he had pain accepting her he did so to his and his child's benefit. She in all probability had run away to have a life of open state of affairs in that there was no pretense of being a respetable wife while in reality being the master's concubine - she had no reason to not expect the master to call upon her services again, although he perhaps would not have done so and did it once only due to grief of losing his much beloved wife in childbirth - and preferred the group of singing dancing troubadours to the hazards of the town, the society of Kabul looking at her beauty askance and victimising it.
Victimisation she did not escape, but perhaps she did have a life.
These are some of the books I read during last half a century or so, and some of the thoughts, questions, reactions and insights, emotions - and so forth -, evoked on reading them, either then or later sometime during the interim years and decades, or even thinking over now, that are summed up here while trying to record my impressions about what I read.
Serene, Reflecting
Life Recedes