Omama Abu Talha
The literature of a society, particularly a country, provides an indispensable window to its history, culture, social structure, and politics. Fiction retains a stronghold of power in shaping motives and how people perceive political systems and social changes. Unlike a common belief, a story is not a passive mirroring of events but an active influence enforcing ideas, values, beliefs, and sometimes agendas. The novel which feels like an innocuous piece of art written to mesmerize you might be an agent of the political system guided to shift narratives by its mastermind, the novelist.
Khaled Hosseini has successfully championed being a favorite writer among fiction readers from the East to the West for a couple of decades now. As a great storyteller whose words make a profound impact on people, he has come to be known as the Voice of Afghanistan, specifically in the Western world followed by the post-colonial states. No other Afghan comes close to having a platform as large and prominent as Hosseini. His books have been translated into several languages over 34 countries and are seen as the sole authentic source on the complex geopolitics of Afghanistan. Hosseini’s books The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns have sold millions of copies and became international bestsellers as soon as they were released in a country that knew little to nothing about Afghans, turning him into a global literary figure.
The Kite Runner, which has been every reader’s favorite at some point, seems to be telling a tale of a beautiful friendship between two young boys in a world of chaos and disorder. It evokes strong emotions with its heartwarming phrases like “for you a thousand times over”. However, despite the massive compliments it received globally, I believe the timing of its release and the not-so-subtle narrative being pushed by the storyline is not a mere coincidence. The book depicts an inaccurate picture of Afghanistan by promoting a pro-US interventionist stance and perpetuating the anti-Soviet and Orientalist discourse at a time when the US was digging its own war machine into Afghanistan. It was a desperate attempt to convince the common masses around the world that the US must battle the fundamentalist Taliban who are described as abysmally evil and barbaric forces unleashing horror on poor Afghans who needed to be saved.
The history of the Afghan civil war and the role of the Mujahideen warlords — strongly supported by the US and its allies, who became corrupt tyrants and drug bosses after the US-Soviet proxy war and made possible the Taliban’s reactionary rise to power — get no mention. In the novel, protagonist Amir’s guide in Kabul curses Arabs, Chechens, and Pakistanis as the real brain behind the Taliban but interestingly there’s no mention of the preservation of US interest, their military intervention as they indiscriminately killed thousands of Afghan civilians including children and women by dropping bombs and how the CIA funded these armed groups to combat the USSR. Remarks made in the book by certain characters such as “America bombed Afghanistan” and “the Taliban scurried like rats” as “twenty years of unhappiness ends” are a gross misrepresentation of the gruesome reality of the US rule in Afghanistan.
Hosseini’s hyper-fixation with ethnicity and religion in all his books paints a similar picture of the Pashtun as vile and brutal Nazi worshippers who are associated with armed groups, assault women and children, and lack morality. This is a strong generalization and misinterpretation of a specific ethnic group which is the largest in Afghanistan comprising more than 30 million people and leaves out other ethnicities like Tajik, Uzbek, etc from the framework. There is no doubt that Pashtuns have always been the strongest group who have time and again oppressed other communities but painting all of them as one would be a gross oversimplification of reality.
To write to a post-9/11 white liberal audience, Khaled Hosseini has used Orientalist tropes to justify America’s intervention, appreciate their cultural and modern values, and portray them as the saviors of the East. He often has his grey-shaded characters make highly objectionable remarks like how the world needs someone like Ronald Reagan because ‘he is a man to be reckoned with’ even though most Afghans hate Reagan for being a mastermind in America’s imperialist war in Afghanistan.
Hosseini’s view of Afghanistan is that of a sympathizer to Western occupation as he sees no other way for Afghans to thrive and progress. He’s a part of the elite class of Kabul who lives in luxury while the majority lives in rural areas which were pushed into poverty by the USA and the propagation of poppy was encouraged over local foods which further destroyed Afghanistan’s economy and society. Another offensive dialogue made by the protagonist’s father in The Kite Runner is how ‘Israel is an island of real men’ which is not only ridiculous but also an out of context statement, written solely to please the white audience. The frequent comments made on religious people follow an anti-Islam rhetoric which becomes even stronger as the story progresses.
As I was reviewing his work critically, I could see many similarities in his books with others of the early 21st century like Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafsi, Ayan Hirsi Ali’s The Caged Virgin, and the famous Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis etc – all these stories have a common trajectory of ‘gendered orientalism’. They depict rebellious or sometimes oppressed Muslim women who are being pushed into marriages against their will or being raped by Muslim men (the antagonists) who also happen to be devoted followers of Islam. This narrative is mostly followed by a developing love story of our ill-treated female protagonist and a young Muslim man (hero) who associates himself with modern Western values and curses the sharia (Islamic law) to keep the readers hooked.
This genre has a constant record of sadistic and graphic details of sexual assault which is intentional to play high on emotional grounds so that all criticism seems detached, insensitive, and even apologetic. This kind of misrepresentation which fuels propaganda is also apparent in A Thousand Splendid Suns and readers need to be aware of the politically incorrect stories they’re being fed. In recent times, we’ve more such works flooding our spheres, and we need to understand that fiction is not purely a work of imagination and it must not be absolved of accountability and criticism.
Omama Abu Talha is a student pursuing English Literature from Jamia Millia Islamia.
Edited by- Sana Faiz
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.
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