The narration starts by- you want a story and I will tell you one, indeed it is one of the most beautiful and gratifying stories Khaleed could have written. He knows his ways with words, one moment it's just narration and on the other, his words are bleeding to your heart. You find yourself sobbing with the purest form of love depicted. It’s the characters’, and the words, the bonds between them that bring the unabridged highlight of the stories. If one is looking forward to an emotional roller coaster here is the one. One won't even have the slightest realisation how through the words of Khaleed suddenly the story belongs to your perception.
"It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backwards. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want."
In the book, the narration begins with Abdullah, a 10-year-old boy and his 3-year-old sister- Pari. Saboor their father beings narrating them a story where a father has to trade his favourite child to the devil, for the sake of the survival of his whole family, this midget story depicts the unconsciousness of Saboor's grief who is ultimately going to sell Pari to a wealthy family in Kabul. The next day both Abdullah and Pari along with their father heads to Kabul and are fascinated by the lifestyle of the advanced city and by meeting the family of the Wadahiti. It is soon that Abdullah realizes that it’s the time for the ultimate separation of his and his whole world which was Pari. The words of Mrs Wadhiti ‘’ it is for the best’’ felt like someone attacking his chest with an axe whose agony only he would relate and no one else.
There was it, the readers thought the story may revolve around them and how they make it way back together, but Khaled is starting a whole new plot and leaving its reader bewildered. Khaleed knows how to use typical drama as a pun and he did. He uses various stories and characters to ultimately connect the lost love of the brother and the sister. Each character in the narrations has their small story to depict the lifelong blessings and sorrow and how beautifully each one of them contributes their little help for reuniting the brother and the sister.
The uncle of Pari and Abdullah – Nabi who also worked as the chauffeur and driver at Wadhiti’s has many interpretations according to the readers. It might not be wrong to consider him wretched for the livelong pain he gave to Abdullah. He was secretly in love with Nila Wadhiti but would never confess it loud. After Nila, left for Paris with Pari, he was staunched for Mr Wadhiti who was paralysed. It’s gradually and steadily we all find a connection with Nabi, who is nothing but hopeless. Later towards the end, we also discover he wrote a letter for Pari to identify her roots and asking for forgiveness.
There is also a narration about two twin sisters one of them enormously gorgeous and narcissistic while the other one always green with envy. She always has a feeling of nausea walking beside her beautiful sister, because no one could appreciate her in the presence of such a magnificent human. Khaleed beautiful quotes- “Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly.” He also proves his point with complete validation to the narration.
“But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.”
That’s exactly how Pari felt her whole life, an unreal existence a pain and no idea of where and how to stop it. She felt a void and agony, which she couldn't tell where it hurt but it always did. Something was missing in her life. She was unaware of her roots, she wanted to travel back to Afghanistan and know where she belonged, but her rapidly occurring life changes didn't provide her with that opportunity. Most of Pari's grievances were also rooted in her mother- Nila Wadahiti. It wouldn’t be wrong to say she was the most sophisticated and bohemian character in the whole narration. She challenges stereotypes of Kabul's upbringings and writes sexually reflected poetry. She was indeed the most influencing character. The readers couldn't even love her nor could they hate her. Nila Wadhiti in one of the interviews quoted that Pari tends to be her punishment depicting the flaws of her past where she desiderates her father's love and the struggles of their broken marriage. She has held a theory about marriages wherein in the first 2 weeks you know if it is gonna work out or not, to that she realised her husband Mr Wadhiti was in love with the chauffeur, and all she felt was a pity for him.
Khaleed beautifully insights the narration of Iqbaal their third half brother, who is devasted by poverty and is scarifying each day to fetch his family. Each narration is a test of love. Whether to choose their loved ones or to sacrifice to cope up with life. In the same chapter, a young boy also realises he has all the luxury of the world but yet as lonely as he could ever be. The mansion that belonged t his dad is no less than a prison to his mom.
“Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile.”
One of the most efficacious is when two brothers Taimur who is sophisticated and big mouth and his cousin Irdias, visit Kabul. Irdias is taken back by the happenings in his homeland and he starts to question everything he ever believed in. During the course, he ultimately develops an attachment to a sick girl in the hospitals and promises her operation; on his return to the US, he is agitated with everything around him. He quotes with the money I spent on a home theatre I could build a school in Afghanistan. But over time, he lets slip each one of them and allows himself to suspect that he worked hard for each one of his comforts and he earned it.
Another narration revolves around a Greek doctor Narkos who lives in the residence of former Mr Wadhiti and treats patients there but ultimately is far away from his sick mother who stays in Athens. Also, Khaleed brings out the bewitching irony that he treats patients and is a specialist in plastic surgery but he lead up to this occupation due to Thaila whose face was disfigured by a dog, but she wouldn’t let him treat her as she accepts the disfigured face as a part of her identity.
"It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into a choice: either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigour even as it squeezed you into something smaller than yourself."
The narrations end with a set up in ancient Afghanistan house set up which belongs to Abdullah. He names his daughter after his most beloved and lost possession, Pari. Pari gets into the fascination of her aunt being her twin sister with whom she would share all her little secrets. One of the most poignant narration was when little Pari states- 'I would sell everything to buy her back. With the ageing taking over Abdullah he hardly remembers anything about his lost sister.
But again that's the beauty of Khaleed narrations; love finds its way back to where it belongs. The lost brother and sister may have or may not found their way back to each other but the story just moves the reader. When Pari handover the feather box to her aunt she could hardly discern it but deep down she knew it meant some kind of connection and love with her brother, and she would forever behold it.
“They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.”
Many of the times we don’t even realise what answers are we seeking from life, or what questions we want to be answered until our last breath, but we should also believe the as life unfolds we will gradually solve all our mysteries, we just need to patient.
