| a
conversation with khaled hosseini
1. The Kite Runner helped alter the
world's perception of Afghanistan, by giving millions of readers
their first real sense of what the Afghan people and their
daily lives are actually like. Your new novel includes the
main events in Afghanistan's history over the past three decades,
from the communist revolution to the Soviet invasion to the
U.S.-led war against the Taliban. Do you feel a special responsibility
to inform the world about your native country, especially
given the current situation there and the prominent platform
you've gained?
For me as a writer, the story has always taken precedence
over everything else. I have never sat down to write with
broad, sweeping ideas in mind, and certainly never with a
specific agenda. It is quite a burden for a writer to feel
a responsibility to represent his or her own culture and to
educate others about it. For me it always starts from a very
personal, intimate place, about human connections, and then
expands from there. What intrigued me about this new book
were the hopes and dreams and disillusions of these two women,
their inner lives, the specific circumstances that bring them
together, their resolve to survive, and the fact that their
relationship evolves into something meaningful and powerful,
even as the world around them unravels and slips into chaos.
But as I wrote, I witnessed the story expanding, becoming
more ambitious page after page. I realized that telling the
story of these two women without telling, in part, the story
of Afghanistan from the 1970s to the post-9/11 era simply
was not possible. The intimate and personal was intertwined
inextricably with the broad and historical. And so the turmoil
in Afghanistan and the country's tortured recent past slowly
became more than mere backdrop. Gradually, Afghanistan itself--and
more specifically, Kabul--became a character in this novel,
to a much larger extent, I think, than in The Kite Runner.
But it was simply for the sake of storytelling, not out of
a sense of social responsibility to inform readers about my
native country. That said, I will be gratified if they walk
away from A Thousand Splendid Suns with a satisfying story
and with a little more insight and a more personal sense of
what has happened in Afghanistan in the last thirty years.
2. What kind of response do you hope readers have
to A Thousand Splendid Suns?
Purely as a writer, I hope that readers discover in this novel
the same things that I look for when I read fiction: a story
that transports, characters who engage, and a sense of illumination,
of having been transformed somehow by the experiences of the
characters. I hope that readers respond to the emotions of
this story, that despite vast cultural differences, they identify
with Mariam and Laila and their dreams and ordinary hopes
and day-to-day struggle to survive. As an Afghan, I would
like readers to walk away with a sense of empathy for Afghans,
and more specifically for Afghan women, on whom the effects
of war and extremism have been devastating. I hope this novel
brings depth, nuance, and emotional subtext to the familiar
image of the burqa-clad woman walking down a dusty street.
3. Where does the title of your new book come from?
It comes from a poem about Kabul by Saib-e-Tabrizi, a seventeenth-century
Persian poet, who wrote it after a visit to the city left
him deeply impressed. I was searching for English translations
of poems about Kabul, for use in a scene where a character
bemoans leaving his beloved city, when I found this particular
verse. I realized that I had found not only the right line
for the scene, but also an evocative title in the phrase “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” which appears in the next-to-last
stanza. The poem was translated from Farsi by Dr. Josephine
Davis.
4. You recently received the Humanitarian Award from
the United Nations Refugee Agency and were named a U.S. goodwill
envoy to that agency. What kind of work have you done with
the agency? What will your responsibilities be in your position
as a goodwill envoy?
It's been a tremendous honor for me to be asked to work with
UNHCR as a goodwill envoy. As a native of a country with one
of the world's largest refugee populations, I hold the issue
of refugees close to my heart. I will be asked to make public
appearances on behalf of the refugee cause and to serve as
a public advocate for refugees around the world. It will be
my privilege to try to capture public attention and to use
my access to the media to give voice to victims of humanitarian
crises and raise public awareness about matters relating to
refugees.
In January of this year, I had the opportunity of going to
Chad with UNHCR to visit the refugee camps where some 250,000
people from Darfur have sought haven. I had the chance to
speak to refugees, local authorities and humanitarian staff
and to educate myself about the staggering tragedy unfolding
in the region. It was a sobering and heartbreaking experience
and one that I will never forget. Presently I am working with
UNHCR on the Aid Darfur campaign. It is my intention that
my future work with the agency take me to Afghan refugee camps
in Pakistan.
5. You present a portrait of Afghanistan under the Taliban
that may be surprising to many readers. For example, the Taliban's
ban on music and movies is well known, but many readers are
not familiar with the “Titanic fever” that swept
through Kabul upon the release of that film, which was shown
in secret on black-market VCRs and TVs. How tight a grip did
the Taliban truly have on the country? And how does pop culture
survive under these traditions?
The Taliban's acts of cultural vandalism--the most infamous
being the destruction of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas--had a
devastating effect on Afghan culture and the artistic scene.
The Taliban burned countless films, VCRs, music tapes, books,
and paintings. They jailed filmmakers, musicians, painters,
and sculptors. These restrictions forced some artists to abandon
their craft, and many to continue practicing in covert fashion.
Some built cellars where they painted or played musical instruments.
Others gathered in the guise of a sewing circle to write fiction,
as depicted in Christina Lamb's The Sewing Circles of Herat.
And still others found ingenious ways to trick the Taliban--one
famous example being a painter who, at the order of the Taliban,
painted over the human faces on his oil paintings, except
he did with it watercolor, which he washed off after the Taliban
were ousted. These were among the desperate ways in which
artists tried to escape the Taliban's firm grip on virtually
every form of artistic expression.
6. You earned your medical degree before you began
writing fiction. How does being a doctor compare with being
a writer?
I enjoyed practicing medicine and was always honored that
patients put their trust in me to take care of them and their
loved ones. But writing had always been my passion, since
childhood, much as with Amir in The Kite Runner. I feel fortunate
and privileged that writing is, at least for the time being,
my livelihood. It is a dream realized.
I have not found many similarities between my two crafts,
except that in both it helps to have at least some insight
into human nature. Writers and doctors alike need to understand
the motivation behind the things people say and do, and their
fears, their hopes and aspirations. In both professions, one
needs to appreciate how socioeconomic background, family,
culture, language, religion, and other factors shape a person,
whether it is a patient in an exam room or a character in
a story.
7. In what ways was writing A Thousand Splendid
Suns different from writing The Kite Runner?
Well, when I was writing The Kite Runner, no one was waiting
for it! The difficulty of writing a second novel is directly
proportional to how successful the first novel was, it seems.
For me, at the outset, there was a period of self-doubt and
hesitation, as well as a recurring tendency to question and
reassess my own literary capabilities and limitations. This
was especially so when I was aware of the people out there
who were eagerly awaiting the book: booksellers, my publisher,
and of course, the reading public. This is both wonderful--after
all, you want your work to be anticipated--and daunting--your
work is anticipated!
Though I did experience some of these apprehensions--as my
wife will surely attest--I gradually learned to view them
as natural and not unique to me. And as I began to write,
as the story picked up pace and I found myself immersed in
the world of Mariam and Laila, these apprehensions vanished
on their own. The developing story captured me and enabled
me to tune out the background noise and get on with the business
of inhabiting the world I was creating.
I also think that A Thousand Splendid Suns is, in some ways,
a more ambitious book than my first novel. The story is multigenerational,
unfolding over almost forty-five years, often skipping ahead
years. There is a larger cast of characters, and a dual perspective,
and the wars and political turmoil in Afghanistan are chronicled
with more detail than in The Kite Runner. This means that
I was performing a perpetual balancing act in writing about
the intimate--the inner lives of the characters--and depicting
the external world that exerts pressure on the characters
and forces their fate.
8. Do you see common themes in the two books?
In both novels, characters are caught in a crossfire and overwhelmed
by external forces. Their inner lives are influenced by an
often brutal and unforgiving outside world, and the decisions
they make about their own lives are influenced by things over
which they have no control: revolutions, wars, extremism,
and oppression. This, I think, is even more the case with
A Thousand Splendid Suns. In The Kite Runner, Amir spends
many years away from Afghanistan as an immigrant in the United
States. The horrors and hardships that he is spared, Mariam
and Laila live through; in that sense, their lives are shaped
more acutely by the events in Afghanistan than Amir's life
is.
Both novels are multigenerational, and so the relationship
between parent and child, with all of its manifest complexities
and contradictions, is a prominent theme. I did not intend
this, but I am keenly interested, it appears, in the way parents
and children love, disappoint, and in the end honor each other.
In one way, the two novels are corollaries: The Kite Runner
was a father-son story, and A Thousand Splendid Suns can be
seen as a mother-daughter story.
Ultimately, I think, both novels are love stories. Characters
seek and are saved by love and human connection. In The Kite Runner, it was mainly the love between men. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, love manifests itself in even more various
shapes, be it romantic love between a man and a woman, parental
love, or love for family, home, country, God. I think in both
novels, it is ultimately love that draws characters out of
their isolation, that gives them the strength to transcend
their own limitations, to expose their vulnerabilities, and
to perform devastating acts of self-sacrifice.
9. One of the men in your novel dreams of coming to
America, as your family did. He sees America as a kind of
golden, generous land. Is that something many Afghans dream
still of?
The way Afghans view America and Americans is complex, I think.
On the one hand, America is seen as a bastion of hope for
Afghanistan. The notion of the American troops packing up
and leaving strikes fear into the hearts of many Afghans,
I believe, as they dread the chaos, anarchy, and extremism
that would likely follow. On the other hand, there is also
some sense of disappointment and disillusionment. There is
lingering bitterness, I think, about the way Afghans feel
they were abandoned by the West--and America in particular--when
the Soviets left, a period that was marked by the factional
fighting that destroyed so much of Kabul. In addition, there
is a growing sentiment, rightfully or not, that promises made
by America are not being kept. The average Afghan, I think,
had hopes of drastic changes in quality of life, in security
conditions, and economic options, when the Americans came
to Afghanistan after 9/11. Many Afghans feel that these hopes
have not been realized. They feel that the war in Iraq, undertaken
so soon after the campaign in Afghanistan, channeled attention,
troops, and resources away from Afghanistan. Still, I think
most Afghans remain hopeful about their country's partnership
with the U.S. and many echo the sentiment of Babi in A Thousand Splendid Suns, viewing the United States as a desirable place
to live, and as a land of opportunity and hope.
10. The women in your story suffer deeply and personally from
being oppressed because of their gender, in their homes and
in the broader society. Is this oppression particularly onerous
in the Muslim world? What can and should be done about it?
This is a complex question with no easy answer. It is undeniable
that the treatment of women in some Muslim countries--including
my own--has been dismal. The evidence is simply overwhelming.
In Afghanistan under the Taliban, women were denied education,
the right to work, the right to move freely, access to adequate
healthcare, etc. Yet I want to distance myself from the notion,
popular in some circles, that the West can and should exert
pressure on these countries to grant women equal rights. Though
I think this is a well-intended and even noble idea, I see
it as too simplistic and impractical. This approach either
directly or indirectly dismisses the complexities and nuances
of the target society as dictated by its culture, traditions,
customs, political system, social structure, and overriding
faith.
I believe change needs to come from within, that is, from
a Muslim society's own fabric. In Afghanistan, I think it
is essential for its future that those more moderate elements
who support women's rights be empowered. Barring that, the
prospects for success are grim. I am always revolted when
Islamic leaders, from Afghanistan or elsewhere, deny the very
existence of female oppression, avoid the issue by pointing
to examples of what they view as Western mistreatment of women,
or even worse, justify the oppression of women on the basis
of notions derived from Sharia law. I hope that twenty-first-century
Islamic leaders can unshackle themselves from antiquated ideas
about gender roles and open themselves to a more moderate
and progressive approach. I realize that this may sound naive,
especially in a country such as Afghanistan, where staunch
Islamists still hold sway and look to silence moderate voices.
Nevertheless, I think it is the only way that true change
can come about, from within Islamic societies themselves.
11. Are you optimistic about the current situation in Afghanistan?
I am an optimistic person by nature, so yes, I do remain cautiously
optimistic about Afghanistan's future. But it must be said
that it has been a difficult year for Afghanistan. Aside from
the challenges of poverty, poor medical care, lack of education
and infrastructure, and the flourishing opium industry, we
now have a formidable resurgence by the Taliban and their
Al-Qaeda cohorts in the southern and eastern parts of the
country. They have given NATO and American troops all that
they can handle. The ongoing fighting and the lack of security
are chief concerns among Afghans, and have an erosive effect
on the image of the Afghan government. There is the risk of
disillusion with the Afghan government and with the country's
nascent, fragile democracy, and this makes people susceptible
to the influence of the extremists.
12. What is likely to happen in Afghanistan if the current
government fails?
I want to state first that I have no expertise in these matters
and that any opinion I offer is that of an ordinary thinking
citizen who follows the news. That said, I think failure in
Afghanistan would be catastrophic not only for Afghanistan
but for the West as well. It would fracture the country, and
seriously damage the credibility of the west. It would embolden
the Taliban, and just as important, those who support the
Taliban, namely Al-Qaeda and other extremist Islamic militants.
Most ominous of all, it would turn Afghanistan into a safe
haven once more for anti-Western jihadis who can gather there
and plan their military operations against the United States
and its allies.
13. What should the United States and its allies be
doing in Afghanistan now?
I will re-iterate my lack of true qualification to answer
this. But it seems to me that U.S. and NATO withdrawal from
Afghanistan would have disastrous results. At this point,
it seems to me the west has no viable choice but to stay committed
to the mission in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, the west has
to try to empower the central government and help it gain
credibility among Afghans, while doing what can be done to
eradicate the opium trade and strengthen the country's economy
in an effort to demonstrate to ordinary Afghans the West's
goodwill and its long-term commitment to their country. Military
effort alone will not bring success in Afghanistan. This is
as much a battle for the trust of the people as it is one
against the Taliban.
14. The Kite Runner was centered on the friendship
between two men, and the story was told from a male point
of view. In your new book, you've focused on the relationship
between two women, and the tale is told from their alternating
perspectives. Why did you decide to write from a female point
of view this time? What was it about these particular women
and their relationship that gripped you?
I had been entertaining the idea of writing a story of Afghan
women for some time after I'd finished writing The Kite Runner.
That first novel was a male-dominated story. All the major
characters, except perhaps for Amir's wife Soraya, were men.
There was a whole facet of Afghan society which I hadn't touched
on in The Kite Runner, an entire landscape that I felt was
fertile with story ideas. After all, so much had happened
to Afghan women in the last thirty years, particularly after
the Soviets withdrew and factional fighting broke out. With
the outbreak of civil war, women in Afghanistan were subjected
to gender based human rights abuses, such as rape and forced
marriage. They were used as spoils of war. They were abducted
and sold into prostitution. When the Taliban came, they imposed
inhumane restrictions on women, limiting their freedom of
movement, expression, barring them from work and education,
harassing them, humiliating them, beating them.
In the spring of 2003, I went to Kabul, and I recall seeing
these burqa-clad women sitting at street corners, with four,
five, six children, begging for change. I remember watching
them walking in pairs up the street, trailed by their children
in ragged clothes, and wondering how life had brought them
to that point. What were their dreams, hopes, longings? Had
they been in love? Who were their husbands? What had they
lost, whom had they lost, in the wars that plagued Afghanistan
for two decades?
I spoke to many of those women in Kabul. Their life stories
were truly heartbreaking. For instance, one woman, a mother
of six, told me that her husband, a traffic policeman, made
$40 a month and hadn't been paid in six months. She had borrowed
from friends and relatives to survive, but since she could
not pay them back, they had stopped lending her money. And
so, every day she dispatched her children to different parts
of Kabul to beg at street corners. I spoke to another woman
who told me that a widowed neighbor of hers, faced with the
prospect of starvation, had laced bread crumbs with rat poison
and fed it to her kids, then had eaten it herself. I met a
little girl whose father had been paralyzed from the waist
down by shrapnel. She and her mother begged on the streets
of Kabul from sunrise to sundown.
When I began writing A Thousand Splendid Suns, I found myself
thinking about those resilient women over and over. Though
no one woman that I met in Kabul inspired either Laila or
Mariam, their voices, faces, and their incredible stories
of survival were always with me, and a good part of my inspiration
for this novel came from their collective spirit.
15. This novel has a few strong female characters.
How did you create them? Are they based on women you know
among your own family and friends, on your reading, on your
imagination?
They are not drawn from family members or from people I know.
In this respect, this second novel is far less autobiographical
than The Kite Runner. Largely they are drawn from my imagination
and, even more so, from the women I saw and met in Kabul back
in 2003.
16. The Kite Runner was adopted by many reading
groups, and by cities and communities as part of their public
reading programs. Why do you think that happened? What do
you think people take away from your stories?
The Kite Runner is multi-layered, in that it provides readers
with cultural, religious, political, historical, and literary
points to discuss. But I suspect that also part of the reason
it is popular with book groups is that it is a very human
story. Because the themes of friendship, betrayal, guilt,
redemption, and the uneasy love between fathers and sons are
universal and not specifically Afghan, the book has reached
across cultural, racial, religious, and gender gaps to resonate
with readers of various backgrounds. I think people respond
to the emotions in this book.
There is also, of course, international interest in Afghanistan,
given the events of 9/11 and the war on terror. For many readers,
this book is really the first window into that culture. So
there is also a curiosity about that country, which this book
addresses to some extent.
17. A movie based on The Kite Runner is now
being shot in China. When is it scheduled to be completed?
What can you tell us about the movie and the experience of
watching your first novel be transformed for the screen?
The shooting wrapped in December 2006. From what I understand,
it will be released in the fall of this year, possibly in
November.
Being on the set was a surreal experience. Writing a novel
is an intensely personal and solitary undertaking. Filmmaking
is first and foremost a collaborative process. So it was strange
to see dozens of people running around, trying to transforming
this very internal creation of mine into a visual experience
for everybody else. It was a unique experience to witness
the visual interpretation of my thoughts.
In addition, I learned to divorce myself from the notion that
everything that I had put on the page would end up on the
screen. Inevitably there is going to be a divide between book
and film. But to me, the idea is not how closely the adaptation
will measure up to my internal images, but rather how the
filmmaker will combine the written prose with the power of
animated picture to make a visual narrative that can stand
on its merits as a work of art, an entity that is separate
from its literary precursor, that can be admired for its own
virtues and artistry, while remaining faithful to the core
emotional experiences that made the book appealing in the
first place.
18. How has life changed for you since the publication
of The Kite Runner?
I travel a great deal more than I did before. I have seen
places that I might not have otherwise--something that kept
recurring to me when I was on the movie set in Kashgar, in
remote western China. I have a slew of new friends in the
literary and publishing community and have had the honor of
meeting and speaking with writers whose work I had admired
for a long time. Also, I have been on an extended sabbatical
from medicine, and have spent the last two years focusing
on my writing, something that had long been a dream of mine.
My days are shaped now around the creation of stories. As
I mentioned before, I am working with UNHCR to raise awareness
about refugee issues. So the publication of The Kite Runner
has had a profound effect on my life and has changed it dramatically.
But as far as my wife, my children, my extended family, and
all of my old friends are concerned, nothing at all has changed.
19. You have visited Afghanistan since you came to
the United States with your family in 1980. What was it like
to go back? Would you like to return again? Is it possible
for you to return now?
There is a line in the book where Amir says to his guide,
"I feel like a tourist in my own country." To a
large extent I did as well, when I returned to Kabul. After
all, I had been gone for more than a quarter of a century.
I was not there for the war against the Soviets, for the mujahedeen
infighting, or the Taliban. I did not lose any limbs to landmines
and did not have to live in a refugee camp. There was certainly
an element of survivor's guilt in my return. I felt, on the
one hand, that I belonged there, where everyone spoke my language
and shared my culture. On the other hand, I felt like an outsider,
a very fortunate outsider, but an outsider nevertheless.
I found that much of the city was either neglected or basically
destroyed. There was a shocking number of widows, orphans,
people who had lost limbs to landmines and bombs. There was
also an abundance of guns and I detected a gun culture in
Kabul, something which I did not recall at all of course from
the 1970's.
But the most striking thing to me was that despite the atrocities,
the unspeakable brutalities, and the hardships Afghans had
endured, they had not lost their humility, their grace, their
hospitality, or their sense of hope. I came away very much
humbled by their resilience. I certainly do hope to return
there again but have no concrete plans at the moment.
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