One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls
These are lines by Saeb-e-Tabrizi, a seventeenth century Persian poet while praising Kabul.
These are the lines that Laila, the protagonist of A Thousand Splendid Suns remembers when she is returning to war torn Kabul after the US forces have defeated the Taliban there.
These are the lines that every citizen can find befitting to describe his/her home nation.
Just finished reading this touching bestseller in which Khaled Hosseini has tracked the history of Kabul from 1980s to now. It seems a pity that a country so beautiful is destroyed and shattered by war. All because of power play. Power play, a game that twists your conscience and breaks all your moral bindings; wrenches the heart right out of your body and hurls it away.
In such times of adversity, what does it take to survive? Laila survived. She did not come out unscathed or unscarred. Memories of the terror, nightmares of the massacres continued to haunt her, but still she learnt to live with hope again. She still had the courage to come back to her home country which had taken away everything from her-her parents, her youth, her freedom. But that was Laila. She was undefeated by the war demon. What about the thousands who succumbed to the terror the demon yielded? What about the thousands who didn't have the courage to return? Everyone is not a phoenix.
And for those unphoenix(pardon narrative license), I mourn today.
PS: Bunked a CAT class to finish the novel and write this blog. Back to the world of books, I am loving it!
These are the lines that Laila, the protagonist of A Thousand Splendid Suns remembers when she is returning to war torn Kabul after the US forces have defeated the Taliban there.
These are the lines that every citizen can find befitting to describe his/her home nation.
Just finished reading this touching bestseller in which Khaled Hosseini has tracked the history of Kabul from 1980s to now. It seems a pity that a country so beautiful is destroyed and shattered by war. All because of power play. Power play, a game that twists your conscience and breaks all your moral bindings; wrenches the heart right out of your body and hurls it away.
In such times of adversity, what does it take to survive? Laila survived. She did not come out unscathed or unscarred. Memories of the terror, nightmares of the massacres continued to haunt her, but still she learnt to live with hope again. She still had the courage to come back to her home country which had taken away everything from her-her parents, her youth, her freedom. But that was Laila. She was undefeated by the war demon. What about the thousands who succumbed to the terror the demon yielded? What about the thousands who didn't have the courage to return? Everyone is not a phoenix.
And for those unphoenix(pardon narrative license), I mourn today.
PS: Bunked a CAT class to finish the novel and write this blog. Back to the world of books, I am loving it!
4 comments:
the hero we look upto, the hero we praise, talk and write about..the one you call the phoenix is also in hindsight an 'unphoenix'
war...the times when 'heroes' are discovered, born and heroism is displayed , honored only for a fleeting moment...and then..all the fighters, the war victims, and the survivors are left for a life completely changed by those days...come to think of it..people whom we call 'War Heroes' aren't they but mere 'War Whores'!
the most intelligent comment i have ever received on a post!tats one more reason i love you..touched!
true abt da phoenix being the unphoneix i guess..its not possible for anyone to be a phoenix after war..as everything around changes, even if you are reborn as the same..
war whores..definitely..but its like a group of people up dere who are leading right?..the war heroes that we make are innocent people who are naive enough to believe that war is justified..nd that they are fighting for honour..while all they are doing is being the shoulder for someone else's rifle..
true it takes courage to rise from ashes. But the irony is, the Afghanistan of today is not better than the Afghanistan of yesterday. Journalists are still being executed because of downloading articles negative to Islam. Taliban is still ruling a major part of the country though not directly but by proxy. The only difference is previously CNN and BBC criticized the atrocities in Afghanistan. Now they just choose to remain Quiet.
ps: on a lighter note when i first read the blog i read it as Subz e tarib .... proves i long good food! that treat is still due!
Ended up having two cups of coffee trying to follow what you've written in this post guess for us mere mortals reading your post caffeine is a kinda make-believe stuff appearing reducing intellectual levels but end results are pathetic..too close but not right thr lol....
when can we expect the blogger to write something for us mere mortals .lol.
trying to figure the context, heard this somewhr ..."War is young men fighting and old men talking" ..guess says a lot.
Rohit.
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