A glance away
June 17th, 2006 admin
With a trembling hand I dare to write
of the day we both shall reunite.
Your smile will be but a glance away
sunny and blue, while the sky may grey.
The days of phone calls draw to a close,
long weekend flights and luggage woes.
The end approaches for goodbyes that ache,
and for promised that are easy to make,
yet hard due to the distance keep,
and the constant hunt for tickets cheap.
The day is close, the end near.
Though a beginning it will be, I fear
it shall come and take a part of me,
and a part of you, leaving but a memory.
Sweet beginning, yet a sad day,
when your smile will be but a glance away.
(Anil Krishna, June 17th, 2006)
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“Reading this book, tears flow down unabated and without warning …”, Kavita had informed me. “But it is such a beautiful story”, she had added. I was looking for a window into the people and politics, culture and psyche of Afghanistan, and this book seemed to promise a mix of both a “beautiful story” and “a window”. I picked it up at Borders in Cary, NC, and as I normally do, started to read it over a weekend in the store. The next weekend, less than even halfway through the novel, I bought it.Though Afghanistan, its people and their ways add colour and concrete to the story, the main themes of the story are timeless and universal - the pleasure of friendship, the pain of squandering it, of coming to terms with one’s true self, of growing up, of sacrifice, of ideals, of living up to those ideals. Amir, the protagonist of the novel, grows up in the 60’s and early 70’s in Afghanistan, where he lives in a big house with his father, their servant Ali and Ali’s son Hassan. Amir finds unfailing and radiant loyalty and friendship in Hassan. “Baba”, as Amir calls his father, is the ideal human being in Amir’s eyes, as he grows up. Amir strives to live up to his father’s expectations. The story winds its way through Amir’s childhood, Hassan’s unquestioning friendship, Amir’s relation with his father and Ali, through political turmoil in Afghanistan, how it affects all the people Amir knows, Amir’s youth in the USA, and his search for something that he is desperately missing in life - an atonement for his sins which brings him back to his motherland and the final redemption. Amir helps us all grow up a little, as he discovers what he has lost along the way and what he has gained. The development of his morality and values, shaped by self-reflection and instinct, by scheming and by accident, is a wonderful mirror into our own values and how we pick them up.