Afghanistan’s recent past recounted through chance encounters
The sorrows of Afghanistan’s last three decades have been recounted many ways — in fiction (most dominantly in Khaled Hosseini’s novels of friendships moulded and wounded by civil war), in travelogues and in strategic histories. To read any one of the books on that shelf is to realise how deeply affected personal lives have been by the succession of wars. Also, somehow, to read any one of the books, especially non-fiction, is to be troubled that recent history has been so much a switching of adversaries that in its accurate telling it shall remain a history of many, separate and separated parts.

Nadeem Aslam, an England-based Pakistani novelist, tries to gather all the parts in one cohesive story. Those who have read his previous novel, Maps for Lost Lovers, would be especially curious how he, the master of the heartbreakingly beautiful sentence, manages to recap the brutalities that have visited a region as well known for open-hearted hospitality as Afghanistan is.

Aslam’s way is to bring in all the participants of these 30 years and more under one roof, to disallow them from forgetting any bit of their past and to nudge them to find a shared humanity. That roof is provided by Marcus — a home by a lake on the outskirts of Jalalabad. Marcus, an English doctor who made Afghanistan his home long before war became a permanent backdrop, has lost his wife, Qatrina, an Afghan woman impatient to bring modernisation to her country, to the Taliban. His equally independent daughter, Zameen, has fallen victim to the Soviet invaders. Marcus, however, maintains fidelity to life, keeping an alert vigil for Zameen’s son, convinced that if he keeps track of all who pass through town his lost grandson will be found.

... contd.