Interview with Afghan Author Khaled Hosseini

Recently I was put in contact with Author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" Khaled Hosseini and had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his life and work.

Friends of Afghanistan: Japan: What type of message do you want to tell of Afghanistan in your works?

I am first and foremost a novelist, and purely as a writer, I hope that readers discover in my novels the same things that I look for when I read fiction: a story that transports, characters who engage, and hopefully a sense of illumination, of having been transformed somehow by the experiences of the characters.  I hope that readers respond to the emotions of these stories, that despite vast cultural differences, they identify with the characters and their dreams and ordinary hopes and day to day struggle to survive.

As an Afghan, I hope that readers walk away with a sense of empathy for Afghans and a fresh perspective on Afghanistan.  Too often stories about Afghanistan center around the various wars, the opium trade, the war on terrorism.  Precious little is said about the Afghan people themselves, their culture, their traditions, how they lived in their country and how they manage abroad as exiles.  I hope my books give readers some insight into and a sense of the identity of Afghan people that they may not get from mainstream news media.  Fiction is a powerful medium to convey such things. 

FA: Are there any different points that you really wanted to convey from the outset between the Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns?

Obviously the biggest difference is that Kite Runner focused on men and A Thousand Splendid Suns is a story about women in Afghanistan.  So much has happened to Afghan women in the last thirty years, particularly after the Soviets withdrew and factional fighting broke out.  The wars in Afghanistan have taken a severe toll on women.  Besides being the victims of landmines, shellings, and arbitrary killings, women in Afghanistan have also subjected to gender based human rights abuses, such as rape and forced marriage.  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.

When I began writing A Thousand Splendid Suns, I found myself thinking about those resilient women over and over, and their incredible stories of survival were always with me, and a good part of my inspiration for A Thousand Splendid Suns came from their collective spirit.

Ultimately, I think there are more similarities between the books than differences.  In both novels, characters are caught in a crossfire and overwhelmed by external forces.  Their inner lives are impacted by an often brutal and unforgiving outside world, and the decisions they make about their own lives are impacted by things over which they have no control: revolutions, wars, extremism, oppression. 

Both novels are multi-generational, and so the relationship between parent and child, with all of its manifest complexities and contradictions, is a prominent theme.  In fact, in one way, the two novels are corollaries, in that 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.  In both books, characters are in the end redeemed by love and human connection.  In the first novel, 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, love for family, home, country, God, or love between women.  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 acts of heroism and self-sacrifice.

FA:  Are you working on or planning any new projects?

 I am currently working on a new book of fiction partially set in Afghanistan.  I have no more updates on that at the present time.

FA: There seems to be in you a call to help people. First through your work as a doctor, now through your involvement in the Khaled Hosseini Foundation in Afghanistan – can you tell us about what you hope to accomplish?

I’ve been a very lucky guy.  I lived a happy and productive life.  I grew up in semi-privileged surroundings in Kabul, I had a charmed childhood.  I was fortunate enough to be in Paris, France when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, so I was at a safe remove from the displacement and massive human suffering that came with the war and in the aftermath of it.  In the US, I was fortunate enough to get an education and go to medical school and have a fulfilling and productive career as a physician.  All this, before my books were published, and before they found success well beyond my wildest hopes.

But there came a point, especially once the extent of my unexpected literary success became evident to me, that I began to grow restless and became anxious for a way to parlay my personal good fortunes into something that was hopefully more enduring and meaningful –especially given where I had come from.  I dabbled in a small project or two, until 2006 when UNHCR invited me to speak at World Refugee Day and then asked me to serve as a goodwill envoy.  It was a perfect match for me.  I would never dare compare my situation with that of the millions of Afghan refugees, but I had come to the States as a political refugee seeking asylum, and so I had always felt connected to the plight of Afghan refugees.  And I felt a personal kinship with the mission of the organization, which is to safeguard the rights and well being of the world’s most beleaguered people.

So it has been my honor and privilege the last three years to work with UNHCR, an organization that has protected and assisted over 50 million refugees since its formation in 1951, an organization that is, as we speak, providing food, shelter, medical aid, education and repatriation assistance to over 25 million people: refugees, displaced people, and asylum seekers.

In September of 2007, I had the opportunity to travel with UNHCR to northern Afghanistan to visit with some of the nearly 5 million refugees who have come home since 2002 with assistance from UNHCR.   We went to settlements and villages around Mazar Sharif, Kunduz, etc, and sat down with returnees and learned through their own words the challenges they are facing since returning home.  And those challenges are enormous and a part of their daily struggle to make ends meet.  These returnees came home in the hopes that international re-engagement in Afghanistan will allow for restoration of peace and justice and economic opportunity. What they found upon returning is a country still reeling from a three decade catastrophe that saw political, social and economic structures collapse, where livelihood is precarious and resources few.  The returnees I met face lack of food, lack of clean water, lack of access to health and educational facilities, lack of jobs, and for many that I spoke to, most importantly, lack of shelter and home.  Their attempt at reintegrating has been very difficult for most.  It’s an overused phrase, but for me, this trip really was a life altering experience.

When I came home, I worried that the memory of the trip would recede and that with the passage of time, the sense of urgency I had felt in Afghanistan would begin to fade.  So I sat down with my wife and had long discussions about how to capitalize on the experience and my newly formed 501c3, The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, was the outcome of those discussions.  My aim with this foundation is to fund projects that help refugees, that provide opportunity, relief, shelter and education for Afghan women and children. 

FA:You come from a long history of literary mastership in Afghanistan – from such figures as Rumi and the court of Mahmud of Ghazni. However, with the coming of the Taliban regime, the arts took a major blow. Now, only a fraction of the population is even literate. Do you see signs of hope for a reemergence of literature’s place and artistry within Afghanistan?

 The Taliban’s acts of cultural vandalism -the most infamous being the destruction of the giant Buddhas- had a devastating effect on Afghan culture and its artistic scene.   The Taliban burned countless films, VCR’s, music tapes, books, and paintings.  They jailed filmmakers, musicians, painters, and sculptors.  The Taliban’s puritanical stance on virtually any art form stifled artists and amounted to, I believe, a sick and twisted social experiment.  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 to write fiction in the guise of a sewing circle -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 all human faces on his oil paintings, except he did with it watercolor, which he washed off after the Taliban were ousted.  These were the desperate ways in which artists tried to escape the Taliban’s firm grip on virtually every form of artistic expression.  Afghans have a deep and rich artistic history and I have little doubt that we will see –we are seeing already- works of art in all forms, film, books, music, produced in Afghanistan by Afghans.

FA: We would be honored if you could provide a message for the Japanese people.

First and foremost, I thank the Japanese people and the Japanese government for the assistance that they have provided to Afghanistan.  Afghanistan is still dependent on the help and the goodwill of industrialized nations like Japan and the help that Japan has provided has made great differences in the lives of many Afghans.  For that we, speaking for Afghans, are deeply grateful.

Next I would offer an alternate way of looking at the conflict in Afghanistan.  I would frame the war in Afghanistan not only as a war against the insurgents but also against poverty.  After all, the number one killer in Afghanistan isn’t airstrikes or suicide bombs, or IEDs.  It’s poverty.  25,000 plus women die yearly during child birth.  Average life expectancy of 42 years.  1/5 chance for a child to die prior to the age of 5.  Nearly half the country without access to potable water, and living in extreme poverty, on less than $10 a month.  I believe that a very big slice of the solution pie in Afghanistan is to fight poverty.  When people have a roof over their head, when they have jobs, when they see their living conditions improving, when they see their kids going off to school, when they have access to a doctor if they get sick, they are much less likely to be influenced or persuaded by extremists.  Historically Afghanistan has never had a tradition of extremism.  This is out of character for the country.  What has brought this about is the huge tragedy of war and the brutalization of a society by successive civil conflict.  At the end of the day, Afghans are the same as any other people.  Their expectations for themselves, their children, are the same as anyone else’s.  They’ve had the misfortune of suffering through one of the worst and longest conflicts that we have seen in the last century, now ongoing into this century.  Any society is going to be bruised by that.

So what I understand, what is a trend and a realization among western capitals and prominent people, is that this is not a war that we can win via military means only.  We have to offer opportunity and better alternatives than the gun to Afghanistan’s young people.  They deserve better options in life.  And it is up to us, the international community, in partnership with the Afghan government to provide better options.  We have done it for some, but clearly we need to do more.