Author: Nadia Hashimi
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Date Started: 15 July 2021
Date Finished: 21 July 2021
This is my second book by Nadia Hashmi, after 'A House Without Windows'. I bumped into this book in one of the Instagram accounts I follow, and the storyline sounded interesting. I also like the writing style of the author. Seems like I like to read stories of survival in both fiction and non-fiction genres. Khaled Hosseini is another favorite author of mine who writes about Afghanistan and its beauty.
The story starts with a ten-year-old girl Sitara Zamani, who is the daughter of the advisor for President Daoud Khan. The story starts in 1978, which is the pre-war, a golden era for Afghanistan. The grandchildren of President Daoud Khan and Sitara's family are close-knit and Sitara talks about how privileged she was while growing up, until the night, a military coup kills her entire family. A soldier who she recognizes as Shair takes her t his house who she thinks has killed her family.
Shair keeps Sitara with his family to protect her and during an argument with Sitara, he takes her and drops her off with an American woman. Antonia (Nia) Shepherd is an American diplomat working for the US Embassy in Kabul, who lives with her mother Tilly. Nia is determined to save Sitara and tries everything possible to get her to the United States. Sitara takes her sister's name Aryana Zamani, who was born in America and died two years later.
Sitara is smuggled into Pakistan by Tilly and some American hitchhikers, who are hiking through the hippie route. Sitara, now Aryana is a witness to the attack on US Embassy in November 1979. Aryana along with Tilly flies to the USA and is placed in a foster home, where the parents are abusive. Antonia adopts Aryana, which changes her name to Aryana Shepherd.
Aryana is a surgeon in New York and one day she meets a patient, Abdul Shair Nabi, almost thirty years after that unfortunate night. He was the same Shair, who had saved her and according to Aryana, had killed her family. The author then talks about how her memories of that night come back, and she presses Shair for the truth of her family's murder and looks for closure. The book also talks about how her past affects her relationships and the way she views the world. Aryana decides to visit Kabul to find the graves of her family and to give them a proper burial.
My favorite character was Sitara. Her will to survive, find closure, and overcome the trauma was compelling. Even though Aryana was traumatized at a very young age, she was resilient, and pursued her way to become a doctor, as her father had wished. The character of Antonia is well written too. Antonia had her own way of living and her own trauma and emotional baggage. But she had decided to save Sitara from war-torn Afghanistan and give her a chance at a good life.
This book was a roller coaster ride of 452 pages. There were many pages where I had blurred vision and wet cheeks! The story although swirled around Sitara or Aryana, it was a gripping story, and I could not have imagined the end. I felt that a girl who goes through seeing her family murdered to escaping the country with someone else's name escaping an abusive home to becoming a surgeon is a huge feat. I could see how the trauma of her past affected her relationships and the trigger situations. Sometimes I felt that she went through the survivor's guilt.
Aryana compares herself to Anastasia Romanov, who was the youngest daughter of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, whose entire family was executed. Aryana feels that Anastasia and herself are the same - trying to survive the murder of the family. Aryana holds a lot of hope that Anastasia was still alive for a long since her body was not found. Aryana is heartbroken when the archeologists find the body of Anastasia, which she feels was the defeat of her struggle to survive.
Favorite lines from the book:
While Neelab was mesmerized by the gold and the stones, I was stunned by the ring's ability to outlive anyone who had worn it.
The will to live is strongest in those who have a reason to live, something to save.
Sometimes it's when people are silent that you hear them most clearly.
You need no one to confirm you. You are everything you believe yourself to be.
People are God's cruelest creations. They'll step on the smallest of backs to feel an inch taller.
Whether by blood, by fire, or by default, to become a mother is no easy feat.
Grief starts before anyone has gone missing.
All I want is an accurate record of history. I want a truthful account of that night. I want something to mark the graves of my family so that the world can know that they lived and died. Truth matters.
"Heaven and hell," Shair scoffs. "As if those are two separate places. As if you and I have not stood in both."
Necessity isn't just the mother of invention. She's the mother of faith too.
Shiva has powers of destruction, but re-creation as well, as one cannot happen without the other.
I remember my father once telling me that whether prayers were made on a gold-threaded rug or on a straw mat, they carried the same weight with God.
Prayer is you talking to God. But meditation is God talking to you.
You know, we're so damned afraid that talking about the ones we've lost will hurt us as much as losing them did. So we just stop talking about them. But that's when we truly lose them.
People have an easier time kissing their elbows than believing war touches kids.
People keep living and growing and changing and dying whether we're here or not.
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