Bookseller of Kabul

Back at home. The Bookseller of Kabul had seemed interesting. At least the page I had opened it on - which prompted me to buy the book. So I settled down to read it. Boy, what a depressing book. Its not that she has written the book in a depressing manner - there is no over dramatizing, no attempt to make things appear morbid than they are, no searching for cynical hidden meanings and connections (ala Milan Kundera). In fact, the book is fairly journalistic - no nonsense and (hopefully) factual. But the facts themselves leave you with the feeling that there is no hope at all for the people of Afghanistan. And especially the women. It is quite evident that the writer herself was moved by the hopeless fate of the women born into that society, for quite sub consciously, her stories bring out the dismal situation that all the women protagonists - young and old, ugly and beautiful - are stuck in.

In a world which focuses largely on the joys of positive thinking and holistic healing and discovering your inner joy, the story of the Bookseller of Kabul comes as a rude demonstration of the helpness that a man's place of birth can put him into. I know that a lot of our postive thinkers would exhort me to look at this as an example of the resilience of the human spirit, and give me examples of the potter's wheel and coffee beans and what not to show how fate tests the strongest (so what if they have never gone through this so-called suffering). But I would rather face reality for it is - stark, naked, and for the women in Afghanistan - brutal and worse-than-death.