Following Amir:A trip to Afghanistan in which life imitates art

I found this essay written by the author of The Kite Runner. If this is any indication to the novel's writing style, I think I am going to enjoy it.

by Khaled Hosseini
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, August 10, 2003

Amir will be the first to tell you that he is neither the noblest nor the bravest of men. But three years ago, he did something both noble and brave:
He went back to Afghanistan, then ruled by the Taliban, to settle an old score. He went back after a 20-year absence to atone for a sin he had committed as a boy. He went back to rescue a child he had never met, and to rescue himself from damnation. The journey almost cost him his life. The thing is, I was the one who sent him. It was easy. After all, I created Amir; he is the protagonist of my novel, “The Kite Runner.”

Then, in March 2003, with the novel proofread and in production, I found myself tracing my protagonist’s footsteps, sitting in the window seat of an Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 headed toward Kabul. Like Amir, I had been gone a long time, almost 27 years, in fact; I was an 11-year-old, thin-framed seventh- grader when I left Afghanistan. I was going back now as a 38-year-old physician residing in Northern California, a writer, a husband and father of two. I gazed out the window, waiting for the plane to break through the clouds, waiting for Kabul to appear below me. When it did, a few lines from “The Kite Runner” came to me, and Amir’s thoughts suddenly became my own: The kinship I felt suddenly for the old land É it surprised me. É I thought I had forgotten about this land. But I hadn’t. Maybe Afghanistan hadn’t forgotten me either. The old adage in writing is you write about what you’ve experienced. I was going to experience what I had already written about.

Given this unusual circumstance, my two-week stay in Kabul took on a decidedly surreal quality, because every day I saw places and things I had already seen with my mind’s eye, with Amir’s eyes. For instance, walking through the crowded streets of Kabul for the first time, I was buoyed, like Amir, with a sense of coming home to an old friend. But also like Amir, I felt a bit like a tourist in my own country. We’d both been away a long time; neither one of us had fought in the wars, neither one of us had bled with the Afghan people. I had written about Amir’s guilt. Now I tasted it.

Soon, the line between Amir’s memories and my own began to blur. Amir had lived out my memories on the pages of “The Kite Runner,” and now I found myself living out his. When I was driven through the once beautiful, nowwar- ravaged Jadeh-maywand Avenue, past collapsed buildings, piles of rubble and bullet-pocked, roofless walls where beggars took shelter, I remembered my father buying me rosewater ice cream there one day in the early 1970s. And I remembered that Amir and his loving servant, Hassan, used to buy their kites on this same street, from a blind old man named Saifo. I sat on the crumbling steps of Cinema Park where my brother and I used to watch free undubbed Russian films in the winter and where Amir and Hassan had seen their favorite Western, “The Magnificent Seven,” no fewer than 13 times. I passed with Amir by smoke-filled, tiny kabob houses where our fathers used to take us, where sweaty men still sat cross-legged behind charcoal grills and feverishly fanned skewers of sizzling chopan kabob. Together we gazed up at the sky over the gardens of the 16th century emperor Babur and spotted a kite floating over the city. I thought of a sunny winter day in 1975, the day of Hassan and Amir’s kite-fighting tournament. That was the fateful day when 12-year-old Amir made a choice and betrayed his adoring friend Hassan, a day that would haunt him for the rest of his life; his choice would draw him back to Afghanistan and the Taliban as a grown man seeking redemption. And as I sat on a bench at Ghazi Stadium and watched the New Year’s Day parade with thousands of Afghans, I thought of my father and I watching a game of buzkashi there in 1973, but also of Amir, who had witnessed the Taliban stone a pair of adulterers in this same stadium, at the south end goalpost, in fact, where now a group of young men in traditional garments were dancing the atan in a circle.

But perhaps nowhere did fiction and life collide more dizzyingly than when I found my father’s old house in Wazir Akbar Khan, the house where I grew up, just as Amir rediscovered his baba’s old house in that same neighborhood. It took me three days of searching - I had no address and the neighborhood had changed drastically - but I kept looking until I spotted the familiar arch over the gates.

I got to walk through my old house; the Panjshiri soldiers who lived there were gracious enough to grant me this nostalgic tour. I found that, like on Amir’s childhood house, the paint on mine had faded, the grass had withered, the trees were gone, and the walls were crumbling. Like Amir, I was struck by how much smaller the house was in reality than the version that had for so long lived in my memories. And - I swear to this - when I stepped through the front gates, I saw a Rorschach blot-shaped oil stain on the driveway, just as Amir had on his father’s driveway. As I said my goodbyes and thanks to the soldiers, I realized something else: The emotional impact of finding my father’s house would have been even more intense if I hadn’t written “The Kite Runner.” After all, I had already been through this. I had stood beside Amir at the gates of his father’s house - now overtaken by murderous Taliban soldiers - and felt his loss. I’d watched him set his hands on the rusty wrought-iron bars, and together we’d gazed at the sagging roof and crumbling front steps. Having written that scene took some of the edge off my own experience. Call it art stealing life’s thunder.

Khaled Hosseini is a physician in the Bay Area and the author of the novel “The Kite Runner,” a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller.

About our next book

In Sleeping with Schubert, Brooklyn lawyer Liza Durbin takes center stage for the ultimate musical comeback when Franz Schubert takes up residence in her mind and body. It seems the composer of the "Unfinished" Symphony has loose ends to tie up.

The story’s spiritual launch site is the shoe department at Nordstrom, where Liza is Christmas shopping. The store pianist’s holiday drivel is driving her batty. When the pianist takes a break, Liza takes his place and plays brilliantly.

The reality that Franz Schubert has entered her life radically changes Liza’s relationships, career and sense of self. Everyone around her has an opinion or an agenda: Liza’s supremely proud parents, a nice Jewish couple, think of themselves as Joseph and Mary. Her wandering boyfriend returns from Italy, unhappy to find an extra guy in their bed, even if he’s invisible.

Liza’s rich, gorgeous sister dusts off her PR skills to promote a cleavage-based image, while a mysterious, self-appointed mentor from Juilliard tends to Liza’s more musical talents.

As fans, critics and late-night quipsters chomp on every detail of her life, Liza deals with heart-wrenching realities. She sees her own life overrun by a dead composer’s passion. With no idea how long it will last or what life would be like if Franz left, Liza searches for understanding. She ultimately finds answers in unexpected places, yet there are still plenty of remaining questions that allow for the thrill of speculation.

Random House, June, 2004
Random House Audio, June, 2004
Richard Pine, agent Inkwell Management
Film rights Paramount Picture

Sleeping With Schubert

I found this about our next author on her website.

About the Author
Sleeping with Schubert is Bonnie Marson’s second piece of fiction. The first was a short story called "The Sphinx," which won honorable mention in the Society of Southwestern Authors writing contest in 1994. She started a second short story but set it aside for several years until a friend suggested she "keep writing till it’s finished." Schubert is the finished story.
Before turning her creative energies toward writing, Bonnie was an artist working, mostly making paintings and drawings but playing with other media, too. Her work sold in galleries and to collectors around the country.
In addition to making art, Bonnie has had other jobs to support her food and clothing addictions. For the past 12 years, she’s worked at Canyon Ranch, the jet-set spa in Tucson, where all is sunny and lovely and healthy.
Though she’s lived in Tucson for more than 20 years, Bonnie is deeply rooted in New York. After growing up in East Meadow, Long Island, she went to college at the State University of New York at Buffalo, earning a degree in Speech Communications. She soon went back to undergrad at Douglass College in New Jersey to study fine arts.
Bonnie lives in Tucson with her husband, Steve Sadler, along with the world’s cutest dog, one good cat and one evil one. She is working on her next novel.
For more details about Bonnie’s unusual route from short story to novel to publication, read about Innocent Optimism.
Contact Bonnie at bonnie@bonniemarson.com: The author gladly reads all emails, though personal responses are not always possible. Thanks so much for you comments.

October 16th Meeting

Katy will be hosting this meeting.
We will be discussing; Sleeping with Schubert by Bonnie Marson.

Katy Downs-Stroh
911 Mariposa Way
Lodi
339-8715
runkygirl@softcom.net

Please call or email Katy to let her know you are coming.

Nov. 20th Meeting

La Dean & Cathy are co-hosting this month at Cathy Meyer's home.

Cathy Meyer
746 Evergreen Way
Manteca
239-6418

We will be discussing : The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Please call or email Cathy and let her know if you will be attending.

Our Reading List

I also sent this as an email attachment, but in case you couldn't open the attachment, here it is again.

Lisa

We’re Booked Reading List
Feb.1996 ~Sept. 2005
Emma- Jane Austen
Like Water for Chocolate- Laura Esquival
My Antonia- Willa Cather
Snow Falling on Cedars- David Guterson
Cold Sassy Tree- Olive Ann Burns
Beach Music- Pat Conroy
Ladder of Years- Ann Tyler
The Bean Trees- Barbara Kingsolver
Uncle Tom’s Cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Pigs in Heaven- Barbara Kingsolver
The Horse Whisperer- Nicholas Evans
The Shipping News- E. Annie Proulx
Song of Solomon- Toni Morrison
Cross Creek- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
She Flew the Coop- Michael Lee West
Bone- Fae Myenne Ng
The Temple of my Familiar- Alice Walker
Object Lessons- Anna Quindlen
The Sixteen Pleasures- Robert Hellenga
A Civil Action- Jonathan Harr
She’s Come Undone- Wally Lamb
A Literary Christmas- compilation
Wicked- Gregory Maguire
The Pull of the Moon- Elizabeth Berg
The Giant’s House- Elizabeth McCracken
A Map of the World- Jane Hamilton
The Romance Reader- Pearl Abraham
Animal Husbandry- Laura Zigman
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn- Betty Smith
Salt Dancers- Ursula Hegi
Under the Tuscan Sun- Frances Mayes
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood- Rebecca Wells
Life Estates- Shelby Hearon
A Cup of Tea- Amy Ephron
The Mistress of Spices- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Cold Mountain- Charles Frazier
The Hundred Secret Senses- Amy Tan
Charming Billy- Alice McDermott
Your Oasis on Flame Lake- Lorna Landvik
Flaming Iguanas- Ericka Lopez
The Reader- Bernhard Schlink
Memoirs of a Geisha- Arthur Golden
Where the Heart Is- Billie Letts
Dear Exile- Hilary Liftin
The Inn at Lake Divine-Elinor Lipman
Hannah’s Daughters- Fredriksson
A Prayer for Owen Meany- John Irving
Tender at the Bone- Ruth Reichl
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister- Gregory Maguire
Crooked Little Heart- Anne LaMott
Lost Horizon-James Hilton
Body & Soul- Frank Conroy
Middlemarch- George Elliott
House of Sand and Fog- Andre Dubus III
Midwives- Chris Bohjalian
Cry to Heaven- Anne Rice
The Ladies’ Man-Elinor Lipman
The Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver
Waiting- Ha Jin
Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind- Ann B. Ross
I Capture the Castle- Dodie Smith
Kitchen Confidential-Anthony Bourdain
Blonde- Joyce Carol Oates
Fugitive Pieces-Anne Michaels
Saying Grace-Beth Gutcheon

Warriors Don't Cry-Melba Patillo Beals
Jemima J-Jane Green

The Red Tent-Anita Diament
Life is So Good-George Dawson & Richard Glaubman
Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
Joy in the Morning-Betty Smith
How Green Was My Valley-Richard Llewyelln
The Blind Assassin-Margaret Atwood
Soiled Doves:Prostitution in the Early West- Anne Seagraves
The Corrections- Jonathan Franzen
Cheaper by the Dozen- Frank B. Gilbreth,Jr.
The Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold
Back When We Were Grownups-Ann Tyler
The Sun Also Rises-Ernest Hemingway
The Hours-Michael Cunningham
Passage to Juneau-Jonathan Rabin
Big Stone Gap-Adriana Trigliani
Empire Falls-Richard Russo
Bel Canto-Ann Patchett
The Other Boleyn Girl-Phillipa Gregory
Seabiscuit-Laura Hillenbrand
The Dive From Clausen’s Pier-Ann Packer
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress- Dai Sijie
Life of Pi-Yann Martel
Atonement-Ian McEwan
Motherless Brooklyn-Jonathan Lethem
Three Junes-Julia Glass
No Hurry to Get Home-Emily Hahn
Ella Minnow Pea-Mark Dunn
Cry, the Beloved Country-Alan Patton
The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud-Ben Sherwood
Good Grief-Lolly Winston
A Fine Balance-Rohinton Mistry
Me Talk Pretty One Day-David Sedaris
Lost in a Good Book-Jasper Fforde
Plainsong-Kent Haruf
One Thousand White Women:The Journals of May Dodd-Jim Fergus
Waiting-Debra Ginsberg
Ya Ya’s in Bloom-Rebecca Wells
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency-Alexander McCall Smith
In This House of Brede-Rumer Godden
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons-Lorna Landvik

Sleeping with Schubert-Bonnie Marson
The Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini

The Magnificent Ambersons-Booth Tarkington

A Walk on the Wild Side-Bill Bryson

A Million Little Pieces-James Frey