truth and fiction.

i recently finished the kite runner by khaled hosseini (website). it's a good book. i've wanted to read it for a while but put it off. it's about a man who grew up privileged in afghanistan before the taliban took over. by the time they did, he and his father had been smuggled out of the country and gone to the united states. he goes back years later for various reasons, largely hoping to make peace with the demons that haunt him, i think, and finds his homeland unrecognizable. at times i thought the book was a little too hard to read. parts of it were very violent and overwhelmingly sad. the story is about redemption - it says so on the back cover - so i knew something bad had to happen in order for someone to need redemption, but i'm not sure the story of the redemption he finds is worth having those images in my head, because they do remain there. on the other hand, reading about such a place, and the beauty that used to be, the beauty lost, gave me a new perspective too.

i remember after september 11th, when the bombing of afghanistan by "the allied forces" began, i felt so helpless and overwhelmed. i could see and hear the echoes of innocent people screaming when i closed my eyes. every night on the news there would be names of more cities being bombed, more colorful dots on the stylized maps of countries many americans had never heard of, much less seen. and images of cities crumbling and faces crying would linger behind the reality where i was struggling to exist. so i was glad to read this book, because through the narrator's eyes, i was able to see the beauty of a country before it was torn apart. or earlier in the long history of it being torn apart, more accurately. afghanistan has a long history of being torn apart, and what really saddens me is the fact that behind these terrible rulers and terrible laws and crumbling economies and crumbling buildings, there are people trying to live from day to day. the images of kids during war tear me apart. it reminds me of a nanci griffith song: it's a hard life. it really breaks me up. i have been so lucky. when i was in nyc visiting my brother, i saw kids roaming the streets in packs, and thought how odd it was that their parents would let them wander around, so exposed to the dangers of big city life. then i read the kite runner. i guess in some ways i'm naive, but i just don't think it's fair that kids have to suffer at all, especially because of wars that started before they were even born, wars that they don't understand, but yet come to experience more personally than many of the people who started them. it literally breaks my heart. maybe i'm too sensitive, but i guess that's what comes from having parents who wanted, tried, and were able to protect me from true suffering.

i opened up the news today and saw that another suicide car bomb in afghanistan killed several people (source). what kind of life is that for kids? seeing that kind of stuff every day, it seems you might get to the point where you don't really even fear it, you just accept it as part of life.

oh, and madonna's adoption of the boy from malawi is being challenged by a "leading child rights group" there (source). this also reminds me of the book, but you'll have to read it to know why.

It's a Hard Life
(Nanci Griffith)

I am a backseat driver from America
We drive to the left on Falls Road.
And the man at the wheel's name is Seamus,
We pass a child on the corner he knows.
And Seamus says "what chance has that kid got?"
And I say from the back , "I don't know."
He says there's barbed wire at all of these exits
And there ain't no place in Belfast for that kid to go.
'Cause it's a hard life, it's a hard life, it's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go.

And if we poison our childred with hatred
Then the hard life is all that they'll know.
And there ain't no place in Belfast for that kid to go.

Cafeteria line in Chicago,
The fat man in front of me
Is calling black people trash to his children
And he's the only trash here I see.
And I'm thinking this man wears a white hood
In the night when his children should sleep.
But they'll slip to their windows and they'll see him
And they'll think that white hood's all they need.


'Cause it's a hard life, it's a hard life, it's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go.
And if we poison our children with hatred
Then the hard life is all that they'll know.
And there ain't no place in Chicago for those kids to go.


I was a child in the sixties
When dreams could be held through T.V.
With Disney and Cronkite and Martin Luther
And I believed, I believed, I believed.
Now I am the backseat driver from America
And I am not at the wheel of control.
And I am guilty, I am war, and I am the root of all evil,
Lord, and I can't drive on the left side of the road.


'Cause it's a hard life, it's a hard life, it's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go.
And if we poison our children with hatred
Then the hard life is all that they'll know.
And there ain't no place in this world for those kids to go,
'Cause it's a hard life wherever you go.