Kite Runner

One of my favourite writer is Khaled Hosseini, I was very impressed by his book “The Kite Runner”. While I was listening and reading the news, looking at social media and reactions of people I know, I suddenly read his message to world; Telling that he has a first cousin in the city of Herat in Western Afghanistan, that they grew up together in the 1970s. Remembering that they used to play 45 RPM records and danced together. They havent seen each other in nearly fifty years. And that little girl was always remembered as a bright young woman with green eyes and freckles, and a warm, contagious smile. After a terrifying phone call, Hosseini was writing these words and the words were turning into tears. This was yesterday, a day from 2021, August.

“It may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime…”

Keeping track of the daily practice of Sharia today, Afghanistan is radically changing back to its sharian history as if to repeat itself. What happened in the sharian history can be metaphored like a bleeding uterus as in most of the middle east countries. It is always war against everybody and the price is always paid by people. Poverty, worthlessness, terror, broken health system and lost values of culture and civilisation, education. Banned women from work, girls from going to school and all walks of life, obligations for women to veil, and for men to wear a skullcap and beard. Sentences starting from 6 months, prisons, executions, punishments in public (hand cuts for different reasons) No information, media, press, all kinds of broadcasts, internet and transformation into the darkness. No picture, no photograph, no book – only regilious content or heavy sanctions can be imposed on those who do not go to the mosque, madrasah. Everybody is Enemy.

“People say that eyes are windows to the soul.”

Plato (Plato- 428-348 BC) has a “cave analogy”; A group of people living in an underground cave. They only can look at the dark stone wall of the cave with their hands and feet are tied, turned their backs to the entrance of the cave. They see some images on the cold dark stone walls they look at. Eventually, these are the shadows created by the entrance and some images are reflected on the wall. These images are their only reality. They have always sat like this for their belief system since they’ve known themselves, thinking that the one and only reality that exists is their reality. A belief system that only looks at one direction. A belief system can easily produce horror and anger. A belief system that disables freedom of choice and nature of life. A belief system that leads its believers to make sacrifices with their own life. Worthless of being, life and joy. This cave is created by man himself and the man can only exist in the cave. Nothing is important than this cave.

“I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.”

Millions of people have become refugees as a result of the civil wars. Many thinkers, writers, composers, artists and people expressed their psychological traumas in their literary works in the countries they went to, if they could make it. Many of the poets, film makers , photographers told stories about these traumas for decades. They reflected the dramas in question, which took place in the world, in bleeding countries ; with all their reality in their works. They told the painful events that took place. They reflected these pains from a child’s eye, in all emotions but mostly pain. The topics that these human beings were touched on in their works and consisted of issues such as discrimination, violated human rights,massacres, rape, violance, freedoms taken from people and hopelessness. Every kind of wars reincarnated the cave of the modern age. They, and the Afghan people as a whole, deserve better than this.

“She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.’ I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.”