I haven't written in a while. Did you miss me? Well, I'm currently reading And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. It was love at first chapter for me! I've read Kiterunner and A Thousand Splendid Suns but this book seems to bring a promise of something greater. I can tell by the presentation of human relationships from the offset of the story.
Chapter One draws the curtain on a very endearing story. It's a fictional tale of hidden meaning and a magical, mystical sense of beauty. Baba Ayub's courage is touching and the div's initial terror and subsequent display of cruel mercy is sagacious. "When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color." (pg. 12) What does it all mean? What is Hosseini trying to communicate to us? In order to be noble we must have a measure of cruelty? In order to be human we must exact a degree of inhumanity?
And then I consider if in trying to do good we are cruel not just to the subject of our goodness, but also cruel to ourselves. Baba has to choose to surrender one of his five children because if he does not make such a painstakingly difficult decision he loses them all. In the end however, it is his favourite son that he loses and in losing this child for the greater good, he seems to suffer the most.
The div's final act of kindness reminds me in a weird way of the Saw series and also of the ending of A Hundred Years of Solitude. He takes away Baba's memory of the incident. Yet while many will see this as the ultimate deed of goodness, Baba continues to feel a void that he cant explain. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he recalls the sound of a bell associated with this lost son. So is this his reward or was it better to lose, hurt and grow? While the div has helped to ease the pain of this lost, there is a part of Baba that no potion can touch, a place where only the hands of love can touch that leaves us forever unraveled.
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