“You're living through the only moments that make life worthwhile... In love, even beasts become divine.”
The narrative is one with tragic characters who are products of their environment particularly the men. Violence and death have become day to day aspects in Kabul that the dwellers have been desensitized to the grim humanity. Atiq too is a man of violence and harbors a lot of anger that he transfers through abuse and violence upon others. He does not love his wife anymore as he feels she is an unnecessary burden to him due to her sickness. However, he is infatuated by Zunaira’s beauty and eventually falls in love with her unearthing desire in him he never knew. In the assertion, Atiq recalls his wife’s statement in terms of the power of love even to a man like him, a ‘beast’. Their lives become intertwined due to his love for her impacting major choices later made by the characters.
“If I put that damned veil on, I'm neither a human being nor an animal, I'm just an affront, a disgrace, a blemish that has to be hidden. That's too hard to deal with.”
The story also explores the plight of women under the Taliban regime in Kabul. As a woman in Kabul, she lacks the freedom that a male-counterpart will enjoy. Women are subjected to rules and attires that limit them which stretches to other spheres from the public to private ones. Zunaira is a highly educated woman who has suffered the wrath of the tyrannical rule that aims to subjugate women. She hates wearing the burqa as she associates it to female oppression and a means of the regime to silence and degrade the woman.
“It seems that the whole world is beginning to decay, and that its putrefaction has chosen to spread outward from here, from the land of the Pashtuns, where desertification proceeds at a steady, implacable crawl even in the consciences and intellects of men.”
Afghanistan has been a war-ridden territory for decades and the impact of the conflicts has been felt worldwide. The narrative explores Kabul during the period of the Taliban regime after the Soviet-Afghan war and the instability and decay that ensured. In the novel, the author focuses on how death and violence corrupt the hearts of men which bolster more violence spiraling into terrorism.
