Fear was the real excuse for putting off Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Somewhere in the course of the novel, a rash of alarming incidents outside his control would invade the idyllic life of an Afghan child, and I would have to face the dreaded words once they arrived. The demon awoke on Page 112 as the boy and his father evacuated Soviet-occupied Kabul and his home as “tapestries still hung on the walls of the living room and my mother’s books still crowded the shelves in Baba’s study.” At two in the morning, with the rest of my New Orleans neighborhood blissfully asleep, a soundless wail scoured its way in and out of my lungs as all of the memories flooded back, threatening to wash away that last cherished spherule of oxygen.
Do the tapestries and carvings still hang in the walls of my living room? Do my books still crowd the shelves of my study? Do the evergreen Dieffenbachias still thrive by my piano? Of course, they don’t. The scoundrels did not leave even the wall-to-wall carpeting.Hundreds of saris. All gone. How she organized and cared for them as she would her own patients. Loss is horrible enough at the end of a life. Why must we experience it before the time has come? Gorgeous, colorful, expensive, tastefully collected silk saris. Where are they now? How inappropriate it is for something as ugly and damaging as war to prevail, to win over the silken glory of something as constructive as a sari collection. Blasted concrete and gnarled girders over the multicolored, multifaceted beauty of delicate couture that took decades to put together and seconds to rip apart, off and down.
Blasted limbs and gnarled sinews over the multifunctional, multifaceted beauty of complex organic matter that took a lifetime to put together and seconds to rip apart, up and to shreds.
Would I give the entire sari collection to get back one human who was taken away from this world by an act of irrational violence? Yes, yes, for you, a thousand times over.
When that last plea for silence played its final strain over my tear-drenched pillow, I slept.
Every morning, at 6:30 sharp, stepping foot from a hot shower, my mother turned six yards of supple cloth into a vestment fit for royalty, like no other woman could. With every finger gently yet assuredly gripping an aspect of the intricate sari, the many-time winner of “Best Dressed Indian Woman in Kuwait” deftly wielded the material onto her blithe frame, as I unblinkingly took it all in. When I grow up, will you teach me to wear one just like that, ma? Of course, I will, my darling, you’re my only daughter. The saris are a symbol of the dignified and self-disciplined manner with which my mother comported herself at all times, at work, at home, with relatives and friends alike. More than that, they signify the number of years my parents lived in Kuwait, plugging away at each of their jobs, while educating younger siblings, caring for parents and ensuring better lives for their children. In the face of the things my mother did and endured for other people, her saris and their supplements were the only indulgence she granted herself.
My mother’s saris are what I fail to save in my dreams. I realize it is her dignity and life’s hard work that I cannot bring back on waking. Unlike the protagonist of The Kite Runner, our family had the good fortune not to face monetary hardships on leaving Kuwait in a hurry, thanks to my father’s wise foreign investments. However, a home and a life once built up are now gone, as they did for Hosseini’s Baba and scores of Afghans like him. Left were the sense of violation and helplessness that accompany invasion, theft, hostage crises, humiliation and the myriad other symptoms of war.
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