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unicornbitchface · 3 years

Text

Raat ki Rani

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC

Background: A story set in the colonial past of India.

Beta’d by my lovely friend @madbaddic7ed !

Warnings: harsh languange

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Chapter 3

The hall looked magnificent as if the ghosts of the past had brought them back to the days of glory. The chandelier was lit up, its jewels reflecting light upon every nook and corner.

The musicians played with vigor, expecting a heavy reward for their best efforts and the sweet-scented welcome of every guest added to the pomp.

Every high born around the state was to be present in the feast, and there they were, happy to make the acquaintance of the new British resident. The only glitch was that the said officer was nowhere to be seen, making the Maharaja jittery and a little annoyed.

Soon everyone would start asking questions, for how long was he supposed to distract guests with starters? With this thought, Ganga nodded at Kulwant, asking him to get an update.

*******

Late again! But the blame was on the delay with the dress they insisted to be worn. What was wrong with the old ones? Nothing when I see them!

Who in their right minds would wear these? UGH. I will have to talk to the culprits after this goddamn feast for that buffoon!

As Damini walked through the seemingly deserted halls of the palace, fixing her stubborn hair, adding a gajra and cursing the dressmaker, she did not realise that she took a wrong turn.

Distressed by her woes of fashion and etiquette that mandated her presence in that debauchery, she walked in a jiffy towards her dear friend, Ashwanth.

The gajra, long forgotten, embraced the side of the marble tile near a very special room. Only the melody of her heavy gold trinkets echoed in the air paired with a certain gift, attracting the attention of a handsome blue-eyed devil who was switching to his suits after giving the Indian kurta a chance.

The sound made him curious like the first night, and his feet dragged him to the halls. Only half dressed, shirt unbuttoned, he looked around and tried to trace the echo. All that he could concur, was a moving shadow with the curves of silk, the bells moving in sync with those voluptuous hips. Coming back to his allotted room, the only remnant of that siren laid across the floor.

The gift.

That smell.

His hand snatched the bunched flowers, as if the grounds would swallow them if he wasn’t quick enough. One whiff and he knew he needed it in his life more than the opium his friends favoured.

So, it belonged to a person after all, and by the accompanying silhouette, a woman.

His woman.

A sudden realization had his pupil dilated, as he went back to the room. She might be at the feast.

If he heard them right, everyone significant would be present in that hall, and she was the most significant.

He chuckled at his poetry, what is wrong with me, he thought. He moved around the room with swiftness but also a renewed interest, humming tunes while he applied a dash of cologne and adjusted his jacket to perfection.

He passed the mirror one last time, stopping to fix his hair. He had to look perfect for his sweet maiden. His brows furrowed, a troubling thought flashing his mind. What if she was spoken for? What if she was claimed already, her heart in someone else’s hands?

Blue eyes turned colder than a foot of ice.

Hands on the desk,

He looked at himself,

A crooked smile gracing,

Then what?

Then,

A war like no other.

A war that would put Trojan and Mahabharata to shame.

A knock at the door tamed the raging storm in his eyes. Lord Cavill looked up, frowning at the distasteful intrusion upon his whims and fancies.

Ah, the big bad boulder.

“Come in, General! I assume you are here to escort me to the venue?”

“Khamba Ghani Cavill Saab. I heard that the British people are always on time, and yet here I find you, barely dressed for the occasion.”

A smirk laced the British resident’s face as he retorted, “Well you’re not wrong, but I happen to be the guest of honour and I may arrive whenever I may please. In fact, just for that comment, I would like to take a few more minutes before I leave.” And he turned towards his desk and picked up a recent correspondence from the Crown.

Kulwant couldn’t help but roll his eyes, a movement instantly caught by the blue-eyed man.

“Keep going! I will take an extra minute for each time you roll your eyes, kind sir.”

It was beyond the General’s comprehension that a man as petulant as this entitled bleached monkey, could even hold the post of a hawaldar in court, let alone be a Lord of some sort. Nevertheless, he was a guest, and of honour at that.

Thus, the loyal servant of the court stood tall and quiet while the firang made his point, albeit unnecessarily.

Once he was done having fun at the General’s expense, Cavill agreed to be escorted to the event. He reached the hall, and couldn’t believe his eyes for a minute.

The hall looked straight out of a fairytale, and the worth of the mere jewels studded on the walls could help him buy a couple of kingdoms.

He reigns in his musings, and walks toward Maharaja Ganga Singh.

************

“We don’t have time! Baba will decorate his court with my head! Let’s go!”

“Damu! Come on, wait! You don’t even have flowers in your hair.”

“You think I care, Ashwanth!? I can barely move in this outfit! It’s so heavy and so unnecessary! All for that invader and his honour! What can be more honourable than stealing lands you have no business with, right?”

“Damu, don’t be silly! You’re a princess, and you cannot just march into the hall like a maid! Here, let me put these roses and..Can you just.. oho! THERE.”

“That’s right! I am a princess and this is my palace! Watch me..”

The two friends kept bickering along the way. Anyone who had seen these two would mistake them for longtime lovers, and yet things remained strictly platonic, at least from Damini’s end.

For someone with an expertise in strategising, warcraft and literature, the princess often missed the veiled looks Prince Ashwanth threw at her. How he always brought gifts, only in exchange for her ruthless company and how he bowed down to all her incessant demands, all for her pleasure.

To Ashwanth, she was the key to his future and beyond. To Damu, he was the ever constant confidant, seemingly balanced and loyal to a fault.

As they moved towards the hall, she made eye contact with her father and naturally started walking to him, just like she has been trained to, her seat to his left calling out to its rightful master. What she didn’t realise was a figure moving in the same direction.

Lost in conversation and the pull of the decorum, she collided with a commoner, which only fueled her frustration.

“Dekh ke nahi chala jata kya? Humare raste aane ki himmat kaise hui?” (Can't you see where you're going? How dare you get in my way?)

“What did you just say?! How dare you use that tone with me?

“Poore mahal mein yeh gorey deemak ke bhaanti badhte hi ja rahe hain! Ek din ka bhi chain nahi hai!”(These white people are everywhere, like pests! Give me a break)

“Damu yeh..”(Damu this is….)

“Honge apne desh mein nawab, yahaan pe inki aukaat humaare naakhoon baraabar bhi na hain! Aur aise kya ghoor rahe hain yeh, laaj lajja kuch hai inko?” (He might be a Lord in his country, but here he isn't worth my toenail! And why are you staring at me like that? Have you any shame?)

Lord Cavill fumed at this disgrace of a woman, one who dared to look him in the eye and dared to speak while addressing him directly. Although he could not understand her words, her tone and posture were enough to get her backhanded, had they not been in the presence of company.

This unruly child must be taught a lesson.

If anyone asked Lord Cavill, a woman’s tongue is only good for two things, sewing her mouth shut and on his cock whenever he pleased. If he didn’t expect the siren of his dreams to be in attendance, he would have put her in her place. Even if he could not punish this puny, dusky troll, he still had a reputation to defend.

“You listen to me carefully woman! You are messing with the wrong man, and spewing gibberish in some primitive language is not going to save you! Do you even know who I am? You are in MY bloody court and if I please, I can rip that serpentine tongue out of that pretty little hole! So you better apologise!”

“Cavill Saab.. please.. that’s my..”

“APOLOGISE? For what? Standing on my own soil? Or comparing you to a termite? None of which are false in my eyes. So get out of my way and know your place or you know what, go cry to your incompetent Lord!”

A storm raged in their eyes, wrath of all oceans combined in his and a black blizzard stirred concurrently in hers.

“Eyes down now, foreigner. ” The Tigress growled in warning.

The entire hall was suddenly quiet at the outburst. The musicians had stopped playing, and by the look of amusement on their faces, this was not the first time Damini Bai Sa had been the centre of attention.

Ashwanth tried pulling her back, her father was shooting daggers at her, while her siblings stood with aggravated expressions, exasperated by this wild child. It was Ganga Singh, who walked towards the ruckus and roared, which broke the deadly silence that had thickly draped the occasion.

“DAMINI! Are you out of your mind?! Do you even know WHO that is? Forgive me my Lord! This is my youngest child, Rajkumari Damini Bai, and I do not know what got into her, she is nothing like this!”

Renu and Revati Bai snickered at this comment and tried to hide their glee when they could see their father’s plan failing. No way will Lord Cavill bed this wild boar! They were preparing themselves for saving the kingdom, all the while reaping the seeds of pleasure from it.

“Damu, this is Lord Cavill himself. What is wrong with you, my child? Apologise, right now!”

“I would rather do Jauhar..” (light a pyre)

“DAMI..”

“It’s alright, Mr. Singh! I cannot expect common courtesy from uncultured brats like her. It just saddens me that you bear this burden on your shoulders! She certainly must have brought tremendous shame to the title of a Princess!”

Damini was about to give him a piece of her mind when Ashwanth pulled her back and gave her a solid glare.

Lord Cavill continued, “ Forgive me, but Maan Singh and your daughters seem like true blue-blooded beings. Has she been adopted from the streets?” His condescending tone should have had all the swords in the realm drawn up, but the language barrier and a father’s resolution to shove his daughter at him, saved the British neck.

Damini could not tolerate the insult and charged at him, “ Oh this is it! You goddamn plague sore! I will..” but was blocked by Ashwanth who was done watching her embarrass the Rajputana pride like a common whore.

“THAT IS ENOUGH DAMINI! Go take a seat!” The Maharaja ordered. But when she moved to her designated seat, her father grabbed her by the arm and lashed out with gritted teeth, “Sit with the guests. That seat belongs to your Master now. And don’t you dare embarrass me further. You are to serve him, and make sure he is left wanting for nothing. Nothing.”

Tears threatened to fall as the Tigress straightened her back, the princess coming to the fore, taking her position in the room, finding her place in the oppressive hierarchy.

Cavill watched her change her stance, a subtle nod to whatever her father threatened her with and for a second, he was impressed by the precise mutation. That is when he noticed the princess for the first time. Not so bad for a desert kingdom, blooming in all the right places.

Back home, feisty women were his speciality, and he would often tame the likes of this woman, ploughing through their virgin lands.

His eyes wandered to her navel, as she walked to the guy who took her away earlier. Must be fucking her, and not enough at that! If she were in the right bed, she would be blissed out and her tongue tired. He could see her under him, screaming for an entirely different reason.

As the lust awoke, the mere thought of breaking this ballsy female had blood rushing to his groin, steeling his resolve as well as his cock. He had never bedded a princess, and was primed to claim her body for one night.

If that man could have her, she was fair game to all.

He strode towards the prize, steps decisive and eyes frigid. That is when he heard her voice, lowered but not discouraged by any means.

“Ashwanth, they let him take my seat, MY seat! And how could he say that about my lineage!? It was my seat!”

Ashwanth patiently replied, “ Don’t create a scene Damu, a chair does not define your position in the house, neither does some outsider! And can you please stop talking in English? You know how our people feel about it!”

Damini was feeling suffocated and needed to take a breath, but her luck soured the moment she felt thick fingers grabbing her arm, and felt his breath at the nape of her neck.

“You don’t need to get so riled up, princess. You know you can always sit on my lap like the little bitch you are.”

Damini looked at him with such fire in her eyes that it would have put Hestia to shame.

"Take. Your. Hands. Off. Me."

Taken aback, Cavill's grip loosened and she jerked out of his grasp with a rippling force. Much to the astonishment of the onlookers, she turned on her heel and stormed off.

The pride of her tears matched with the stride of the Tigress, refusing to fall before anyone.

***********************

Hindi Terms:

Khamba Ghani: Rajasthani salutation and a way to say hello.

Firang: A derogatory term used for Europeans/ Colonisers, loosely translating to outsider.

Saab: Sir

Maharaja: King

Gajra: A traditional weave of scented flowers used as hair accessory by women.

Chapter 2

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#henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill #henry cavill thoughts #colonial era #india #henry cavill series #raat ki rani #thechurchofcavill #henry cavill x ofc

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aftaabmagazine · 5 years

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Conversation with Jamil Jan Kochai, author of "99 Nights in Logar"

By Farhad Azad

[caption: The cover of Jamil Jan Kochai debut novel]

Jamil Jan Kochai's multi-layered debut novel 99 Nights in Logar opens inside Afghanistan at a time when Khaled Hosseini first book The Kite Runner was making waves in the US. While Hosseini's story depicts the urban Kabuli perspective, Kochai's narrates the rural Logari experience. The distance between Logar and Kabul maybe a short 45-minute drive, however in many ways, the two places are worlds apart.

In this rural environment, we are guided by the main character, Marwand, a 12-year-old Afghan-American from the capital of California. He is spending his summer vacation in his parent's modest village located near the Logar - Kabul roadway.

Being so young, he is collectively accepted as a local by his large extended family and the people he meets. Marwand, along with his younger male family members, leads several hairy adventures. They organize a disastrous search party to find the fierce family dog, avoid local gunmen, including a couple of young Taliban, and don burqas attempting to join a women's wedding party.

Humorous, tragic, and honest, the novel requires careful reading because the multi-layered stories are intricate and dense. The primary reader is the Afghan-American who will connect more with the native terms and phrases skillfully crafted by the author, along with particular cultural nuances. Through the stories of the different characters— young and old, male and female —Kochai writes an authentic narrative about the people of his native Logar, one of Afghanistan's most picturesque regions— romantically beautiful on the surface and dark and complex on the inside.

I chatted with Jamil Jan Kochai about his novel, here is our conversation.

Farhad Azad: What did your parents think about your desire to be a writer vs. the usual lawyer, doctor, or engineer?

Jamil Jan Kochai: At first, they were definitely resistant to the idea of writing as a career. Up until my third year of undergrad, my father was still trying to convince me to switch to engineering or computer science. For a time, I was able to quell their worries because I'd actually planned to go to law school. But, gradually, as I won a few writing awards at Sac State and eventually became the commencement speaker for my graduating class, both they and I realized that I was much more gifted as a writer than I ever would be as a lawyer. So, after I graduated from Sac State and entered the Masters in Creative Writing Program at UC Davis, my parents began to fully support my creative writing endeavors. They let me interview them for stories, they respected the time I needed to read and write, and they never doubted or scolded me for pursuing such a risky career path. Their faith in my abilities made me work even harder. I read and wrote like a mad man. Alhamdullilah, their support was honestly astonishing. I couldn't have written this novel without them.

Farhad Azad: Were you familiar with Afghan writers and literature growing up?

Jamil Jan Kochai: I was very familiar with Pashtun poetry. My father was an admirer of Rahman Baba, Khushal Khattak, and Ghani Khan. He would often recite their poetry from memory. I was also familiar with some of our local folktales and our more culturally expansive epics. Laila and Majnun, Farhad and Shirin, and those sorts of tales. From an early age, I was taught to appreciate the poetic arts and Afghanistan's literary lineage.

Farhad Azad: Post 9/11, how did you deal with the backlash growing up?

Jamil Jan Kochai: In many ways, I think the backlash, the alienation, and the condemnation I felt in the years after 9/11 only made me prouder to be a Muslim and an Afghan. Even as a young kid, I was very defensive of my cultural heritage and my religious beliefs. I became rebellious. I would argue with my teachers about Afghan and American history. I questioned what I was taught in high school, and by the time I got to college, I had this immense curiosity about all these differing but interconnecting lineages of imperialism and warfare. By studying the American War in Afghanistan, I learned about the civil wars, the Soviet Invasion, and the Anglo-Afghan Wars, which led me to study the broader histories of colonization and imperialism throughout the world. This all had a profound impact on my writing.

Farhad Azad: There are many stories told by the various characters in 99 Nights in Logar, how did you decide to include them in the work?

Jamil Jan Kochai: I realized that my stories themselves can encapsulate all these other stories. There was this moment when I was writing the novel itself when I hit this barrier in the road, and I didn't know what would happen next. Once I realized that we had this rich tradition of oral storytelling and all these stories within my own family, I sort of allowed the characters in the novel to tell their own stories. That's when the project really hit its stride.

Farhad Azad: Afghans have a habit of not finishing their stories which you included in your work.

Jamil Jan Kochai: It is sort of magical in that way. When I first started this project, I would interview my father. It was really important to me that I recorded some of his stories from his life, but I would try to do this chronologically, starting with his childhood. But it was difficult trying to get stories out of him. He would say, "Oh, I had a regular childhood."

I couldn't get the details I wanted. Later on, we'd be sitting somewhere. We would be drinking tea, and he would see something on TV. It would remind him of this beautiful, incredible story from his life that he didn't mention to me in my interview. And he would tell the story and stop at some place, often times a place where it would be emotionally difficult for him to continue the story. It would be about a significant loss, and he would have to stop. It took me a while to be patient with his stories, to learn that certain stories didn’t always have pleasant resolutions, that some stories you had to piece together, a memory at a time, like a puzzle.

Farhad Azad: Telling stories is a quality that Afghans possess, including the ability to describe anything in very fine detail.

Jamil Jan Kochai: It's incredible. I remember on a trip with my aunt to Yosemite, and out of nowhere, just because of the mountains and the forest, she started to tell us the story of when she escaped out of Logar during the war, going through the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan to escape to Peshawar. She told this incredibly detailed story of carrying her little sister through the mountains and then getting lost. Then my father is eventually finding them on horseback. Then she remembers calling my father's name and the echoes coming back to her through the mountain. It was so visual, and it was so essential at the same time. It really made me appreciate it. At a storytelling level, how talented my family members are at telling stories.

Farhad Azad: For the past two decades you have traveled to Logar, but your trips to the region have shortened in length.

Jamil Jan Kochai: When I first went to Logar, I was 6 years old, I had all these really precious magical, memories of swimming in these streams, with my cousin, these were some of my greatest memories. When I came back from Logar, I was telling everyone how really beautiful Afghanistan was. And everyone was so surprised that my reaction to the time because the Taliban were in control. So everyone had this very grim vision of Afghanistan. I was telling everyone how much I loved it and how beautiful and incredible experience. And then I went back when I was 12, and it was again an incredible experience with some of the most precious memories that I still have is from that summer that I spent in Afghanistan those three months especially in Logar.

Then I had the opportunity to go back in 2012, but it just seemed like progressively Logar was becoming more and more dangerous. And so when I went back in 2012, the security situation hadn't completely deteriorated, but it was a very murky situation. During the day, government forces were in control and then at night, the Taliban had control over the village. And I had to be very careful about speaking because of my accent, I had to be careful about telling people who I was and where I was from. Nonetheless, I still got to spend a decent amount of time. I was 19. I spent a great deal of time in my grandfather's orchard. I spend a great deal of time with my cousins. It was another beautiful experience.

But when I went back in 2017, by then the security situation in my village had gotten so bad that even villagers who had lived their whole lives there were afraid to go back because of the gunfights and the executions and the bombings and these things had become almost a daily occurrence.

My uncles and cousins, who had seen war and gone through warfare, they were completely afraid to enter Logar. They wouldn't allow me to spend a night in Logar. My father, brother, and cousins, and I ended up taking a very short trip through my home village. The whole village had been emptied out because one of the militias had shot a rabid dog with a machine gun. Everyone thought it was a gunfight. We entered my father's village, and it was a ghost town. We drove in, and there was this incredibly heart-wrenching experience. My father's cousin, who had grown up in Logar and my father looked afraid. But we were determined to visit the grave of my father's brother, and other family members' graves. We said our prayers, and we came out as quickly as we came.

I just remembered being incredibly saddened by the way that the security situation in Logar had developed. My father's village has been so precious to me. The security situation has deteriorated to the point where I'm not able to visit anymore and spend time anymore. Logar has fallen into tragic circumstances. It has made me want to tell the stories of Logar even more. It has made my storytelling even more urgent.

Farhad Azad: Today on social media, we see thousands of beautiful photos from all over Afghanistan, but these places, more or less, are intangible to experience.

Jamil Jan Kochai: Thinking back on these memories, these precious times I had in Logar, it really feels like that beauty I had experienced had been lost to war in this very concrete way. Looking back at these memories, I have access to this time in this land that is almost lost to me now.

Farhad Azad: Your novel you have incorporated the stories of almost every character.

Jamil Jan Kochai: That was really important to me when starting the project was that I tried to get as many differing and diverse voices as possible into the novel and into my stories because I didn't want it to just be this kid from America coming into Afghanistan and just telling everything from his point of view. I was trying to find a way how I could resist that and how I could tell as many different stories, I can capture as many different voices as possible. Once I realized that the main tool I had was of the storytelling and allowing the other characters to tell their stories. And Marwand [the main character] listens to and absorbs the world and not always talking. And so I did I went into the novel with this with a very specific goal.

Particularly Afghan women voices, which can often time in our culture can be overwhelmed by men's voices and particularly telling these voices of the story of people but particularly women living in these rural spaces. I'm trying to try to understand these stores and trying to understand their lives and try and understand the particular ways that they live, grow, and suffer.

The novel was expansive in its abilities to tell different stories and perceptions and point of views. I was really concerned that I was able to capture these different perceptions and point of views. And one thing that I did when I finished writing, I showed it to different Afghan women, who identified as Pashtun or Tajik or whatever else, because I didn't want it to be to just be a book about an Afghan American boy seeing the world. I wanted it to be about different versions of Afghanistan culminated to this one narrative, which I think is one of the biggest problems of how Afghanistan is always understood-- about one narrative about terrorism, about one narrative about oppression or one narrative about violence. It seems to me there is beauty, and beauty of the complexity of just a small village. Often times it isn't crafted.

Farhad Azad: You clearly describe the nuances of the people, down to the standards of beauty.

Jamil Jan Kochai: With so many aspects of Afghan culture, so many aspects of our society and country, we are constantly being put into these boxes.

"This is the conservative mullah who beats his wife." "This is the wine drinking musician and who is doing drugs." "This is the oppressed women who never spoke up for herself."

It was very important to me to unpackage those boxes that our people are being put into and understand the complexity of it at the same time, maintaining a sense of realism.

Women in villages and in Logar are often times oppressed by men. And they go through severe abuse. They go through these incredibly traumatic events in their lives. It was important for me to demonstrate that. But I also wanted to show the ways that these men at the same time because of poverty, because of war, because of whatever else are living painful, traumatic lives themselves. Often times the trauma you see in villages, there are larger, more complex reasons for these things that are occurring. And it was very important for me to demonstrate and show that these are very real in Afghanistan.

Insurgents can oftentimes also be incredibly young men. Just boys on the brink of becoming men.

I was heartbroken by that, and I feel that is a side of Afghanistan, that isn't often demonstrated. There is an incredible amount of nuance to all these figures, stereotypes, and cliches that we have put on Afghanistan. That there are reasons-- historically, politically, socially -- people end up becoming the way they are. I don't know how successful I was in the novel, but that is something I was trying to do.

Farhad Azad: Please talk about the shape shifter character Jawad who seems to match many of the political and militant personalities in Afghan history.

Jamil Jan Kochai: That character specifically came out of a story that I heard one day when I was at my uncle's house. This is in 2012. I visited my uncle in Logar, and over dinner, one of my uncle's brother-in-law's brought up this guy named Jawid who was on the run from the Taliban because he was impersonating a Taliban and had been working for the government forces. He was a spy. He was also running away from the government forces because he was spying on them too. He was putting these two groups against each other. He became kind of a folk legend in the villages because no one could capture him. I found this character so incredibly fascinating. He became this figure of fluidity, like you said, a shape shifter, one day he is Talib and the next day he is a government soldier, the next day he is a civilian and the next day he is donning a burqa pretending to be a woman. He was a figure who disrupted the usual categorizations placed on Afghans, this "black and white" of government vs. rebels, revolution vs. order, however, you want to categorize it. By showing figures that are constantly moving back and forth, I wanted to demonstrate how it is not always so simple to be able to relegate people into one group or another. There is an incredible amount of fluidity and shapeshifting, these gray areas in war. I was trying to get Jawid to sort of embody that.

Farhad Azad: The maze is a central piece to the novel. For me, it symbolized the complex history of Afghanistan.

Jamil Jan Kochai: Definitely, the history of Afghanistan was an important part of it. When I was thinking about the maze, I was specifically thinking about the geography of my village, which has these mazes, alleyways and compounds build close to each other. I was also thinking about the stories my father told about these tunnels built underneath the compounds during bombings. The Russians had figured out what the Afghans were doing to avoid their bombs and so they began to use gas. There were tunnels in Logar filled with dead bodies. During the Soviet war, Logar was sort of turned into a ghost town. And now new buildings are being built upon these sites of these massacres.

So when I was thinking of the land itself, it seemed to me that there were so many layers of trauma, massacres, and history. And these stories that were buried right underneath the earth, locked inside of the ground. So much of these stories have been lost. The maze sort of embodies the bits and pieces of the history of Logar, but also of Afghanistan at large, that have been sort of lost to time but are still buried in the earth. Somewhere ready to be found.

Farhad Azad: In modern Afghan history, there have been two versions of Afghanistan: Kabul and everywhere else. Your novel touches on the dichotomy between rural vs. urban.

Jamil Jan Kochai: I wish I had given more time to Kabul. In my last two visits, I've spent most of my time in Kabul and I have come to appreciate Kabul as a city. But coming from the rural area of Logar, my family came to despise Kabul in a way. We felt that the urban people of Kabul were living in their own world, their own universe. Although our village in Logar was maybe a 40-minute drive from Kabul, it was still its own world. The people in rural Afghanistan lives are just built around the compound, the crops and local forms of government, that all the goings-on and incredible events happening in Kabul wasn't touching them in a very real way. My father told me that it wasn’t until the Communists took over and repressive measures were being laid out in the countryside, in Logar, that people felt the shift in the country.

It was fascinating to me that the perception and the stories and viewpoints that were coming out of Kabul were the ones that ended up getting the most light shown on them. We talked earlier about "The Kite Runner." I remember reading it, and it was an important novel to me, I'm not sure if I would have pursued writing without having read The Kite Runner first. But it didn't feel like my own vision of Afghanistan, my experience of Afghanistan wasn't really captured in that novel because it was centered upon Kabul and not the countryside.

And that kind of became inspiring to me in an odd way, my experience of Afghanistan, my family's experience in Afghanistan, and rural Afghanistan it hasn't had its own light and its own time to share its stories. That was one of my goals in the novel was to demonstrate life in Afghanistan and to show this very complex relationship between the urban and the rural and the how the political and economic roles of Logar and Kabul were deeply intertwined and yet encapsulated in their own worlds.

Farhad Azad: You also show the various levels of how Islam is embraced within a family.

Jamil Jan Kochai: Practicing Islam, praying, and reading and studying the Quran was such an important part of who I am, and it was such an important part of how I understood the world. I wanted to show how people practice and struggled with faith. And ultimately my goal was to show the struggle, even the struggling with Islam is in its own way very beautiful.

Farhad Azad: One chapter is written entirely in Pashto.

Jamil Jan Kochai: That was a story my father told verbatim to a scribe in Pashto. My father gave it to me. I gave it to my editor and told them that I want it to be part of the novel. I wanted to stay in Pashto, true to my father's voice.

Farhad Azad: Thank you for the time in speaking with me.

Jamil Jan Kochai: It was an absolute pleasure.