Khaled Hosseini and his Trauma: A Review

Khaled Hosseini and his Trauma: A Review

Literature is the academic field which encapsulates all the moral, scientific, and social issues. Literature on ancient times suggests the morality with sublime thoughts. The literary works reflects the society according to the writer’s perception on the society or narrates the lives of civilians under political, economical, and cultural issues. South Asian writers focus on the diaspora of individual and its effects. They write novels as the lamentation of their incapability to cope up in new environment. Khaled Hosseini is one of the writers who write about his guilt and narrates the life of Afghan civilians.

Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan American novelist. Hosseini is migrated to America as a political refugee due to the invasion of Russia in Afghanistan. Hosseini started his career as a physician but due to his passion in writing he chose to be the novelist. He has written many short stories during his childhood and narrates his short stories with their family members. In 2006, he has awarded with the Humanitarian Award from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and has become a U.S goodwill envoy to the organisation. He has founded an organisation for the welfare of Afghan people as The Khaled Hosseini Foundation in 2007. This foundation also has initiative programmes and projects to empower helpless groups in Afghanistan, especially for women and children. The uniqueness of Khaled Hosseini is that he writes about the reality and attempts to avoid exaggeration of traumatic events. In his novels the fantastical elements are seen when he narrates the myths but his characters are much alive in reality than in the world of fantasy.

In addition, his novels make the readers to know the unknown facts of Afghanistan and he depicted their unseen life to non-afghans. Hosseini depicts Afghanistan before the Soviet war because it is largely a forgotten period in modern Afghan history. For many people in the west, Afghanistan reminds the Soviet war and the Taliban. Under these circumstances, Hosseini intended to reveal the peaceful environment and equality that prevailed in Afghanistan.

Khaled Hosseini’s first novel The Kite Runner, published in the year 2003. This novel has received the South African Boeke Prize in 2004. This novel is set in Afghanistan, based on the characters Amir and Hassan who lived in Kabul, Afghanistan. This novel has many themes including ethnic anxiety between the Hazara and Pashtun in Afghanistan and the experience of the immigration of Amir and his father in the United States. His second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns has published in 2007. In this novel, he depicts the life of the Afghan women before the cruel wars such as the soviet invasion, the civil war under the Taliban dictatorship. This novel insists the value of afghan cultural identity from female perspective. He has published his third novel And the Mountain Echoed in 2013. This novel is an example of true relationship among family members and it depicts the non- Afghan people’s opinion on Afghanistan after the atrocities of various wars and invasion. It changed the real nature of the country. Unlike other novelist, who writes about the darker sides of Afghanistan, Hosseini presents the joyful and optimistic environment that prevailed in Afghanistan.

Khaled Hosseini through his novels tries to represent his homeland and their trauma. During the course of the war, the wound in the mind becomes the haunted memories by witnessing the death of their family members. The term ‘trauma’ has many definitions, in Oxford English Dictionary trauma is defined as a wound or external bodily injury. Trauma study now includes many disciplines that focus on “Psychological, philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic questions about the nature and representation of traumatic events. These concerns range from the public and historical to the private and memorial” (Luckhurst 497). These types of memories are recorded as the narratives of the victims in literature. Literature has witnessed the traumatic events and the shattered life of the two World Wars and many Civil wars. The protest and struggle have various reasons and it solely affects the society, in particular, the familial relationship, the women, and children.

The research on Khaled Hosseini’s novels has dealt with various themes and theories. The themes like familial love, friendship, marriage, redemption, search of identity, and guilt. Theories that the researches had done are psychoanalytical approach, historical approach, South Asian armed conflicts, feminism, structural approach in Khaled Hosseini’s novels. The past researches had mentioned the struggles of Afghan civilians and their trauma. Some of the research papers and thesis on Khaled Hosseini novels are compared with other country writers and their novel with respect to oppression of women, female bonding and historical perspectives.

The characters like Amir, Hassan, Laila, Mariam, Nana, Abdullah, and Pari are the major and minor characters in Khaled Hosseini’s novels. They have powerful memories on their past life. The characters are both directly and indirectly affected by prolonged wars in Afghanistan. The present lives of the characters are filled with traumatic memories, they possess the quality of being positive in their life amidst darkness, and they stand as the lighthouse of faith and hope for happy life in future generations.

The contemporary world is damaged and fragmented as the psyche of Khaled Hosseini’s novels. The minds of the character in Khaled Hosseini’s novels are in need of peaceful and positive environment. The Afghan civilians had crossed the horror days by fundamentalist Islamic monotheistic attitudes. The reason for the destruction of Afghan society is not the religion but the wrong interpretation or approach towards the religion that ended up as civil war. The trauma of an individual affects the whole family and it is passed to next generation that leads to historical trauma. The article entitled, “Trauma, History, Memory, Identity: What Remains?” by Dominick LaCapra insists the fact that personal trauma affects the society which distorted in nature as, “Trauma and traumatic events, experiences, or processes, such as genocides and other forms of violence and abuse, may involve double binds, and may limit what may be represented with any degree of adequacy. But there are dimensions of the traumatic that can be represented and should be as lucidly and accurately as possible” (LaCapra 377). Khaled Hosseini has represented the traumatic history and the haunted memories of Afghan civilians in his novels.

Khaled Hosseini through the characters like Amir, Laila, Abdullah, and Pari tries to reveal his trauma in the form of survival guilt. In one of his interview “Khaled Hosseini Interviewed On KVOS TV” with Ty Ray, a Northwest Notebook host, Khaled Hosseini confesses his mistake and feels guilty of his mistake as,

I mean there’s a sense of survivor’s guilt when I went back to Kabul I met people who’d lived through the Soviet war the anarchy of the factional war the rise and fall of the Taliban I mean while I’ve been living in the States and making a going through my education so yeah I mean you you go back and you wonder if you deserve your good fortune and there’s definitely a sense of guilt that I felt as an Afghan in exile returning home after 27 years. (00:52- 01:16)

This interview is the source that confirms Khaled has trauma and he experiences the same when he writes his novels.

Khaled Hosseini consoles himself and tries to come out of his trauma through his writing. The sense of guilt is the one of the effects of psychological trauma, makes him to be the representative of his Afghan community. As the characters are the source of historical trauma, Khaled Hosseini through his works narrates the history which is largely affected by instable political powers. The distorted culture of Afghan society leads to the migration of numerous people and their experiences in refugee camps and in alien land expresses cultural trauma. The characters like Amir, Laila, Pari and Nila experiences cultural trauma.

On the whole, Khaled Hosseini has survival guilt and he had experienced trauma in his life. As a hyphenated individual he not only mourns for the life that he missed in his native country but he steps forward to help his native land. He never exaggerated the traumatic events but he represents the trauma and reality through his novels. His pen reveals his inner conflicts of guiltiness and panacea for his trauma.