Afghanistan: The Pearl that Broke its Shell

The Pearl that Broke its Shell
by Nadia Hashimi

One of the main reasons I set out to read a book set in every country is because I believe with all my heart that fiction opens up a window into the world and casts light on our shared human experiences, which we may otherwise never take time to consider.  As I searched for a book set in or about the provocative country of Afghanistan, I found that many of the bestselling and recently-written books focus on war.  This is similar to what I’ve discovered in my efforts to read about Vietnam, the country from which my husband and I adopted our youngest child.  But I hear plenty about war-torn Afghanistan on the news and have seen plenty of war-torn Vietnam in movies.  What I'm looking for are stories that bring the people of other countries to life in my imagination, make them more real in my mind, and remind me that no matter what's happening politically, we are more alike than different in our shared humanity.  I wanted to read a novel that would tell me something about the Afghan people through the lens of their daily lives. 

                          

The Pearl that Broke its Shell is a beautiful, heartbreaking story of two women, living in Afghanistan with 100 years spanning between them, who struggle to cope and survive with the hardship that plagues all women of that country.  The novel weaves back and forth in time, between the stories of Rahima, a young girl growing up in a small village in modern Afghanistan, and Shekiba, who is Rahima’s great-great-grandmother.  The clear and very compelling theme is the plight of women, how vulnerable and subjugated they are to men and by tradition, and how little has changed over the span of a century. 

Because Rahima is one of five daughters in a family without the all-important son, her mother decides to make her a bacha posh, a girl who pretends to be a boy and is treated, by everyone, as a boy.  Having a bacha posh makes life a little better for the family since Rahima, now called Rahim, can go out unchaperoned to run errands, to attend school, to work, and to interact more boldly with men without fear of shaming or dishonoring her parents.  Rahim finds intoxicating freedom in life as a boy, and when her time as a bacha posh comes to an end as she is married off at the age of 13, the cloistered life of being a woman in Afghanistan is all the more bitter a pill.  To help her to cope with the sudden and dramatic shift back to a life without freedom or affection, Rahima’s unmarried aunt tells her the story of Shekiba, whose journey through womanhood is hauntingly similar despite the 100 years that separates them.  After losing her entire family to cholera and being sold as a servant to repay her uncle’s debt, Shekiba is given to the king’s delegation as a gift.  Although she is frightened and lonely, she finds some solace when she is charged with guarding the king's concubines, a role she must play while posing as a man.  She, too, finds unimaginable freedom in shedding the burdens of womanhood, but everything falls apart when she is unfairly accused of allowing a strange man to visit the harem at night.  She narrowly escapes her consequence ... death by stoning ... when the stranger offers to take her as his second wife.  She, too, find the return to life as a woman to be stifling, frightening, and isolating.    

The women in Hashimi's novel face a brutal existence, one where they rarely take solace in friendship with one another as they all fight for the scraps of kindness and opportunity wherever they may find them.  There are momentary pockets of brightness, predictably in the love each woman has for her children, and for Rahima, in the small bit of progressive thinking that comes to Afghanistan via the Westerners who are there for war.  Despite a few scenes that seemed a little too dramatic, the novel is a beautifully written, haunting story that will stick with you long after the final page.

 

Other Books Considered for Afghanistan

•  The Swallows of Kabul, by Yasmina Khadra  (fiction)
• The Man Who Would be King, by Rudyard Kipling (fiction)
• The Secret Sky, by Leila Roy (YA fiction)
• Kabul Beauty School, by Deborah Rodriguez (memoir)
• The Places Inbetween, by Rory Stewart  (memoir)
• Sardar, by Abdullah Sharif (memoir)

 Previously Read - A Partial List

• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
• And the Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini
• The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon