"I'll leave this on the shore and i'll pray that you'll find it sister,
so that you know what was in my heart as i went under."
emotional, heart wrenching, i had to punch myself in the face few times after i finished reading this not gonna lie. so i was on my way home from jakarta with my family, i sat with my brother and i was scrolling shopee spt biasa gengs #sobatshopee at it's finest.
and that's when he told me to search up for Khaled Khosseini books, he previously mentioned it pas BBW 2019 di jogja but i couldn't find it so he told me to buy it online. and so i did. i bought this book for 7$ sekitar Rp 98.000 di akun shoppee-nya periplus. and the book arrived few days after i ordered it. seperti biasa tidak langsung baca, since there's still lots of things to do. akhirnya pada suatu jumat sore aku memantapkan hati to read it. so let's start with the synopsis!
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Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari - as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named - is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their heads touching, their limbs tangled. One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand. Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways in which we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us. |
reading few pages of the book i'd already know that this book was written by a master of story teller.
the story played out through many decades in at least five countries among a myriad of characters, and I did feel lost or confused while reading it. the story was written in many points of view, so reading it pretty much gives me the sensation of putting together a puzzle. with such method of writing, i find myself drowned inside each of the character, all at once; their story, their sorrow, their interest, their hidden desire and feelings.
Abdullah, is very close to his little sister Pari. his poor family living inside a mud house, in Shadbagh , a small village in Afghanistan, days walk from Kabul the capital, the boy's whole life is about her sister.
Washing her, keeping the sister clean, reciting poems, taking the tiny female on rambles, even exchanging the only shoes he had just for a peacock feather (Pari collected any kind of feather). They lived with their strict father Saboor, and their ignorant stepmother. Their father work day and night, too busy scratching out an existence to provide a bowl of food on their table each night. Their stepmother Parmana was as indifferent to Abdullah and Pari's needs. Besides she has a child of her own to occupy her time.
Sadbagh was a cruel place to live. specially on winter. you can always found children and infants who died of starvation and hypothermia during these harsh times. And it was then when an unbelievable event happens. Pari was sold to a rich, childless, unhappy couple, Suleiman Wahdati, a very private man and his sophisticated, beautiful wife Nila, half French, half Afghan. This adoption was arranged by Abdullah's uncle, Nabi who did this to save his brother's family who were pretty much falling inside crisis. But later on it was told that this arrangement was mostly to please Nabi's beloved Nila Wahdati out of her inability to have a child.
Abdulah, was beyond devastated. Pari was his everything. "And now she just left, but there was no forgetting. Pari hovered, unbidden, at the edge of Abdulah's vision everywhere he went. She was like the dust that clung to his shirt. She was like the dust that clung to his shirt. She was in the silences that had become so frequent at the house, silences that welled up between their words, sometimes cold and hollow, sometimes pregnant with things that went unsaid, like a cloud filled with rain that never fell," Khosseini wrote as Abdulah's grapples with his sister's absence.
The next chapter was wrote inside Nabi's point of view. his story contains mostly about the rich couple, his words on Mr. Wahdati was rather harsh, and yet somehow, at the same time, respectful. he told about how Mr Wahdati ended up marrying Nila Wahdati, such a glamorous woman with such strong opinion towards the idea of life. how Nabi slowly gained fondness towards Nila's bewitching smile, how he ended up driving thousands of kilometers to Shadbagh from Kabul to meet Pari's father to tell about his adoption idea. A decision that never once stopped being a weigh on his chest even after years later, even until the day he wrote his final wills. The wills contains not only about the scandalous feeling she had towards his mistress, but also a shocking truth about how the marriage falls apart and later ended with Nila running away with Pari to France.
The story continues with Pari's point of view. grown up Pari, lives in Paris with her mother Nila, she was an economic student at Sorbonne University. and that's how the book continues until the very end of the page where Pari and Abdullah met in such an unfortunate condition.
Every so often a book comes around that rocks you to your core. It makes you cry, laugh, think, feel and dream so intensely that when it is over you wonder where that life has gone. And this is one of them. And The Mountain echoed brings such a wonderful, magical and tragic experience for me to explore. Such a pure writing, each words successfully drawn me into the character's tragedy, their love, their shattered world. Overall, i love the book, and i enjoy reading it :")
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