At the heart of this novel lies an effort to describe a involuntary tilt or shift in the American worldview, a forced reappraisal of the safe vantages and distances to which we have grown accustomed and to which we feel in some senses are our inheritance and our right.
The kidnapping of an American aid worker (Todd Barbery) in Afghanistan serves as the mechanism that sends out a series of shocks through the set of relationships in Todd’s immediate family, bringing into sharp relief physical and emotional differences: those between a wife and her stepdaughter (Clarissa and Ruby), a husband and a wife (Todd and Clarissa) but also questioning whether geographical – or more properly cultural – differences are merely differences of degree and not of kind. At issue seems to be the very idea of communication itself (an idea that goes unquestioned in the American worldview): whether in every act of communication or every effort to connect there exists something that remains unsaid which finds expression only in times of crisis.
While the main narrative is set in motion by the kidnapping – grief in the shadow of an anticipated grief – it is joined by an equally powerful protagonist from the subplot: a graffiti artist, Danil, who uses his paintings as a commentary on the war and also a tribute to his younger brother killed while fighting in Afghanistan. At this point the novel is spring-loaded, ready to go off along the lines of a classic thriller: what we get, however, in both the language and action is a type of strategic withdrawal: the author seems at pains not to speak but rather to try to listen: physical action is generally subdued, Todd’s ordeal is more or less sidelined and the narrative’s center of gravity shifts to the encounter between Clarissa and Danil.
Clarissa, oscillating between the competing choices of an attempt at military extraction or continuing negotiation with Todd’s captors, sets off on a late-night ramble through Brooklyn and chances upon Danil: somehow they get talking and each shares the story of their hurt, originating in Afghanistan, with the other. Once voiced to Danil, Clarissa’s pain does not dissipate as much as the unilateral act of giving up the burden of grief to another without expectation allows her the freedom to decide and take action.
At one point in the book, speaking of his dead brother, Danil notes that “[w]hat he told me was that being there [Afghanistan] gave his life ‘clarity’…you have someone giving you orders, you don’t have to face the fear of figuring things out for yourself.” It is this sense of what might be termed a transparency of meaning or intention that Americans, perhaps more so that other nations, feel is their birthright that the author is drawing into question; in warzones especially there are practical reasons why it is absolutely critical that meanings and intentions be unambiguous – not only your own but also those of your adversary.
This brings to mind the fictionalized account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty: one aspect of this film which surely was not fiction concerned the behind-the-scenes bureaucratic war over whether OBL was actually living in the Abbottabad compound (as sources on the ground claimed) or not. According to the film, the White House continually stalled on authorizing any military intervention/extraction on the grounds that more ‘clarity’ was required yet this insistence on additional transparency led to months of inaction and paralysis that could have proved fatal to the success of the mission. This novel seems to be hinting at something along the same lines: that an insistence on reason and transparency may not necessarily lead to good outcomes. On the other end of the spectrum and at another point in the book, Danil recalls his brother stating that “[f]or all intents and purposes this place [Afghanistan] does not exist” and additionally calling it a “ghost land” as if he almost already saw himself as the ghost that would later haunt Danil.
Countering the impression of Afghanistan as a place where Americans go to die, each of the novel’s five sections is preceded by a letter from the last Communist leader of Afghanistan before the dissolution, Mohammad Najibullah, to his exiled wife and daughters. While under the protection of the United Nations, Najibullah is not allowed to leave to join his family – he reacts by bringing an enormously lyrical depth of expression when writing about his enforced separation, his identity and the fate of his country. A younger version of Amir (an aide to Todd in Afghanistan) works behind the scenes to enable Najibullah’s eventual release although he resists departing his country. These letters – taken together with those of Stela, Danil’s mother – work as a type of echo chamber for the themes of the novel: ratcheting up the tension as the novel approaches a conclusion but also indicating that choice and decision belong to neither darkness nor clarity but somehow both together understood as the same.
