Afgahni culture, book, store and a movie!
Now this entry is totally incoherent! There is one thing in common between the three paragraphs… they are all Afghani! 
The book: Kite runner.
Whenever i have been into a book store, i saw it in the best seller section. I kept avoiding it till i could not avoid it anymore( i was not in the mood for a depressing reading), so i bought it… Now, after i am done with it, I am seeing flashes of scenes in this book, and i honestly believe it is a very good book. I am not going to give information to ruin the pleasure to those who still want to read it… but i will talk about some scenes… One of the scenes i found so powerful, was the confrontation between Aseef and Amir… he is being beaten in a life and death situation and he is laughing! laughing because he is finally free… the other one was the confrontation between the boy and Aseef… I laughed from the bottom of my heart thinking “Hallelujah God exists!” The third scene was at the ends when he says for you a thousand times… it was the best ending that could possibly be for this book…
This book made me feel what one of my good friends keeps saying on situations where whatever you are running away from finally catches up with you ” life works in myseterious ways”… it is true… it is better if we face our fears from the beginning, because no matter how hard we try, we will have to confront them eventually.
The store: an Afghani store in Germany called the “Schwartz Elefant” or the Black Elephant. This store has a very interesting business idea. They have furniture and home decoration items.. all antiques, and if not they were very good imitation of antiques… beautiful stuff, leather chairs, dark wood, wooden figures, animals, Buddhas… colorful fabrics…cultural items… absolutely gorgeous. Their business idea was to locate temporary storage spaces, and keep moving their stuff from one location to the other, the same city, in different cities, and sell whatever they have at the famous sentence ” we are moving, everything is on sale”… and people would buy…i dont know how ethical this is, or if they actually make money at all… but i suppose they do, because they have survived all the three years i have been there.
The movie: a movie called Osama, it is set in the Taliban cruel phase, where women were not allowed to work or go out. The story is about a woman and her daughter who are on the brink of starvation because they dont have an male relatives to work for them,( if they do, they are starving themselves, and can not feed other people) so the mother disguises the little girl as a boy, and has her work to save their both lives… the girl goes into the world, confused by the cruelty, and trying hard not to get caught…. a powerful movie, and a good one…
I have to disagree. I found the movie Osama very simplistic in its approach. Nothing personal, but I think it is only suitable for people who can't point Afghanistan on the map. It certainly given more attention that it deserves.
-iyas
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probably, i mean the point of all the publicity it got was to glorify the the Afaghani war…what i liked about this movie is that i helped me imagine how hard it was for women in Afghanistan…It made me think what i would have done if i was there? the first thing I have done was to check the credentials… Afghani or not… and since they were i thought, there is some truth in it…These people wanted the world to hear how they felt, and i wanted to listen… Iyas… I am one of those people who get disappointed when I watch a movie or read a good writer falling in the trap of Arabs and muslims are bad….This why i no longer read Helen fielding … I hated olivia joules… extremely diappointing. This is why i am very looking forward to watching the kingdom of peace…. there is nothing simple in life…especially today.
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I thought it was well directed in a way that requires the viewer's intelligence… while watching, the events are not all straightforward, but require that you make inferences and connections to other parts of the film. This is an emotionally difficult movie to watch because it does not try to hide (and rarely tries to euphemise) the reality of the characters. I agree it is targetting the west.
Mehtab
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Ok I just wrote a long comment and the page suddenly disappeared!! I HATE IT when that happens!! Ok back to what I was trying to say
Kite Runner was one of the best books I recently read (you should've pointed out a SPOILER ALERT before talking about your favorite parts!) This story was so beautiful and so painfully honest… it was interesting how Amir was telling the story from his perspective yet we see him as a coward and we get so mad at him as a child! There are so many good details in the book, how you just love Hassan, hate Assif, feel sorry for Amir's relationship with his dad, admire the dad as he struggles to make it in the states… I could go on and on! Yeah you're right, the end was really good! You can run but you can't hide, right? 
Ok enough of me blabbering!
Lina
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You know something Lina, I really did not get mad at him when he chickenedd out and did not help Hassan… i understood! Well I think most kids would simply run away… it is human nature…I started thinking about what I would have done when I was a kid and was put in similar situations? I honestly dont know… I remeber i was a stubborn mule! and fought the wall for what i believed in… but after all i was never exposed to something so dramatic and life changing as this situation and I always had people to help me if in trouble… so maybe i would have ran away too.
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Hey Mariam,
totally unrelated … could you please give Kirsten or me a little sign that you haven't forgotten us?
The older woman
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lol! i will write you an email… I read your email… just a bit busy… love you and miss you guys
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Afghanistan has been through so much in the last three decades, and Afghani woman specifically have witnessed an ugly form of discrimination even torture during the Taliban era. In the past few years some argue that Afgahni women has regained some or all of their freedoms. I still don't know, simply because i never heard any Afghani woman giving us her opinion in what's going on. I don't wanna drift away from the subject but same thing applies to Saudi women. We keep arguing how much they are deprived of their basic rights however I never heard a Saudi woman talk about any important subject other than Zait el-Arabi and Detol il Mo3aggem. We need the woman to talk and tell us their experiences and concerns, otherwise the XYs will always determine her fate.
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sorry i'm Hareega posting above lol i forgot to sign
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I read this book some time ago and I must agree it was an enjoyable read. It was a bit depressing but who cares it was good:)
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hey, you are definetly right about both Afghani and Saudi women not being very vocal about their situation… However, I think they are vocal.. I mean when i was in Saudi, I met very impressive women. who were extremely intelligent and were speaking and actually doing something about their cause. They are doctors, lawyers, day traders…. also dont forget that the media does not put as much effort in hearing them speak as they do to show the side. maybe i am wrong… but this is a personal observation
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was nice talking to you
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I guess you're right… and that's what made the story enjoyable, its painful honesty it portraying human weakness! What I got mad at wasn't the incident itself when he chickened and didn't step in, I got so mad at what he did afterwards, with the watch and the money!! Well, it must've been weighing so heavily on his conscience as he grew up… but you're right, I don't know what I would've done if I were in his shoes!!
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Sorry that was Lina again
you might've guessed!! I suppose that's one good thing about Haloscan over other commenting systems!
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Since you've been there, you know much more than i do. I'm sure that Saudi women are just like women from other parts of the world, and that what pisses me more -excuse my spanish- they can do a lot but they're not allowed to. I never heard of a Saudi woman talking on TV about her rights as a woman, barely read articles by Saudi women about topics other than religion or raising up a child, which again are important issues but not the only important things to be discussed. I hope the saudi and arab woman will get her freedom grdually and effectively. Otherwise we'll have women on the two B extremes, Bikini as a suggested sign of freedom or Borgo3 as a sign of reaction to such freedom.
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again forgot to sign, hareega
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“for you a thousand times…” OH! I sobbed my heart out! It was a GREAT book.
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