Please forgive our lack of attention to this blog. We have all been busy. Terri is working and getting her Masters in Science Education; Jenny has married Dennis and is buying an apartment; I have been leading my writing workshops, book groups, trying to keep Planetbookgroupie.com up to date, and firing off emails in support of Obama.
If any of you would like to post an entry on this blog, please send it to planetbookgroupie@gmai.com.
The following is an article I wrote about a book discussion of SAMIRA AND SAMIR by Siba Shakib for my local paper:
We have been talking about forty-five minutes. I remind the group, “Several of you said you can’t accept the way the author chose to end the book. Do you want to talk about that?”
But the group isn’t ready to talk about the ending yet. They have more to say about the story. They take the lead, as they should. I am here to guide, to provoke.
The book is Samira and Samir by Siba Shakib, the setting the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan.. A first child is born to the tribal commander and his wife. The child is female but if her gender were revealed to the tribal members, the commander would lose face and his position. Although disappointed, the commander allows his daughter to live and in turn his wife agrees to raise the girl, Samira, as a boy, Samir. The book, a page-turner is about nomads who spend the summer in the Hindu Kush, the winter in the south.
“ When I was reading the book, I kept having to remind myself that it’s set in the 21st century,” commented a woman sitting in the rocking chair, “the people’s lives are so primitive, and then there’s talk of the Americans and the Taliban…”
“Their lives may seem primitive to us,” counters another woman,” but I don’t think the mines that blow the legs off the children and the grandfather are a sign of civilization.”
“It’s like a time warp when you see pictures of American soldiers on television watching the nomads on horses coming through a narrow mountain pass.”
A hesitant question comes from the person to the left of me. ”Do you suppose when Samir and Bashir are trading guns in the village, they know whether they’re in Pakistan or Afghanistan?”
Still standing, a late-comer responds,” What does the border matter to them? Those tribes have been going up to the Hindu Kush in the summer and down to the South in the winter before the British set the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “
“Let’s get back to the book,” I suggest gently. “Earlier someone said Samira is the only strong character in the book . Does everyone agree?”
“Well, she is a star,” an athletic young woman says, “ She can ride like the wind, she‘s good at making friends, and she’s smart enough to outwit the village shop owners. She even wins at buzkashi, she’d be a winner anywhere. By the way I love it when Samir’s mother tells the commander that maybe some of the warriors he’s fought were really women. He’s …”
A voice from the other side of the sun-filled room interrupts, “ You’re right, the mother is a terrific character.. Samira would never have survived if her mother hadn’t been clever enough to bring the commander around. The book is filled with strong women. “
Heads nod in agreement and on we go. Someone comments on the simple but poetic language.
The end of the discussion is drawing near. “OK .let’s get back to the ending.” I summarize the choice Samira faces.
Should she continue her life as Samir, a warrior, a commander? Should she go into battle against the Taliban or a neighboring tribe? Fighting and killing is a tribesman’s life even when he doesn’t know what he is fighting about. Her other choice is to become Samira, teach in the little mountain school, marry Bashir, a friend whom she loves, a friend who has discovered her gender? There would be no more buzkashi, nor more riding horses with wild abandon.
Were this story a fairy tale, either choice would be possible, but this is no fairy tale. According the author, the story is based on the life of a real woman.
(Warning: if you are going to read this book and don’t want to know the ending, read no farther because I intend to disclose the ending.)
Samira knows there is a world outside winter in the south and summer in the Hindu Kush. She has had some education in a mountain school and can read. She has seen the silver birds that fly high over the mountains and knows that people fly these birds. The author makes Samara’s choice for her. She decides to leave her home, her tribe, her mother, (her father has died in battle) and Bashir whom she has just married.
“No, she wouldn’t do that, ” say several people.
“Of course she’d go, how can she stay?” asks someone across the room. “If she reveals she’s a woman, she’ll be stoned along with her mother. “
“She wouldn’t go. What would she do? Where would she go?” People are talking at the same time. Of course, no one is right, no one is wrong. Maybe there’s another way to look at the choice the author has made for Samira.
“Let’s just suppose, “ I suggest, “that sitting in this room, instead of us, are our grandparents or our great grandparents. Suppose I were to ask them whether it was possible for Samira to leave her life with the tribe and find another one in a new country.” The room was quiet. I added, “ What do you suppose they might say?”
No one spoke for a moment and then a torrent of responses
“My grandmother was 13 and came here alone on the ship.”
“During the gold rush, my father went on a wagon train to California. He was only 15."
“ My mother traveled from Russia all the way to Hamburg to get the ship to America..”
Suddenly the reader’s point of view and experience emerge as a factor in what we think about Samira’s choice. In previous sessions we have talked about the importance of a character’s point of view, but never that of the reader. We connect our grandparents experience with Samira’s and we understand.
For the moment we are walking in Samira’s shoes in a country we read about every day in the newspapers but can only imagine. It’s doubtful that any of us will meet a nomad from Afghanistan. Even more unlikely is that we will meet a young woman who was raised as a boy. Samira and Samir is just a book, letters on paper, but we are a bit different for having read it and shared our thoughts.
Samira and Samir is available at http://www.bookcloseouts.com/
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