Shooting Kabul Book Review

By: N.H. Senzai




I got the book for fifty bucks at the NBS book sale at Megamall. Isn’t that a steal? I never appreciated book sales because most of the books being sold there doesn’t fits my interest. However, reading Khaled Hosseini’s work made me more interested in the land-locked country. You can read my thoughts on Hosseini’s work here. For now, we will concentrate on Shooting Kabul.

What is it about: Shooting Kabul is a story about an Afghan family who left their country while the Talibans were still in power. It was all Walt Disney like until the youngest member in the family was accidentally left behind when they escaped. Yes, a six year old girl was left behind in Afghanistan while the Talibans ban a lot of stuff and make people miserable in their own country.

I want to think that this book is really how the family blamed themselves because of Miriam’s lost, however, almost every one who knows them told them that it was faith that the poor little girl got separated.

What I love about it: The main character in the book, Fadi, will impress you. He really beat the hell out of him when Miriam got separated. He was so persistent in getting her sister back. I also adore how important family to the Afghans, seriously, they have honors and codes that needs to be followed.

Fadi also has photography skills. He used this to get his sister back.

What I hate about it: Granted, I really don’t like the Talibans. I also like the fact that a Filipino was the bad guy in the story. Haha. Sorry, I’m patriotic. But I never expected how the book ended. Yes, it has a great conflict and you will be really curious about how will they get the girl back. When it ended, I was like, seriously? Is that it? Haha.



The book is an easy read. Definitely, your kids will like it. It’s a children’s book, by the way. Now, I am thinking why I get it. Haha.

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A Thousand Splendid Suns

I’ve been a fan of Khaled Hosseini after I read the book, The Kite Runner. My landlady asks me to create a book report on it. I thought that the book was really excellent. It has something heartwarming on it. My interest in Hosseini’s work intensified that I started reading about Afghanistan in the office.

That was also the time I learned about A Thousand Splendid Suns.

A Thousand Splendid Suns was a story about two Afghan girls – Miriam and Laila. Miriam, an illegitimate child, never have a happy life, her mother committed suicide because she chose her father over her mom. She was then force by her father to marry a man who was old enough to be her uncle. She lost her baby seven consecutive times. Lastly, she was badly beaten by her husband. Poor girl.

Laila, on the other hand, was born on the same neighborhood where Miriam and Rasheed (Miriam’s husband) lived. She was way younger than the two and has a childhood sweetheart named Tariq. When the war in Afghanistan started and people started moving out of the country for safety, Tariq ask Laila to marry him. She refused Tariq’s offer, and when her family decided to leave Kabul, her parents were killed by a rocket. Rasheed and Miriam found her under the crashed structure and advised her to leave with them.

Here was the fun part; Laila was Rasheed’s second wife. Laila accepted the offer because she have Tariq’s baby.

They started as enemies but as the story progressed, Laila and Miriam became more than friends, they started treating each others like families. Rasheed, the mad man that he was, badly beat his wives. There was even a part where the two of them, including Laila’s baby, were deprived with water, when the two of them tried to escape Kabul. In the end, Rasheed was killed by Miriam when he tried to kill Laila because Tariq was back in the picture.

Miriam suffered a painful death under the Taliban’s rule. Laila, however, returned to Afghanistan to become a teacher when the war was over.

What was so cool about the book was, aside from sharing the two girls’ story, it also features the story of Afghanistan – how the war started, how the Taliban came to power, how they got defeated, stuff like that. It’s like reading a history book with the touch of drama on it.

It was a sad book. Really, most of the time while I was reading it, I was sincerely hoping that it was really fiction and stuff like that never happened. But, it was Afghanistan and for sure torture and brutality happened. Reading the book made me so thankful that I am here in Manila and not in a place where watching television was prohibited while growing beard was a must. I started feeling fortunate that I was able to eat three times a day while in Kabul, people has to send their children to orphanages just to feed them. I’m happy living in a free country, though sometimes things get rough, we still survived.

After I read the book, I promised myself that I will try to stop complaining on stuff that are not even worthy to complain about. I know, things may get hard sometimes, but we don’t know what is happening somewhere else. Sometimes, whatever we have right now, how minute or grand it may seems, we still have to be thankful for all the blessings that we receive.

All of a sudden, I want to go to Kabul. Haha.