Red Sky Over Kabul: A Memoir of a Father and Son in Afghanistan by Baryalai Popalzai and Kevin McLean. Speaking Tiger. Pages 288. Rs 499
Book Title: Red Sky Over Kabul: A Memoir of a Father and Son in Afghanistan
Author: Baryalai Popalzai and Kevin McLean
Sandeep Dikshit
There has generally been a paucity of authentic Afghan books, whether biographies or fiction. Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ did bring to the readers the tragedy of Afghanistan, but Khaled has lived in Afghanistan only eight of his 60-odd years.
Baryalai ‘Bar’ Popalzai had a longer stay — his entire youth. As the surname suggests, his father Rehman was among the elite in Afghanistan during the monarchy. The Popalzais had ruled and advised practically every colour of the government, except the red. It is, therefore, natural that Bar was fearful of the governments that ruled from the 1978 Saur Revolution till the US forces hoisted a Popalzai — Hamid Karzai — as the country’s President in 2001.
Bar’s diary opens with an idyllic Afghanistan where duck shoots, Buzkashi games and wild strolls seem to be the norm. Apparently, one could also hang out with the heartthrob outside her house before marriage.
By the time Bar comes of age, he is instilled with the Afghan way of life by his father, who takes him to jirgas, the quaint Pashtun institution of a jury of elders drawn equally from the two warring sides who adjudicate a dispute. Father Rehman was a tutor to both Zahir Shah and Doud, but never viewed the latter kindly for his pro-Soviet policies during his 10 years as the Afghan PM under Zahir Shah.
With the Communists coming to power, it was a matter of time before Bar, being a Popalzai, would be marked for disappearance. Bliss quickly gives way to misery as he is forced to flee. After his guide is killed in a mine blast on the Pakistan border, he is picked up by the police and grilled by the ISI for days. The age-old Afghan institutions come to his help and Bar lives the life of a semi-destitute as he trawls the underbellies of Peshawar and Karachi before arriving in Germany via Turkey. Fixated on migrating to the US ever since he was in Kabul, Bar’s dream comes true.
Bar returns to Afghanistan during the Karzai regime and by recalling his father’s tutorials in Pashtunwali, reclaims his houses in Kabul and Jalalabad. The principle of success was in ensuring that no side lost face. It’s a pity that neither the Soviets nor the Americans grasped this maxim as they went for an all-out victory. For some reason, the present title has been given to the book ‘Crossing the River Kabul: An Afghan Family Odyssey’ that was published in 2017 with Kevin McLean acting as the voice of Bar Popalzai. But that doesn’t detract from the honest, unembellished account of life of an Afghan under the non-Mullah regimes in Afghanistan.
