People who read the interpreter get attached to me, I get attached to them, it's the interpreter.
5.0 out of 5 stars Human scenes of Afghanistan crafted around the pursuit of a torturer, November 27, 2011 By Katherine Holmes (Duluth, Minnesota) While The Interpreter portrays an insider's panorama of the conflicts in Afghanistan, it is also crafted as a story that tunnels into the vendetta between an Afghanistan man and his Taliban torturer. Yet the book is written with the gray zones that make this conflict one of controversy.
Based on true experience, the author tells of his hunt for the Taliban with American soldiers and Afghanistan men. They course many villages, finding out the tenor of people who have been displaced from farms. The Americans have built schools and hospitals yet the Taliban raid and attempt to forcibly convert the villagers. Both pro and anti American responses are depicted but what is so poignant are the individuals and their losses. The worry the Afghanistan men have about their women and how Americans might treat them is an understatement to the plights of these people.
Shabir was learning karate when the Taliban captured him, beat him, and tortured him, sending his family to Russia for refuge. His bravery in joining the American forces as an interpreter leads to compelling scenes of encounter. When he interprets intercepted radio messages, he knows he is a target. Although he eventually vanquishes his tormenter, there is more to this. It reminds me of the end to Doctor Zhivago in that Shabir must leave; he has to be displaced. Because the Taliban know him, his presence only causes strategy that can kill those around him.
This is a moving book, rich in scenes of Afghanistan and the hunts there. The author doesn't sensationalize because much is preparation. A traditional meal is a blessing. Also his relationships nourish him as the plot surges towards the confrontation with his nemesis. I was rapt to read this to the end.
Shah Wali Fazli takes you to Afghanistan. Where his main character is an Afghani Interpreter for the NATO forces stationed there. This book gives you much insight into the turmoil in Afghanistan and the reasons for being there in the first place. It is a fictionalized account of Shah Wali Fazli's own experiences as an interpreter for our forces there.
Shabir Khan, the interpreter, is torn between missing his family and a desire to help his people to prosper. His family has escaped from Afghanistan while he is there helping the soldiers and the villagers communicate. As an interpreter, Shabir is considered by the Taliban as the worst kind of traitor.
The Mullah Aslam or Mullah Dozakhi meaning from Hell, is the main Taliban chieftan in the Helmand area where Shabir works. He has been known to behead the interpreters that he captures after torturing them. He taunts Shabir that his turn is coming.
Shabir lives in fear for his life on every patrol he goes out on. He dwells on Mullah Dozakhi to the point of becoming depressed. He believes that this is the same mullah who imprisoned him in Kabal and tortured him for months. Finally his fellow interpreters and the American named Ralph who is a commander break him from this train of thought.
The book goes quickly and there is no lag in the story line. The reader becomes enmeshed in the life of Shabir and the other interpreters. The book not only tells the life of the interpreters, but also the lives of the local Afghanistan citizens. Those farmers and villagers who are threatened in the night by Mullah Dozakhi and his band of thugs that if they don't provide food, money, and their sons they will be killed.
Mullah Dozakhi and his gang of thieves do not believe in education or anything that speaks of a modern world. They are truly the left over nineteenth century warlords. Their power is in striking fear in the farmers and villagers. They plunder and take what they want. They care not who they kill and use propaganda to blame the Americans.
For me the book was more than just a story. It was an education into why we have men and women risking their lives in Afghanistan. I had believed Afghanistan was a mountainous region. I missed that it is also desert and that farmers have irrigated the valleys to make them lush with crops. While they are not wealthy farmers they work to provide for their families. They wish their children to attend school and get medical care. All of these are things the Taliban would deny them.
If you are looking for a powerful book, this is one I would highly recommend you read. It has many messages. It also helps create understanding.
5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful, unforgettable novel about Afghanistan, the Taliban and the life of an Afghani interpreter,September 12, 2011 By G. Polley "blogger and writer" (Sapporo, Japan)
"I was reminded of where I was once I heard the soldiers making noises in the yard of the camp.
Another day in Helmand.
"My senses opened hesitantly yet again to the mud-ceilinged room, and my heart seemed to lose all is saddened beats ..."
So begins Shah Wali Fazli's remarkable novel about the life of an Afghan interpreter assigned to American soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. He knows well what he writes about, as he was once one of the interpreters about whom he writes so eloquently and with such sympathy.
It is not, as they say, "a cake walk." It is a nightmare, especially when the main Taliban group you're fighting is led by a man known as Mullah Dozakhi, a killer with a personal vendetta of hate against you because you once bested one of his men in a karate match in Kabul. What kind kind of person is this Mullah Dozakhi? "He had lived his entire life dealing out retribution, death and destruction. How could he stop all that? [He] had built a reputation for destroying other people's lives. Why should he stop now?" And he is out to kill you and your American friends.
Having read Khaled Husseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Ahmed Rashid's Taliban, the story is a familiar one. Schooled in a doctrine soaked in resentment and hate, the Taliban are poisonous. But so are the warlords, many of whom dominate the Karzai government in Kabul.
"The people are hungry," Ezeqiel Martinez Estrada wrote years ago about Argentina's people, "but not for bread. They are hungry for honor, for love, for cordial treatment, for human consideration" ("Xray of the Pampas"). As Shah Wali Fazli so eloquently shows, this is what the Afghan people want ... but not what the Taliban, the warlords and other power brokers want.
The Interpreter is a book I won't soon forget, and neither will you. Very well written, it is a book to treasure. I finished it with a clear picture of the bond that exists between soldiers and their interpreters and between the interpreters who do such dangerous work. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Shah Wali Fazli for writing it, and for Night Publishing for publishing it so that we can all read it. Available in paperback and Kindle.
