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A review by jennyyates
A Door in the Earth by Amy Waldman
5.0
I highly recommend this novel about culture clash, idealism, and war.
The protagonist is Parveen, a young Afghan-American who has just graduated from college and isn’t sure what she wants to do next. She’s inspired by a book by Gideon Crane, a man who went to Afghanistan, had some gut-wrenching experiences there, started a clinic there, and wrote about it all. And so Parveen, too, goes to the small village in the mountains of Afghanistan, where Crane spent his time, to see what she can do to help.
Parveen is in a strange in-between position. She looks like a native of the region, but she doesn’t have to wear head-to-toe covering when she goes out, and she can talk to both men and women. She speaks both Dari and English, so she is in a position to understand both sides when American soldiers come to the town. But she doesn’t always know what people mean, even when she hears what they say.
The hardest thing for her is to find out that Crane didn’t tell the truth when he wrote about the village, and that she believed him because of her own assumptions about the people there. She spends as much time unlearning as she does learning. The plot is masterful, as every action leads to unforeseen consequences.
The writing is also evocative. Here’s an excerpt:
< On the way back to Waheed’s compound, she would sweep her hand along the village walls, dry and smooth, almost the texture of hands themselves, and try to imagine living within enclosures built by one’s ancestors and that still, beneath layers of repair, held traces of their touch. Throughout the day the walls were repainted by shifts in the sun’s position overhead – warm sand, then ocher, then amber. They were as smooth to the eye as they were to the hand. The village had no visual clutter. No billboards, no advertisements, no graffiti. No names on street signs, no numbers on the homes. The village was washed clean of words. What use did the villagers have for writing? Most of them didn’t know how to read, and anyway they didn’t need such guidance in the village where they’d lived their whole lives. The map of this place, the location of each family compound, had been laid down in every head in childhood, probably around the time language was. >
The protagonist is Parveen, a young Afghan-American who has just graduated from college and isn’t sure what she wants to do next. She’s inspired by a book by Gideon Crane, a man who went to Afghanistan, had some gut-wrenching experiences there, started a clinic there, and wrote about it all. And so Parveen, too, goes to the small village in the mountains of Afghanistan, where Crane spent his time, to see what she can do to help.
Parveen is in a strange in-between position. She looks like a native of the region, but she doesn’t have to wear head-to-toe covering when she goes out, and she can talk to both men and women. She speaks both Dari and English, so she is in a position to understand both sides when American soldiers come to the town. But she doesn’t always know what people mean, even when she hears what they say.
The hardest thing for her is to find out that Crane didn’t tell the truth when he wrote about the village, and that she believed him because of her own assumptions about the people there. She spends as much time unlearning as she does learning. The plot is masterful, as every action leads to unforeseen consequences.
The writing is also evocative. Here’s an excerpt:
< On the way back to Waheed’s compound, she would sweep her hand along the village walls, dry and smooth, almost the texture of hands themselves, and try to imagine living within enclosures built by one’s ancestors and that still, beneath layers of repair, held traces of their touch. Throughout the day the walls were repainted by shifts in the sun’s position overhead – warm sand, then ocher, then amber. They were as smooth to the eye as they were to the hand. The village had no visual clutter. No billboards, no advertisements, no graffiti. No names on street signs, no numbers on the homes. The village was washed clean of words. What use did the villagers have for writing? Most of them didn’t know how to read, and anyway they didn’t need such guidance in the village where they’d lived their whole lives. The map of this place, the location of each family compound, had been laid down in every head in childhood, probably around the time language was. >