Stunning. Heartbreaking. Eye-opening. Life changing.

This novel deserves 6 stars, if only Goodreads had a 6 star rating. It's changed the way I view the wars in the Middle East, my own country, and the conflict within Islam.

Read it.

An expanded version of this review can be found at https://meredithrankin.home.blog/2019/01/16/review-blind-mans-garden-nadeem-asla... ( )

Blind Man's Garden has all the elements to touch readers- forbidden love, brotherhood, and war. But I find it rather bland and hence difficult to write a review. ( )

En aktuell bok om terrorism och om religionens fundamentala vansinne. Tänkvärt och bra skrivet om kärlek och hat. ( )

Alternately lyrical and brutal, this is a powerful and visceral story of life in modern day Pakistan and Afghanistan. The central love story is contrasted with accounts of the reality of war and of life inside extremist organisations. This does not always make for pleasant reading, but it is poetic in places and very moving in others. ( )

Interesting perspective: the Afghanistan-Pakistan border tribal territories immediately after 911 and during the American invasion of Pakistan from the view of a young man living near Pashawa. American were definitely not the good guys in this portrayal. However, the ending did seem to suggest that our shared humanity was more important than our political and ethnic differences. Quite a complicated, but thrilling plot.

Rohan runs a school in a village called Heer (interesting name sounds like here). He has one son, Jeo, who is a doctor in training--the author is a doctor--and a step-son, Mikal, who is an orphan. The 2 boys go to Afghanistan naively thinking they can contribute as medics to the war effort on the side of the Afghans. However, they discover quite quickly that this is not so easy. Jeo is killed almost immediately and Mikal, the narrator, is taken captive by a warlord, who amputates his trigger fingers and proceeds to sell him to the American. Meanwhile, Jeo's wife,Nedeem, who is also Mikal's paramour, receives Jeo's body and goes in search of Mikal after she learns from Rohan that he also has died. She becomes convinced that Mikal is still alive and waits for his return.

Meanwhile, Mikal is sent on a mission by the warlord to steal a religious relic but that fails he ends up at a brick mosque where he is picked up by Americans. He is tortured by the Americans and, when they realize he has no information for them, they plan to release him back at the mosque. However, Mikal panics when he thinks they are planning to kill him and he kills 2 of them instead. Mikal then escapes into the hills. Eventually he discovers an injured American, who is the brother of one of the victims at the brick mosque. Mikal takes his rescue and salvation on as a cause. His motivation for doing this is a little obscure. This is one of the central themes of the novel--shared humanity. They start out hating each other, but slowly learn to care for each other despite no shared language and minimal ability to communicate. There is lots of adventure to follow, but Mikal turns out to be very clever, courageous and resourceful. I really liked the way they managed to call in the Americans using the muezzin's loudspeaker. A bit far-fetched, but fun.

Aslam also develops the characters back in Heer well-enough. There is a terrorist event at a Christian school, where Nedeem is held and eventually mistakenly reveals who Basi is (Mikal's brother). The hostage-takers kill him. There is another side story where Sharif Sharif, the man who once raped Nedeem's mother, Tara, wants to marry Nedeem and offers to and pay for their home save Rohan's sight. This fails when Mikal returns-possibly carried in the American chopper. Sharif disappears.

The story ends well for Nedeem and Mikal with 2 kids, one is Nedeem's (child of Jeo or possibly Mikal) and one from Yasmin, the wife of Basi. Rohan loses his sight but survives. ( )