Joseph shall return to Canaan

The line "Joseph shall return to Canaan" is a verse from a ghazal by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez, which Zaman, the director of the orphanage in Kabul, paints on a sign above the classroom door. The full quatrain, which Zaman writes in gleaming white paint on a sanded board, reads: "Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not, / Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. / If a flood should arrive, to drown all that's alive, / Noah is your guide in the typhoon's eye, grieve not." The sign is Zaman's deliberate answer to those who complain that the promised aid money to Afghanistan is not coming, that the rebuilding is too slow, that there is corruption, that the Taliban are regrouping and will return with a vengeance, and that the world will forget Afghanistan once again. The verse draws on the biblical and Quranic story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers but eventually rose to power in Egypt and was reunited with his family, making his return to Canaan a symbol of ultimate restoration after suffering. By invoking this narrative, Zaman asserts a conviction that even the most dire circumstances—hovels, floods, exile—can be transformed, and that despair is not the final word. The sign is nailed above the doorway of the classroom that Tariq and Zaman built by knocking down the wall between two adjacent rooms, and it is the first thing Laila passes beneath when she enters to teach. The verse resonates with the novel's broader themes of endurance, loss, and the possibility of renewal after decades of war, and it serves as a counterpoint to the grief that permeates the characters' lives, offering a framework of hope that is both religious and literary.