San Jose State University

San Jose State University, a public university in California, became the academic home for both Amir and Soraya Taheri after they settled in the United States, serving as the institution through which they transformed their immigrant aspirations into professional careers. For Amir, the university was the place where he declared an English major and began writing his first novel; for Soraya, it was where she enrolled in the teaching track despite her father's objections, pursuing her long-held dream of becoming an educator. Their time at San Jose State represents a crucial chapter in their American story, one in which education provided both a path to personal redemption and a means of contributing to their new society.

Amir's Academic and Creative Journey

After graduating from high school in Fremont in the summer of 1983 at the age of twenty, Amir enrolled in junior college classes that fall, telling his father he would major in English with a focus on creative writing. Baba, who had hoped his son would pursue medicine or law, was skeptical of a career in storytelling, but Amir stood his ground, determined not to sacrifice his own ambitions as he had done in the past. He later transferred to San Jose State University, where he declared an English major and began work on his first novel. To support himself and his studies, Amir took a security job working the swing shift at a furniture warehouse in Sunnyvale, where the solitude of the empty building allowed him to study and write. It was in the Pine-Sol-scented office of that warehouse that he began writing the father-son story set in Kabul that would become his debut novel. The following year, Soraya joined him at San Jose State, enrolling in the teaching track to her father's chagrin, as General Taheri believed a woman of her intelligence should pursue law or political science rather than a career in education.

Soraya's Teaching Vocation

Soraya's decision to study teaching at San Jose State was the culmination of a calling she had felt since childhood. As a fourth-grader in Kabul, she had taught a servant named Ziba to read and write, and the pride she felt when Ziba wrote her first letter convinced Soraya that she wanted nothing else but to be a teacher. Despite her father's pressure to become a lawyer or political scientist—roles he believed would serve Afghanistan when it was eventually freed—Soraya remained steadfast in her commitment to education. She had already become ESL certified while living in Virginia and taught at a public library one night a week, and her studies at San Jose State formalized the vocation she had long practiced. Her mother, Jamila Taheri, had been a teacher of Farsi and history at Zarghoona High School for girls in Kabul, and Soraya saw teaching not as a lesser profession but as a meaningful way to serve her community.

The University as a Site of Transformation

For both Amir and Soraya, San Jose State University was more than an institution of higher learning; it was the place where they could reinvent themselves after the upheavals of immigration and the weight of their pasts. Amir, who had carried the guilt of his betrayal of Hassan since the winter of 1975, found in his writing a way to process his experiences, even if he was not yet ready to confront them directly. Soraya, who had been marked by the scandal of her teenage rebellion in Virginia, found in teaching a profession that allowed her to define herself on her own terms. The university provided the structure and legitimacy they needed to build new identities as an American writer and an American teacher, identities that would eventually allow Amir to return to Afghanistan and bring Sohrab home. When Amir's first novel was accepted for publication, the celebration dinner with Soraya's parents marked a moment of pride that Baba, who had died before seeing his son's success, would never witness—but the foundation for that achievement had been laid in the classrooms and libraries of San Jose State.