Bamiyan

Bamiyan is a city in central Afghanistan, the capital of the Hazara region known as Hazarajat, and the site of the giant Buddha statues carved into the cliffs. In the novel, it functions as the ancestral homeland of the Hazara characters Ali, Hassan, and Sohrab, a place of refuge after their expulsion from Kabul, and a symbol of the ethnic and cultural identity that the Pashtun-dominated society has persecuted and the Taliban later destroyed.

Geography and Hazara Identity

Bamiyan lies in the central highlands of Afghanistan, a region historically inhabited by the Hazara people, an ethnic group of Mongoloid descent who are predominantly Shi'a Muslims. The novel establishes that the Hazaras have been persecuted and oppressed by the Pashtun majority for centuries. Amir discovers this history in a book by an Iranian named Khorami, which states that the Pashtuns "quelled them with unspeakable violence," driving them from their lands, burning their homes, and selling their women. The book also notes that Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims while Hazaras are Shi'a, a religious divide that fuels the discrimination. The city is also the home of the blue-eyed Hazara woman Sakina, who nursed both Amir and Hassan, and whom Ali described as being "from Bamiyan, the city of the giant Buddha statues." The giant Buddhas themselves become a symbol of the cultural heritage the Taliban later destroys, as Omar Faisal the lawyer reminds Amir: "You saw what they did to the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan."

Refuge and Return

After Ali and Hassan leave Baba's household in 1976, they move to a small village just outside Bamiyan, where Ali has a cousin. Rahim Khan drives up to Hazarajat in 1986 to find Hassan, now a grown man of twenty-two or twenty-three. He describes the journey: a scorching summer day, a rutted dirt road with nothing on either side but sunbaked bushes and dried grass, past a dead donkey rotting on the roadside, until he turns a corner and sees a cluster of mud houses against a backdrop of "broad sky and mountains like jagged teeth." The people in Bamiyan tell him he will find Hassan easily, as he lives in the only house in the village with a walled garden. The mud wall is short and pocked with holes, enclosing a tiny house that is "really not much more than a glorified hut." Inside, the yard has a parched strawberry patch, a bare lemon tree, and a tandoor in the corner. There, Rahim Khan finds Hassan squatting beside the tandoor, placing dough on a wooden spatula. Hassan drops the dough when he sees Rahim Khan, and Rahim Khan has to make him stop kissing his hands. Hassan's wife Farzana, a young light-skinned Hazara woman, is visibly expecting their child. The interior of the adobe room is bare: just a frayed rug, a few dishes, a pair of mattresses, and a lantern. Hassan tells Rahim Khan that Ali and his cousin were killed by a land mine two years earlier, just outside of Bamiyan. Rahim Khan reflects that it was likely Ali's twisted polio leg that finally stepped on the mine. Initially, Hassan refuses Rahim Khan's invitation to move to Kabul, saying the village is his home now and he and Farzana have made a life there. But after a night of weeping upon learning of Baba's death, Hassan agrees to go. They pile their belongings into worn rags, tie the corners together, load the bundle into the Buick, and Hassan stands in the threshold holding the Koran as they all kiss it and pass under it before leaving for Kabul.

Narrative Significance

Bamiyan represents the ancestral homeland and ethnic identity of the Hazara characters, a place of both refuge and loss. It is where Ali and Hassan retreat after being driven from Baba's house, where Hassan builds a new life and marries, and where Ali dies. It is also the place that Rahim Khan must travel to in order to find Hassan and bring him back to Kabul, setting in motion the events that lead to Hassan's eventual death at the hands of the Taliban. The city's famous giant Buddha statues, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, serve as a symbol of the cultural erasure that the novel's Hazara characters endure. The novel's treatment of Bamiyan thus intertwines personal exile with the broader history of ethnic persecution in Afghanistan.