David Pescod speaks

THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS:

It was over a year ago, we had booked a vacation to
Mexico, so here we are, but the first thing we learned is
that you can’t get away from the market malaise. Go for a
dip in the hot tub and everyone is talking about Japan just
hitting a 26-year low. Go for a walk on the beach and eve-
ryone is talking about, how low can the Dow Jones go. All
of a sudden, people are talking about how lucky people
are with government jobs.

Yes, you can’t get away from it and here in Puerto Val-
larta, real estate for some of the tourist area is down 20%,
vacationing and tourists is down about 20% and you can
tell that the world has changed. Everyone’s question is,
when is it over?
To get away from it all, there is nothing like a good
book and I might be one of the last people that hadn’t read
“A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini, the Af-
ghani-American author who also wrote the Kite Runner.
While the Kite Runner might have been a look at Afghan
history through the eyes of men, 

A thousand splendid
suns is a look at the terrible history of Afghanistan
through some of its women and it’s just not a pleasant
story and so many ethnic groups have had a history of
beating up on each other for so long, one just wonders if
there is ever a pleasant exit.
Maybe having an ugly market is bearable in compari-
son to reading through this book. “Men-wielding pick
axes swarmed the dilapidated Kabul Museum and
smashed pre-Islamic statues to rubble—that is those that
hadn’t already been looted by the Mujahideen.

 The Uni-versity was shut down and its students sent home. Paint-
ing were ripped from walls, shredded with blades. Televi-
sion screens were kicked in, books except the Koran were
burned in heaps, the stores that sold them, closed down.”

The poems of Kajlili, Pajwak...and more went up in
smoke...everywhere the beard-patrol roamed the streets in
Toyota trucks on the lookout for clean-shaven faces to
bloody.”

An amazing book and what a sad time for that country