Sometimes you have really high expectations for a book. Sometimes that book meets them and sometimes it, for whatever reason, does not. This is one of those times where I was contacted about a book; a memoir as it were, that I really thought would be an interesting read given the background of the author. I have to say, that although there was a lot of validity to everything he had to say, I had a really tough time reading his book.

Hamid Zaher penned Living in a Nightmare, which is an inside look at living as a gay man in Afghanistan (and Iran, and Turkey). It’s about what he and, and presumably others like him, endure inside of Afghanistan and what they often must do to escape to more open societies, which for many of them seems to mean escaping to Europe. I say “presumably” because Hamid states early on that he’s trying to draw attention to the plight of all Afghanistani gays, but he has met/known so few (literally a very small handful) that his book is really focused only on himself.

Zaher has been trying to raise awareness of his book in the United States and around the world in order to raise awareness about the persecution of gays in Afghanistan. He has not had a lot of success. For one, it has limited availability and little marketing. At the time of this writing there are 5 copies available on Amazon. There are no reviews. Also, his original work was published, apparently, in the Pashtu language of his native village. Part of what makes the book a difficult read is that Pashtu, or maybe just his dialect of it, does not translate easily into American English. A lot of the idioms and structure are very different. This is readable, certainly, but it’s not skimmable by any means without losing meaning.

This book, if even 50% true,  offers a fascinating cultural insight into a very socially backward country. When reading about his every day life in Afghanistan, especially with regard to people, I often felt as though I were reading about grade school children and not grown adults. It is unfathomable to me and perhaps would be to anyone who has always lived in the industrialized world, how it’s commonplace to ridicule and harass others for being different or for something another person in their family did or is perceived to have done. People are called names, they’re followed around and taunted, they have stones tossed at them and they endure daily humiliations by neighbors, co-workers and even near strangers. It’s pervasive nationally, if things are as the author says.

It would appear, from what Hamid writes, that Iran is only slightly more advanced than Afghanistan. It would also appear that Turkey is only slightly ahead of Iran. My impression of Turkey, given his views, is that the government there just does not have the time or the resources to deal with the things he personally thinks they should handle like helping gay Afghani refugees gain asylum in countries that will accept them as social misfits. Knowing that he was in Turkey illegally, quite frankly, I’m surprised he got as much consideration as he did.

One of the maddening things about Zaher’s book is the repetitive nature of every point he makes. I don’t know if this is cultural or if it is unique to him. Either way, I found it very frustrating. He had an extremely rough life; of that, there is no question. His family and, his mother especially, were very emotionally abusive to him. The hard part for me was that he repeats the same incidents often from one paragraph to the next or even twice in the same paragraph. Then, the same patterns and arguments will be repeated a few pages or a chapter later.

He probably did have the same running arguments with his family for example, but it is a) very tiring to read about them continuously and in a circle and b) I found myself wishing that just once he would act as a man in a society that is so dominantly patriarchal and stand up to his mother, his sister, his brothers, etc…but he never does. He just plots and schemes and he repeats the same patterns hoping for a different outcome. For example, he never once says to his brother in England that his mother takes all of the money that he sends over for him and that is why she is really upset with Hamid. It’s not that she does not want Hamid to use that money to leave. It is that she does not want to give up any money sent for him. She wants to hoard it for herself. He dances all around the issue but never puts it in words.

I read the whole book eventually. I admit, I got quite a cultural awakening and I do feel sorry for the plight endured by Hamid Zaher. All of that said, I find his book to be very self serving. It does not really outline larger societal issues. It’s simply his own personal opinion based only on his experience and that is heavily colored by the influence of his controlling mother. He seeks out no one to interview for the book and other gays he finds are his sexual conquests or acquaintances only, not brothers in arms, so to speak, out to fight the establishment. And, that brings me to my final point. There is no “establishment”. The village nature and, really, the almost tribal nature, of much of Afghanistan (if’s it’s truly as he paints it), does not allow an avenue for widespread change any time in the foreseeable future. Things have finally changed for Hamid Zaher but his book isn’t going to change Afghanistan.