A New Year Begins

Today is the first day of 2008. January 1, 2008, begins the world’s new year, and it begins my new year as well. This is my birthday, the anniversary of my birth, and it is a time of both beginnings and continuations.

Yesterday, by way of a New Year’s Eve celebration, we spent an afternoon and evening in the Middle East. First, over at the Cinemark multiplex, we saw The Kite Runner. This is an amazing movie. The story is compelling, with some subtle hooks in the plot to keep things moving along. The tale of the descent of Afghanistan from the imperfect, and sometimes violent, conditions of 1978, to the Hell of Soviet occupation and Taliban vigilantism is scathing. Over the 22 years of the story, everything and everyone good in Afghanistan is driven away or killed, and everything evil rises to greater and greater prominence. Or so it appears to our not-so-heroic hero, Amir, who ends up making a harrowing journey back to Kabul to rescue the child of his childhood playmate and servant.

This is a very, very good movie. One of the engaging touches is the constant juxtaposition, via flashbacks, of America (in the San Francisco version) against Afghanistan. The lives of Afghan refugees in the United States are illustrated, in all their frustration and hope, leaving one to wonder how many might have returned to Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001. The story is complex enough to keep one interested, and tense enough to bring one to the edge of one’s seat. The characters, at least the main ones, are complex enough to come across as real people.

Despite the fact that much of the film was shot in China, the manners, the landscape, and the urban settings of the movie reminded both of us of our days in Turkey. In fact, much of the dialogue, which I gather was in Farsi, contained recognizable words, such as “teshekkur” for “thank you.”

Another movie bearing on Afghanistan is Charlie Wilson’s War. I have not seen it yet. What I find interesting is that, taken together, the two movies may provide a compelling justification for our interventions in Afghanistan, while, at the same time, showing what the terrible consequences of foreign interference in that country have been. It all reminds me of my frustrations with a big book on the Middle East, to be dealt with in my May 2007 review.

We followed our virtual trip to Afghanistan with dinner at the Caspian Cafe, which, despite the name, is pretty thoroughly Mediterranean. The appetizer of Feta cheese, black olives, flat bread (lavosh), dried apricots, and almonds lacked only a glass of chai to make a Turkish breakfast. I had red snapper and scallops over basmati rice; Helen had chicken with artichokes.

It was an altogether enjoyable afternoon and evening, recalling some of the more interesting moments of our past. Now, as the new year starts, let us look forward to the future!