A Horse Walks into a Bar
by David Grossman (year)
translated from the xxx by xxx (year)
publisher (year)
xxx pp
Jamil Jan Kochai first showed up in The New Yorker in 2019 with a strangely titled story: “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain,” which is a real video game. In that story, which was well received here, Kochai uses, along with the video game, the second person perspective to look at events in Afghanistan. Here he is also playing with form a bit: this story is told in a series of paragraphs that seem to come from a C.V. Here is the first, starting in Logar Province, Afghanistan:
1966-69: SHEEPHERDER, DEH-NAW, LOGAR
Duties included: leading sheep to the pastures near the Black Mountains; measuring the distance between the shadows of chinar trees on dirt roads; naming the sheep after prophets from the Quran, who, according to Hajji Atal, were all sheepherders at one point in their lives; reciting verses from the Quran to dispel djinns; borrowing fruit from neighbors’ orchards for sustenance; watching sheep; counting sheep; loving sheep; understanding the nature of sheep; protecting sheep from bandits, witches, wolves, rapists, demons, and half brothers (nicknamed the Captain and the King); taking younger brother, Watak, along to the pastures; swimming in a stream with Watak instead of watching sheep; losing two sheep; getting beaten by the Captain for losing sheep; leaving Watak at home, and never taking eyes off sheep again.
This continues, showing this individual’s various jobs, in various locations, through the next 50 years, ultimately ending up in California. Each talks about the duties he has, as he tries to survive.
I look forward to your thoughts on this story. I think Kochai is doing interesting, important work, and I like that I never quite know how he’s going to approach it. His story collection, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak (which appeared in The New Yorker) is coming out in July.
This is a story which in some ways may seem more reportage than fiction but the story it tells is completely compelling and something important for people in more well-off circumstances to remember. Millions of us encounter service workers, blue collar workers and probably don’t rack our brains about their background. This story does that beautifully. The formal invention is clever because the average western reader is probably far more familiar with resume writing than the character here is. The author also effortlessly blends factual, choppy sentences with those describing narrative sequences and also feelings and thoughts.
When the U.S. exited Aghanistan last August I wondered what Jamil Jan Hochai’s thoughts were concerning his family and relatives, yet it appeared he hadn’t written any opinion piece or any sort of statement.
This unusual short story, “Occupational Hazards” is so much more compelling, lively and energetic than any dry factual opinion could ever be. It’s also a moving affirmation of the continued resilience of the Afghani people to a steady stream of intruders and internal antagonists over many many years. But also, it’s so story specific that it has the heart and guts and detail that make it work as fiction alongside fact.
As Ken mentioned, this fictional lengthy resume contains much factual information concerning select Afghan history.
Many usual resumes are recitations of actions taken in a particular job that though sometimes dull, will suffice to gain a new or better position for someone.
Hochai puts so much life force into this imaginative yet very precise resume, which if it were someone else’s, might detail an almost completely dull usual sort of work life. He seems to be contrasting the typical Western life with a thoroughly atypical Muslim Afghan life at least in the beginning.
But there is a direct dramatic arc as horrendous Afghan difficulties morph into not as quite as bad but still horrendous Western difficulties.
So Hochai very effectively uses this resume to profile singular and plural curious, perilous Afghani lives for Western readers. And he has a wonderful way with words and structure that radiates warmth amid uncomfortable feeling. There are three “s” words that round out and effectively describe a particularly bad condition: “for insomnia, for unbearable pain, for drowsiness, dizziness, constipation, diarrhea, swelling, stiffness and sadness.”
The protagonist attempts to bring his beloved younger brother Watak back by “speaking him alive again.”
His lists take on a lyrical resonance as in “waiting for sons to begin their careers; waiting for daughters to begin college; waiting for wedding days and funerals; waiting for good grades and graduations; waiting for sleep and food and time and joy; waiting for the pain to ebb;” a kind of universal sensitivity very particularly noted.
He’s writing about Afghanistan, about emigrating into a new culture but also just about some of life’s more difficult challenges that can be universal. It’s a great short story and I look forward to reading the rest of them when the new collection appears in August.