Free Tree and Other Stories

"Free Tree and Other Stories" by Aayram Kesh, in Pashto, 1901, Omaid Shah Publishing, Chora, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan. Softcover, 86 pages, no graphics. The book is printed in obvious modest conditions: no frills, no thrills, very poor stock (pulp-like) but the twenty-eight short stories are excellent. Mr Kesh has a raw but profound talent, he is a sensitive writer with ideas and concepts that go way beyond any expectation. The stories are really short, the longest has four pages, and that shows the author making his point with a great economy of words and producing compact, hard-hitting, impressive prose. The dialogue is clipped, the descriptions are terse, the effect is astonishing. You can almost feel the harsh, cold wind of the northern plains around Mazar-i-Sharif, the constant struggle of men and beasts alike to carve out a living, the subdued violence of the deep burning pride and ferocity of passions that explains the Afghan victory in the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839 - 1842. My favourite story is "Free Tree" that gives the name of this volume; it describes a knife fight in the family's backyard during which the older brother kills the younger brother over a previous conflict (not explained in the story). People stand silently by and let it all happen, strangely the reader is captured and mesmerized into understanding why nobody acts when they fight each other to death. The story ends with one brother limping away bleeding and the other just laying there, bleeding out in the dirt. I've never figured out the deal with the tree and why it was free but I felt it was important and it left a pale yellow taste in my mind.

I read and reviewed this volume as part me cataloguing and creating an inventory of the books found as part of the "The Evart-Gunn Publishing Company Book Salvage Operation" (see first entry of this blog).