美国国家公共电台 NPR Khaled Hosseini Says A Succinct 'Sea Prayer' For A Refugee's Journey

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

You know our next guest for his books about Afghanistan - "The Kite Runner," "A Thousand Splendid Suns," "And The Mountains Echoed." But Khaled Hosseini's latest writing, "Sea Prayer," is a departure from those best-selling novels. This is a short, illustrated¹ work of fiction that captures the trauma² and heartbreak of the Syrian refugee crisis. It is told in the form of a letter from father to son. When I spoke³ with Hosseini, I asked him to read an opening passage in which the father is describing how their home city, Homs, in western Syria used to be.

KHALED HOSSEINI: (Reading) I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan - in its bustling⁴ old city, a mosque⁵ for us Muslims, a church for our Christian⁶ neighbors and a grand souk for us all to haggle⁷ over gold pendants and fresh produce and bridal dresses. I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square.

MARTIN: It is clear that the child to whom the father is speaking never got to see that.

HOSSEINI: Yeah. And it speaks to the experience of so many refugee children, whether we're talking about Syria or Afghanistan, an entire generation of children who are being raised amid turmoil⁸ and violence and war and have no personal connection to the beauty and the richness of their country before all the turmoil began. And that's an experience that I've encountered when speaking to refugees all over the world.

MARTIN: I imagine you've spoken with Syrian refugees about their own experiences as part of your work with the U.N.?

HOSSEINI: Yes. I was in Lebanon this past June, and I met with Syrian refugees. And it is a hard, strange and punishing life to be a Syrian refugee in Lebanon - 1 out of 6 people on the streets is a Syrian refugee. Most live on less than $4 a day in makeshift improvised⁹ housing structures like abandoned garages and warehouses¹⁰, and memorably¹¹, even a shopping mall that's unfinished and that smells like an open sewer¹² and has no sanitation¹³. Over a thousand people are living there.

So it's a hard life. And when I was speaking to these refugees, I could imagine how I too as a father who would not be able to provide for his children might choose also to pay smugglers and try one of these desperate crossing across the Mediterranean¹⁴ Sea to reach European shores and try to secure a better life for my family.

MARTIN: Was there a particular child or story or image that helped you create the tale that you tell in these pages?

HOSSEINI: Yes. You know, three years ago, we all around the world were shocked to see the photograph of a young Alan Kurdi, a little over 2-year-old Syrian boy who drowned on a Turkish beach after his family tried to cross the sea to Europe. And when I saw that photograph of Alan's body on the beach, and I was just bludgeoned, you know. As a father myself, I kept trying to imagine the emotional, psychological nightmare that his dad had to endure every time he saw the photographs of his son and a stranger lifting his child's body, a stranger who didn't know Alan's voice or his laughter or his favorite toy.

And so I hope that this book, "Sea Prayer," is a small tribute not only to his family, but also on a broader level, I hope it highlights the unthinkable despair that thousands of other ordinary people face everyday to abandon home and community and take a chance on this brutal¹⁵ and often lethal¹⁶ journey, you know, across the sea.

MARTIN: I'd like to ask you to read another excerpt¹⁷. This is the bit of the poem that begins, first came the protests.

HOSSEINI: (Reading) First came the protests, then the siege, the sky spitting bombs, starvation, burials. These are the things you know. You know a bomb crater¹⁸ can be made into a swimming hole. You have learned that dark blood is better news than bright. You have learned that mothers and sisters and classmates can be found in narrow gaps between concrete, bricks and exposed beams, little patches of sunlit skin shining in the dark.

MARTIN: This is not just a letter to a son. It is a prayer. Clearly, a connection to the tens of thousands of people who have taken that life-threatening journey by boat across the Mediterranean. Why did you decide to make it a plea to God?

HOSSEINI: I imagined myself as one of those fathers who's abandoned home, land, community, who's been forced to walk across miles and mile sometimes for weeks, occasionally for months with his children, knowing that along the way he may be detained, that he might be beaten, that his children might be sold into forced labor¹⁹. And then to reach the sea and put your life savings²⁰ in the hands of smugglers and set out in the open sea knowing that thousands have died before you attempting this very same journey with nothing there to protect you.

The sea - pitch black. You can't tell the sky from the sea. Nothing to protect you and your life at the hands of smugglers who have no regard for human life. And this whole business pivots²¹ on your suffering. Who would choose this for their family? If I was a father on a moonlit beach about to take one of these journeys, you can bet that I would turn inward and say a prayer for my son too.

MARTIN: It is revealed that part of the father's motivation is that he just wants to make his son feel OK and that he wants to believe that the prayer will be heard. He's afraid that it rings hollow. May I ask you to read the close of the poem?

HOSSEINI: (Reading) These are only words, a father's tricks. It slays²² your father, your faith in him, because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea and how vast, how indifferent, how powerless I am to protect you from it. All I can do is pray, pray God steers²³ the vessel²⁴ true when the shores slip out of eyeshot and we are a fly speck²⁵ in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting²⁶, easily swallowed. Because you, you are precious cargo²⁷, Marwan, the most precious that ever was. I pray the sea knows this, inshallah, how I pray the sea knows this.

MARTIN: Novelist Khaled Hosseini. His latest book is called "Sea Prayer." Thank you so much for talking with us.

HOSSEINI: It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF DHAFER YOUSSEF'S "BIRDS CANTICUM 'BIRDS REQUIEM' SUITE")