When Mr Pirzada Came to Dine

In the autumn of 1971, Mr. Pirzada comes to Lilia’s house to dine each night. Mr. Pirzada is from Dacca, then a part of Pakistan. He left behind his wife and seven daughters for a fellowship to study the foliage of New England. Since his fellowship provided for only a meager dorm room, he comes to Lilia’s home to eat with her parents and to watch the news of the Indo-Pakistan War. Dacca had been invaded by the Pakistani army and torched and shelled. Thousands of people were tortured or killed. Although Mr. Pirzada writes a letter to his family each week, he had not heard from them in six months.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europeans made the voyage to a “new world” in order to achieve dreams of opportunity and riches. In this other world the Europeans came upon another people, which naturally led to a cultural exchange between different groups of people. Although we commonly refer to European and Indian relations as being between just two very different groups of people, it is important to recognize this is not entirely true. Although the settlers of the new world are singularly referred to as Europeans, each group of people came from a different nation and with different motives and expectations of the new world. Similarly, the Indians were neither a united group nor necessarily friendly with each other. Due to the

Violence, war, discrimination, and poverty: these issues have long been a part of Afghanistan’s history. Even though things in Afghanistan are getting better, war fills the country, and women and children have to learn to endure abuse, caused by men and the Taliban; they also learn to endure poverty. Considering this, it is no wonder why Afghanistan is in the terrible position it is in now. Many Afghan cities like Kabul are filled with things like violence and discrimination, and the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini takes place in Kabul. This book follows the lives of two Afghani women, Mariam and Laila, as they suffer pain and discrimination received from the Taliban and their

“Afghanistan was a monarchy ruled by King Zahir Shah. On July 17, 1973, when the king was on away on vacation, a man by the name of Mohammad Daoud Khan attained power. The military takeover did not cause any bloodshed, but as we see through Amir's story, it was still a frightening time for the people of Kabul who heard rioting and shooting in the streets. For six years, Mohammad Daoud Khan was President and Prime Minister of Afghanistan. Then, on April 27, 1978, he was violently overthrown by the PDPA, People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Daoud was killed in

When most of us think of the great Indians of the last century, we think of a thin, well-defined figure standing stern and serious. When we think of a modern Indian, we

Imagine being away from love ones and not knowing anything about them. What if they not doing well or they are in danger? Being far away would be hard because one won’t know if his or her love ones are safe or not. Kindness helps to improve a friendship no matter what people can be kind to one another. In “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” Jhumpa Lahiri presents the idea that kindness can be helpful for a person that needs it. No matter what situation one person can be in always be kind it can make them feel better.

For the bloodbath in March-December 1971 - when the Pakistani army executed a largely unarmed Bengali population in the then vital part of Pakistan’s state known as “East Pakistan”, in an effort to suppress the region’s demand for independence - was at the time the biggest story in the world’s media.

In the third grade, I remember bringing noodles to lunch, and all of my white classmates looking at me strangely. Little did I know, Americans did not bring noodles to lunch, but rather simpler things, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lunchables. Although my introduction to the western culture was nothing as close to the Ibo people’s introduction to the western culture, it is clear that different cultures often have a hard time understanding the customs of another culture. Okonkwo’s response to new western influences spreading through his clan depicts how the introduction of different cultures can lead to disagreement because of contrasting religious values and customs.

In Khaled Hosseini’s book The Kite Runner, one of the most surprising motifs is of ethnic division and violence in Afghanistan. The groups that commit such acts , though brutally primitive, have deep set reasons and justifications for their actions. In totality, ethnic violence is an enduring problem for humanity that is due to differences that exist between people of various cultures and ancestry as well as foreign intervention from world powers.

Amira Arzu, an Afghan teenager, was only 15 years old when she was forced into an arranged marriage. She was kind hearted, intelligent, elated, and humorous until one day this was all taken away. December 15th, 2016 she was on her way to school in Afghanistan not knowing that her parents were driving her to a Mosque, the Shrine of Ali, to get married to her future husband, Ahmed Akmal. A few days later she found herself on the street Taimani in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amira ran past workers ordering from street carts, women with their children, men in trucks honking at one another, and many looked at her uncertainty as she was running through the streets of Kabul. At the time, she was wearing a blue floral hijab, jeans, and a dress as in Afghanistan you cannot wear a dress without covering your legs. Many deduced that she was without her husband on the streets of Kabul, which is not normally the case, but Amira was different from the other wives and arduously wanting to figure out an escape.

With the Taliban beginning its reigns on Afghanistan, darkness took over the nation. Terror became a more common installment into the minds of the citizens. Hearing the rumble of the jeeps, the bangs of the AK-47s, and the bombs setting off can send a shiver down anyone’s back. Families are torn apart, children forget what play time is, schools are destroyed. The injustice that the Taliban brought is defined through the cruelest of actions. “There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.” (Hosseini, 1) With their regime, the Taliban established radical rules that limited the country to all but making the essential function of speaking, barely legal. The effect of the Taliban begin to spread specifically towards Amir and his family. With the beginning the war, Amir sees his

The Pakistani government was involved in an attack on Mumbai that killed over one hundred and fifty people. The captured militants who executed the attack were never brought to proper justice, an incarcerated terrorist confessed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency aided the attack, and the Pakistani government freed the militant group’s commander for no plausible reason. Pakistan has denied all accusations of its’ involvement but evidence shows that they played a key role in this devastating siege.

In Afghanistan, there is a divide between the Pashtuns and the Hazaras; the Pashtuns are upper class citizens who are treated with respect while the Hazaras are lower class, minority citizens who are treated poorly. Because of the contrasting history of the two groups, their responses to the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul were complete opposites. The Pashtuns “danced on [the] street,” (Hosseini 200) while the Hazaras cried “God help the Hazaras now” (Hosseini 213). The conflict between the Pashtuns and Hazaras in “The Kite Runner” directly reflects the real life issues in Afghanistan starting in the late 70’s and continuing on past 2001.

In the short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” by Jhumpa Lahiri, Lilia, her parents, and Mr. Pirzada react differently to Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 because of the different cultures in which they grew up. Lilia is a ten-year-old girl growing up in Boston, Massachusetts. The civil war affects her vicariously when she sees her parents and Mr. Pirzada upset. Lilia’s parents are from India and moved to Boston before Lilia was born. They show concern when watching the news of their homeland in peril. Mr. Pirzada is from Pakistan and moves to Boston for one year on a research grant while his wife and seven daughters still live in East Pakistan. The civil war affects him the most because it is his personal property and his direct loved ones that are in the midst of it all.

To Rani, ‘people dying here, others dying there’ (cited in Butalia, 2000, p.268) was something that happened every day, it was no surprise to her. Thus, Rani’s cynical view about the future of India and Pakistan was conceivably drawn from memories of witnessing horrendous fights and strife throughout her whole life (cited in Butalia, 2000, p.268).