Afghan v. American Cultural Norms

            Over the past week, I have read another portion of the book and am at the halfway point.  Journeys have been made and deaths have occurred in this section.  I noticed that the author focused the second quarter of the novel on the Afghan customs versus the American customs.  Amir and his father migrate to the United States and are living in Freemont, California as U.S. citizens.  However, Baba passed away due to lung cancer shortly after Amir got married to another Afghan, Soraya.  Amir and Baba stay true to Afghan customs in California, which made it easy for them to reconnect with other Afghans in the area.  Throughout this section, how they view trustworthiness and forgiveness struck me the most as cultural differences.  The opinions on these three cultural values show how difficult it is to assimilate into a new country. 

            Shortly after arriving in America, Baba saw how America was not seen as trustworthy as Afghanistan when writing a check to store clerk to buy fruit.  While handing over the check, the clerk asks for an ID from Baba, which makes Baba explode with rage shouting, “What kind of a country is this?  No one trusts anybody!”  (Hosseini 128).  This incident is a great example that captures the differences in American trust and security.  As a country, the United States wants to ensure that everyone is who he or she says they are and check that with identification.  Although you could be going to the same store for years, clerks still check identification because there can be no special treatment for loyalty to a store.  This confuses Baba because he is used to the Afghan lifestyle where everyone trusts everyone and credit cards are made out of branches, with cuts in the branch to mark transactions.  America finds it difficult to trust others because of the national threats and terrorist attacks on our soil in the past.

            The motto in America for forgiveness is that if you make a mistake, you can do everything in your power to fix it, and if not, everyone makes mistakes at some point in their lifetime.  “America was different.  America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past.  I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far” (Hosseini 136).  America is a clean slate for Amir, letting him remember his wrongdoings in Afghanistan, but allows him to move on.  America is forgiving of the past, which is necessary for him to make a new lifestyle for himself in this country.  Amir knows that in Afghan culture, once a sin is committed, the sin stays with you forever.  I think that leaving Afghanistan and migrating to America was the best decision for Baba and Amir.  Now not only are they safe, but Amir can finally build the life he wants and become a writer.  Amir was struggling a lot with facing Hassan after knowing what happened to him; Amir needed a fresh start in order to start this new chapter of his life as a mature adult. 

            Afghan moral values when compared to the traditional American values were very interesting when looking at how all of these values were packaged together to shape Amir in the novel.  Since Amir successfully connected Afghan and American values together, he is able to be a traditional Afghan husband, but also is understanding and follows the American values of his wife being seen as an equal. 

            The novel’s connections between Afghanistan and the United States are very interesting and I am interested in how the rest of the novel turns out.  So far so good!