Too Foreign For Homes: Khaled Hosseini On Refugee Crisis

Imagine you woke up some morning and found out whatever you perceived to be yours, your loved ones, homeland, culture, friends, acquaintances, affectionate things and the childhood memoriesare all susceptible to be ripped off by a primordial ritual of destruction and that Whatever you until now have held close, can no longer be with you.

Yeah!! You got it right, this manifestation of destruction is war.
By the end of 2017, 68.5 million individuals were displaced worldwide. By the time you have read this, probably 30 people lost their everything, thats a person per 2 minutes. Two third of the refugees come from just 5 countries, Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Mayanmar and Somalia. Afghanistan leading until in 2013 Syria became the most refugee producing country.

Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan born American novelist, was born in Kabul in 1965. Khaled Hosseini is one of the most read authors in the world and have been the author of masterpieces like The Kite Runner and The Mountains Echoed. In his books Khaled has emphasized pain and sacrifice. Like the protagonist of his first book, The Kite Runner, he led a prosperous life in Kabul. His father was a diplomat and his mother taught Farsi and history. Later on as the Afghan Refugee crisis began in 1980, the Hosseini family was relocated to paris just like another 1.8 million people who had become homeless and had to seek asylum in other countries that year. The Afghan cities were so devastated by the Soviet Invasion in Afghanistan, that a staggering number of refugees were forced to leave what they had in order to continue life. Life security had reduced to a thread and the number of cities bombed and houses burnt were innumerable.

The repercussions of war is devastating. There are reckless deaths, injuries and serious violation of Human Rights. As khaled Hosseini depicted in his books, the pain and suffering caused by war are endless. There are incidents where poverty and crisis became so acute that fathers had to sell their sons and daughters in order to feed the rest of them. 90% of refugees carry nothing with them and 75% of them are women and children. There is never enough food, shelter or security for the dislocated mass. The refugee camps and asylums are crowded, filthy and lack enough resources making hunger and poverty as the predominant concern for refugees. Plagues are frequent and death is prevalent.

The Afghanistan civil war started in the April of 1992 after Mujahidin took over Kabul leaving Afghanistan in the hands of chronic insurgencies and protests. People had to shift to more northern cities for many cities became inaccessible and too dangerous. By 1990 6.3 million people were hosted in Pakistan and Iran as refugees and for people who had dreamt of retuning home, it was now an obscure idea.

Also being the Goodwill envoy of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, Khaled Hosseini has a huge contribution in helping out the refugee masses. He has his own foundation too, The Khaled Hosseini Foundation that helps in easing the suffering brought onto them.

Dislocation is now even more a serious concern as it ever had been. It is bizzare that in so advanced a world, there are places where normal life is imperceptible. The society in the form of refugees being the victims, we are witnessing the most brutal form of man made demons that are eating up our society and culture.