Come Back to Afghanistan Blog #2

I would definitely say that This American Life has cleared up a great deal of things that I was unsure of before about the book. For example, the Khyber Pass travel was much clearer to me when I heard Hyder speaking about it rather than when I had read about it. I would guess this is partly because of Hyder’s writing style, in the sense that he will talk a great deal about the actual storyline in Afghanistan and then throw in here and there little anecdotes about something related, but that did not actually happen at the same time as the travels and occurrences while he was there. It also explained much more clearly what happened at the loya jirga. I had gotten a different impression from reading about it than I had from hearing Hyder talk from the loya jirga and actually listening to the sounds of the music and the people in the background. The ability to hear what happens definitely helps your sense of visualizing what happens, at least in my opinion. It lets you get a different perspective of the situation as well. I actually thought it was slightly funny when I heard the band play the national anthem of Iran because they were so bad and yet it was the best they could do. It sort of showed, like Hyder said, a sense of persistence, no matter what happened, as a sort of metaphor for the country’s struggle. The thing that I found most interesting was when Hyder said that the violence had become almost normal to him and that he had also found it weird. As I stated in my last blog, I think that the violence is one of the things that I could not adapt to, and yet after only a short time there he regarded the guns and the daily rocket strikes to be normal everyday occurrence. But, overall, being able to listen to Hyder’s radio entries did let you get a glimpse of what you could not see in the book. It clarified the unclear and allowed you to visualize the story much more easily. I am ecstatic that I was able to listen to it; it really did help with comprehending more of the novel.