New Book Alert: The Unseen Path by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'mere Younossi; Sequel to The Unseen Blossom Reveals The Real World Surrounding The Fantasy

 

New Book Alert: The Unseen Path by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'mere Younossi; Sequel to The Unseen Blossom Reveals The Real World Surrounding The Fantasy

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: In 2019, I had the pleasure of reading my favorite book of that year and one of my all-time favorites since this blog began, The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'mere Younossi. This stunningly beautiful and allegorical love story is set in Afghanistan and stars Zuli and Lamar. In a modern day fairy tale, the duo are given a task to search for a fig blossom. They travel through various dream like landscapes and are aided by magical guides before they reach the end of their quest and find love with each other. They are also given a much larger task of sharing the lessons that they learned about love and empathy with the world. I did not exaggerate when I described The Unseen Blossom as "walking into someone else's dream." 

Well, I now have the pleasure of reviewing The Unseen Path, the sequel, and it's a thorny pleasure. Not because it's a bad book. In fact, it's just the opposite. However, if The Unseen Blossom is a fantastic dream, then The Unseen Path is what happens after the dreamer wakes up and reality sets in. The Unseen Path shows us the real Afghanistan in which Zuli and Lamar live. It is a world in which it is difficult to share such a fantastic journey among intense poverty and strict laws, a romance between lovers of different social classes, and ideas of empathy and love that are hard to share in a country that is torn apart by war.

The book begins where The Unseen Blossom ends. Zuli and Lamar have returned from their journey.There is a strong tonal shift in the book that is both jarring, but at the same time realistic in how quickly the world can change for people. The first half of the book somewhat retains the fantastic elements of the previous book, though bordering more on romantic comedy rather than fantasy. There are Zuli's regal but distant parents who are bound by tradition. There is Zuli's loyal maternal nanny, Gulnar. There are some seriocomic moments that illustrate the class differences between the pair.

 It seems that Samad and Younossi are invoking a Jane Austen-esque comedy of manners involving star crossed lovers. 

Then reality crashes in and the Reader is aware that this book is set Afghanistan in 1979.

The Soviet-Afghan War is foreshadowed in the first half of the book by rumors of war. Zuli's father, the king, fears that Russia may invade. But like a murderer in a movie that is first introduced as an extra where the audience's focus is on the lovers in the foreground, these rumors are mere whispers or dark clouds on the horizon. Only in hindsight, after a second reading, do those dark clouds become important.

Once war hits, it does so in a way that catapults Zuli, Lamar, and the Reader headlong into reality. There is so much grief and anguish, partly because it is so unexpected. The destroyed buildings which only chapters before held such friendly people are reduced to rubble. People like Zuli and Lamar make every day plans to get together, go to work, share a drink, or just hang out only to be cruelly ripped apart possibly never to see each other again. 

It would be tempting to make Zuli and Lamar soldiers, warriors, and hell bent on revenge against the people who destroyed their country (and really who could blame them?). But that path would contradict the lessons that they learned in The Unseen Blossom. They use their talents, abilities, and personalities to aid the people around them. To provide healing, education, empathy, and love through their actions. They are learning to put into practical use the lessons that they have been taught. Those lessons take them through the immense grief and suffering that surround them.

Is The Unseen Path a better book than The Unseen Blossom? Well, they are so different that it's almost like comparing two completely different entities. Even though they are written by the same authors, featuring the same deuteragonist characters, and carry similar themes. The Unseen Blossom is a one of a kind spiritual fantasy into a dream world. The Unseen Path shows one how to put the love, magic, and kindness that is shown in the dream world into the real one. It shows how one can turn that fantasy into reality and plant the blossom that grows a better world.

New Book Alert: The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L’mere Younossi; Beautiful Magical Allegorical Modern Fairy Tale About Empathy and Love

New Book Alert: The Unseen Blossom by Zlaikha Y. Samad and L’mere Younossi; Beautiful Magical Allegorical Modern Fairy Tale About Empathy and Love




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The Unseen Blossom reads almost like a fairy tale. Once Upon a Time, a princess meets a handsome commoner. They are given a task to go on a journey to retrieve a magical object. Along the way, they encounter other creatures that either help or hinder their progress giving them side quests that add to their journey. After much struggle, they reach their goal and fall in love.

Cut and dry, The Unseen Blossom would be no different from “Cinderella” or “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp,” but the authors, Zlaikha Y. Samad and L'mere Younossi made their fairytale much deeper than the usual clichés. Instead The Unseen Blossom is a beautiful allegorical tale about love and empathy that has plenty of romance and magic that the best fairy tales share. It is for all ages and people of all faiths.

Princess Zuli, an Afghan princess, visits her favorite fig tree in her garden but while caring for the tree she is pushed onto the path of Lamar, a shoemaker's son. The two encounter a rock creature that tells them that Afghanistan is a country torn apart by war, bloodshed, and inequality. What can help save it is a fig blossom. The two are destined to work together to find it and bring it to Kabul.

This will be an odd quest. (After all, who has ever seen a fig tree blossom?) But journey they do through a landscape of fairies, royal fish, flying horses, talking birds and many strange landscapes with such names as The Garden of Tulips, The Garden of Lily Ponds, and The Garden of Roses to reach their goal.

It's kind of strange to say this about a book that has no illustrations, but The Unseen Blossom is a visually beautiful book. Samad and Younossi's writing creates evocative word pictures that are vibrant almost hallucinatory. The secret is in the little details such as their description of a waterfall in which the “water pounded onto the rocks below, creating an enticing silvery pool. Under the moon's gaze, the waterfall looked like a wall of shimmering silver and gold coins.”

Some of the most beautiful sections are in the Garden of Tulips and the Garden of Roses. The former features the characters traveling through a garden of different colored flowers that are so delicately described that the fragrances leaps off the pages.

The flora in the Garden of Roses is a somewhat disappointing follow up consisting solely of white roses, but the bird life more than makes up for that. Not only are they different types, but they are so dense that there are moments where the bird's wings look like something else; crows resemble a night sky, doves take the form of wings, multicolored plumages resemble tiaras and gowns. These details and descriptions give off the impression that the Reader is walking into someone else's dream.

Besides the dream like setting, Samad and Younossi give us compelling characters to take this fairy tale journey. Zuli is hardly a damsel in distress. She is aware of the situations outside the palace walls because she often dressed as a commoner to sneak out. She is very adventurous and sometimes haughty. (She engages in a few quarrels with Lamar along the way.) However she is also skilled in diplomacy such as when she negotiates with a tyrannical fish queen who surprisingly acquiesces to her suggestion with little argument. Zuli has what it takes to be a good ruler especially in a male dominated society.

Lamar is also a developed character. While not a prince, he is extremely charming as he shows in a letter he composes to Zuli revealing his deep feeling for her. He is quite intelligent as he is able to recognize signs and portents. He is also very protective of Zuli as we learn that he used to follow her on her excursions out of the palace. Throughout the book, Zuli and Lamar show that they are more than their titles of princess and commoner and that is the point of their journey.

As Zuli and Lamar travel, they probe into their inner consciousness and become self-actualized. Some characters appear that had previous connections to them through dreams and stories, implying that they are spirit guides to help them on their path.

Part of this self-actualization is empathy. Every time they help other characters or each other, they understand their predicament and do all they can to change that. They know that to help heal a country that has been torn apart by war, people need to empathize with each other and see others as people and not enemies incapable of understanding.

Banned Books Special: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; A Moving Novel About Friendship in Time of War and Conflict

Banned Books Special: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini; A Moving Novel About Friendship in Time of War and Conflict

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: When we are kids, we are told and believe that everything is going to be okay. We believe that our best friends will be our best friends for life, our families will always be together, and that the bad things that happen in the world that grown-ups talk about on the news won't possibly affect us. We look forward to our favorite games, cartoons, summer vacations and holidays like Christmas with great excitement. As we grow older and are hit with the realities of death, divorce, poverty, war and so on we become more aware how dark life really is and look back on those childhood days with an idyllic nostalgia.




Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is about that. It is told from the point of view of Amir, an Afghan man who recalls his childhood friendship with wondrous detail and how that friendship changed because of world events and Amir’s own weaknesses.




Amir’s best friend growing up was Hassan, the son of his family's servant. The two grew up in 1970’s Kabul and even though they are separated by class, ethnicity, and religion (Hassan’s family are poor Hazara Shiite Muslims while Amir’s are wealthy Pashtun Sunni Muslims.), the two share some things in common. They both lost their mothers as infants (Amir's died in childbirth and Hassan's walked out on him and his father shortly after he was born.) and their fathers were also childhood friends as well as master and servant. Amir and Hassan share many interests such as American Western films, adventure stories which Amir reads and Hassan listens, and kite flying. Kite flying is a particularly important past time as the two participate in the annual Kite Flying Festival Events in which Amir flies the kite and Hassan runs after it. Hosseini develops his two lead characters really well as he explores their childhood games, interests, and families. Even though there are some conflicts, the two are portrayed with the innocent idealism of childhood. They are ready for fun days, adventure, and dreaming of their future until life and reality hits them in the faces forcing them to mature long before they reach adulthood.




The two families become affected by the Soviet attack on Afghanistan and the constant days of bombs, armies, and fighter planes that fill the Afghan landscape. They are also affected by the increasing racism that Amir’s classmates feel towards other ethnic groups like the Hazara. One classmate, Assef openly admires Hitler’s Final Solution and is fond of taunting and physically bullying Hassan for being from a different ethnic group.

Besides the troubles from the outside world, Amir also recognizes conflict at home. While Hassan swears unconditional loyalty to Amir, Amir feels guilty that he doesn't feel the same. As an adult, he is filled with guilt for all of the times that he teased Hassan for being illiterate or pushed his loyalty by bossing Hassan around. Above all, he feels remorse for his jealousy that his father, Baba treated both Hassan and Amir equally and that he got along with the active practical Hassan better than the introverted literary Amir.




Both the political and the private struggles culminate during the Kite Flying Festival when Hassan is attacked and raped by Assef and his friends. Instead of defending his best friend, Amir ran in fear. Ashamed of his actions, Amir orchestrates the dismissal of Hassan and his father, Ali from Amir's family home and his life.




Even though the two friends are separated, the Soviet-Afghanistan conflict and Hassan's rape followed by Amir’s inaction continue to follow Amir. Even as he and his father flee Afghanistan for America and live a life as impoverished refugees, Hassan continues to haunt Amir like a ghost. Even when Hassan’s not there in body, he’s still there in spirit and in Amir’s consciousness.




Despite the troubles both in his former country and in his mind, Amir begins to settle in America. He rekindles his relationship with Baba as the old man mourns his former life, befriends only other Afghan refugees, and health declines. Amir becomes his caregiver seeing a man who he once thought of as having a high honor code, shriveled into despair. Amir also marries another Afghan immigrant with a troubled romantic past and begins a career as a talented best-selling author.




Just when Amir begins to settle in his new life, he receives a letter from an old friend that forces him to return to Afghanistan. The chapters when Amir returns to Afghanistan are among the most heartbreaking as he sees a country torn apart by war. He travels among destroyed buildings, little vegetation, the Taliban ruling their country with violent and religious dogma, adults with missing limbs and gone mad with grief, and children who have been deprived of their childhoods. Afghanistan becomes like a giant graveyard as Amir recalls his youth which seemed so pleasant at the time and contrasts it to the destroyed country before him.




Amir's return to Afghanistan also gives him a chance to confront his past guilt. He learns the truth of some family secrets involving his father, Amir, and Hassan and also learns of Hassan's current whereabouts. In one suspenseful passage Amir encounters a former enemy turned Taliban leader, and Hassan's young son. This moment and the aftermath when Amir bonds with the boy give Amir a second chance to face his old fears and atone for his past inaction in running when Hassan needed him the most.




The Kite Runner is a moving novel about a friendship that is torn apart by war, deception, and conflict. But ultimately it is about getting beyond that conflict and reconciling with and forgiving others and oneself.