Afghanistan Blog #2

The This American Life radio show gave a new in site into the book, which the book could not offer. That incite was speech. Listening to the radio gives you profoundly different view of how Said felt during the actions that take place in the book and how Said presents himself. First off I was extremely surprised with the way Said presented himself. While reading the book I thought of him as a hardened and uptight person who was the son of a politician, but in that matter I was wrong. As I heard Said talking I just got this feeling of relaxation and the idea that he didn’t really care about much anymore. His voice made me interested but made me feel that he really wasn’t looking forward to doing this interview. The way he spoke of the morgue made him seem like he still was like child, in the fact that he was very cautious but was so curious that he just had to get closer and closer without being awkward. This book also offers a new incite into the feelings if Said while he was taking part in the crucial events of the book. One of the most touching feelings that I received while listening to the radio show was when he and his father went to the site of the bombing, just outside of the Kabul Hotel. It seemed that in the book everything was just there and it happened but I never really got a good picture of what it looked like. Once I heard Said’s voice talking about it in horror, amazement, and almost crying the picture just popped into my mind of debris of both inanimate objects and human flesh lying around like chunks of scraps. This really changed my whole view of the book because it has now shown me the way that he had been writing the book, which was completely different than what I expected.