A Nobleman from Khorasan

by Khalilullah Khalili, M.F. Moonzajer (Translator)

A Robin-hood of Afghanistan seasoned with love, passion and nobility. The enemy had crossed oceans and mountains. They had come from Great Britain. Marches of their army had ignited anger and vengeance in every home. Men, women, and children scowled at beardless, long hairy mustached soldiers in the city. Anger had boiled inside the bone and blood of every citizen. They believed the soldiers holding guns and patrolling all over the city were like walking deaths; their blood had frozen like zombies, and their souls were lifeless in their muscles…

165 pages, Paperback

Published February 23, 2019

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Days passed and one night in his decorated silky throne three creatures slept. A hero in simple clothes; filled with love, happiness and gratitude. A beautiful innocent girl; in fears and doubts, and a rifle; representing a symbol of courage and righteous.

Moonzajer's translation of this novel by Khalilullah Khalili, one of the most important Afghan writers, is a bit rough when it comes to grammar and formatting, but I'm just really grateful that I am able to read this at all.
The thing with Afghan storytelling is that it comes from a culture where verbal exchange of stories and poetry is much more popular than written text and so while Afghanistan undoubtedly has a long history of poets and the kind, it's not something that was put on paper much, let alone taken across borders to the rest of the world. Reading the poetry collection An Assembly of Moths with a fantastic introduction by anthropologist Whitney Azoy parallel to this novel actually made the significance of Afghanistan's verbal culture even clearer to me and made for a perfect companion piece to this.
Anyway, given all of that, it's great to find a classic Afghan text in English at all and Khalili's A Nobleman from Khorasan definitely serves as an interesting window into the country's history.

This book is a sort-of biography of Habibullah Kalakani who was king of Afghanistan for 9 months in 1929 and is praised by many as a hero akin to Robin Hood with a rags-to-riches story as a common man on the throne.
It's even more interesting to me because Kalakani basically preceded Amanullah Khan who was probably one of the most interesting Afghan kings as he was the first one to actively attempt to modernize this very traditional country in a major way.
I actually went into this book expecting Khalili to completely villainize Amanullah not only because the story involves his exit from the throne after things didn't go too well, but also because Khalili's father was reportedly killed as a result of Amanullah's original rise to it. I was pleasantly surprised though to see that Amanullah wasn't just given all the blame for everything and, on the contrary, even was given some respect or empathy at points.

On the other side though, it's a bit hard to tell how much artistic freedom has been taken when it comes to the protagonist Habibullah Kalakani. From what I gathered, this biography has been somewhat controversial and I believe that might be because Kalakani is portrayed here as a completely fair and noble common man, intolerant to crime and injustice. But common sources claim that he has been involved in organized crime himself.
It's actually funny because when you read up on the real-life person, you can see that he was known for being part of bandit groups and eventually arrested for it. The book actually picks up on that but instead of being part of said bandit groups, in Khalili's novel he is actually stopping them, but is then framed by the feds and wrongfully imprisoned.
I'm not claiming to know which version is closer to the truth, but it's just interesting to see this discrepancy.

When it comes to the prose, there is the occasional great choice of words, though it is hard to say how much of that is Khalili's phrasing and how much of Moonjazer's translation. There are typos and syntax errors, but it's clear enough to understand what's going on.
The story structure very much feels like a story one would tell rather than write, which would make sense given the aforementioned cultural emphasis of verbal storytelling in the country. Though it's fair to note that this novel was actually written down during its conception while Khalili was living in the USA.

I think in the end I appreciate this mostly for its cultural and historical significance; for being this almost immediate glimpse into the history of this country as perceived and retold by a prominent witness of the time.

[David Garza · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book's back cover tries to sell this as a "Robin Hood" type story, but it's really not. It's better understood as an Afghan story, an early-20th century history and biography of sorts, which is what drew me into reading it.

There are definitely glimpses and moments of great poetry in the words here, but it's a shame they are all too fleeting. I'm not sure if there are other translations of this work out there, but if not, there probably deserves to be something handled better. In the beginning, I was feeling I was getting the feel of the flow, despite some of the grammar issues, but it wasn't too long that things kind of fell apart for me. And it wasn't just the individual grammar and syntax issues. Yes, those piled up, but the work as a whole started to not hold together well. The translation didn't handle continuity very well and it was easy to get lost with how people and events tied together. I wanted to like this so much more, but I guess you never know what you're going to get when a writer's works have not been translated to English much at all, so the small sample size is not enough to separate wheat from the chaff.

I'm wondering if the English translations of Khalilullah Khalili's "Quatrains of Khalilullah Khalili" and "An Assembly of Moths" are given better treatment. I certainly hope so. And I hope this works get another shot of being translated into English.

[Nelson DeWitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone unless they already had a background in the history of Habidullahs reign of terror. The book is as dishonest as “My Life: From Brigand to King” weaving a highly fictionalized story of Habidullahs life while claiming itself as factual.

This book isn't all bad though, there is some beautiful poetry in here, and we're painted a picture of a Robin Hood figure who becomes a king in a concise, simple narrative. Even if the reality is more of a bandit becoming a pragmatic tyrant. The issue though is that this poetry only comes across for about 10% of this book. Throughout the rest, poor translation and typos trample the beautiful descriptive language.