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Title: The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan
Author: Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller with John DeSimone
Genre: Memoir, Immigration
Audience: Adult
My Review:
Hmmm. It’s hard to write reviews of memoirs that don’t exactly work for you, isn’t it? I don’t want to discount someone else’s life experiences. But I personally felt there were some serious issues with the writing.
Enjeela and her family experienced a terrifying journey when they left Afghanistan. They had nothing with them except the clothes on their backs and the money hidden in their shoes. They had to cross war zones, towering mountains, and international borders without proper documentation. I respect their journey and can’t even begin to fathom the fear and the hardships they faced.
But the amount of detail that Enjeela shares stretches credulity. She was born in 1975 and the Soviets invaded in late 1979, so she was four years old at that point. Yet she waxes philosophical about her country when she sees the tanks. The timeline gets very fuzzy from there. The journey took literally years and ultimately culminated with her immigration to the United States in 1986, at the age of ten or eleven. So we’ve got an awful lot of detail for someone who was between four and eleven years old. Maybe the stress and terrifying experiences left details etched in her mind or maybe she’s incorporating stories she’s heard older family members share. Maybe the ghost writer wanted to add more “exciting” details to someone’s childhood recollections. Or maybe I’m just too skeptical.
There were more things that just didn’t feel right. Enjeela is very much the leader in any decisions she and her siblings make together, despite being the youngest child in her traveling group. And then most of her siblings all but disappear from the narrative once they reach India. There are moments of very introspective, insightful reflection along the journey, and they’re presented as memories of Enjeela’s thoughts at the time. They just didn’t ring true as the thoughts of a child of her age. Maybe they’re simply Enjeela’s thoughts now as an adult but it was jarring to read these words from the perspective of a child.
Again, I am not discounting the actual journey this family undertook by any means. I hope I would have even half their strength and fortitude if I ever found myself in a similar situation (heaven forbid). I just feel that the author may have been a bit too young during these events to complete an entire memoir. A novel based on her and her family’s experiences with an afterward sharing their personal story may have been a better choice.
My Synopsis:
The second-youngest of eight children, Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller began life in a progressive Afghanistan. Women worked outside the home and wore whatever they chose. Her father worked at the US Embassy and life was good. Then the Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul. Enjeela’s family was torn apart. Her mother fled the country with three of her children; Enjeela’s father chose to stay in Afghanistan with the others. Eventually, even her patriotic father had to admit that conditions were too bad to remain in the country. He hired a guard to help Enjeela and her siblings across the border while he stayed behind. Enjeela shares her family’s long fight to be reunited in this memoir.
Recommended by:
Amazon First Reads
Similar Books:
If you liked The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan, you might also like my reviews of
- The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
- When the Moon is Low by Nadia Hashimi
- The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, translated by Ingrid Christopherson
Purchase:
Buy The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan from Malaprop’s Bookstore in beautiful Asheville, NC or
