“I never believed I would flip the channels and find my name as an answer to one of the Jeopardy questions,” proclaimed Khaled Hosseini during his Humanitarian Lecture at the Open Visions Forum on campus. Born in Afghanistan, Hosseini and his family eventually came to America as political refugees. It was in the United States that Hosseini received his medical degree and practiced internal medicine.

These many accomplishments would make Hosseini, by anyone’s standards, a success. But most of us know of Khaled Hosseini as the author of the number three best seller book for 2005, The Kite Runner. My English class was fortunate enough to study this work of literature, and not only attend the Open Visions Forum, but also have the opportunity to have a one hour private Q&A with Hosseini.

When I first heard that Khaled Hosseini was coming to our class to talk with us personally, I was star struck.  Our professors emphasized the importance of making our questions sophisticated and classy, but the second Hosseini began talking to us, I realized that he was actually talking to us.

The Kite Runner speaks of the tremendous humanitarian crisis that exists today, and has existed for over 30 years in Afghanistan. Hosseini explained the struggles he encountered while writing his novel.

“All novels are in a sense autobiographies,” he stated. “So much of something you believe, something you have faith in winds up in that experience.” While Hosseini explained that “writing has to serve a story,” he discussed the constant battle he encountered between talking of the many horrendous realities that are present in Afghanistan, and sticking to the actual narrative. He underlined that he had to allow those realities to be experienced through the eyes of the characters. In a way, these humanitarian crises became the backdrop to the story. “I hoped my book would open a window, however narrow, into a culture that has been put into the wrong hands…demonized,” said Hosseini.

The most overwhelmingly humble component of both his personal discussion with my class, and of the Open Visions lecture was that Khaled Hosseini doesn’t believe he has made enough of an impact. While his nonprofit organization, The Khaled Hosseini Foundation has provided relief to over two million Afghan refugees, and The Kite Runner has sold over ten million copies world-wide, Hosseini doesn’t think he has done enough. “[Afghanistan has] encountered 30 years of a national nightmare…and they’re tired of it,” explained Hosseini.

Khaled Hosseini returned to his homeland of Afghanistan for the first time in 2007, and described his trip back to Kabul and parts of Northern Afghanistan as “truly heartbreaking.” Hosseini illustrated the paradox between coming home and feeling like a tourist in his own country. Guilt was not something that only his fictional character of Amir struggled with, but is also an internal reproach within himself. He compared his feelings to those similar of “survivor’s guilt,” and that his novel doesn’t relieve that.

So, Hosseini questioned, “What do you do with that?” He offered the only solution he saw plausible for himself: action. He will continue to give back after all that he has already done. If that’s not worthy enough Jeopardy, I don’t know what is.

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