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Sikander
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Sikander (2010) (edit title/settings)

by M. Salahuddin Khan (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

It’s 1986. Seventeen-year-old Sikander dreams of studying and living in America. But enraged after a father-and-son confrontation over an unintended indiscretion about the family, he feels compelled to leave his comfortable Peshawar, Pakistan home. He soon encounters Afghan mujahideen fighters... read more

Summary edit see section history

Sikander is a 17 year-old Pakistani who's passionate about winning freedom from Soviet occupation for his fellow ethnic Pashtuns in neighboring Afghanistan. It's 1986, a time when Ronald Reagan's commitment to the same cause makes Sikander love just about everything American and along with... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Sikander is a 17 year-old Pakistani who's passionate about winning freedom from Soviet occupation for his fellow ethnic Pashtuns in neighboring Afghanistan. It's 1986, a time when Ronald Reagan's commitment to the same cause makes Sikander love just about everything American and along with Afghanistan's freedom, his other great yearning is to study and live in America one day. But when a family crisis leads to a naive indiscretion by Sikander, the resulting verbal lashing from his mother and then his overbearing father who also strikes him, provokes Sikander into leaving his comfortable Peshawar life and home. Staying the night in a nearby mosque, Sikander meets a handful of visiting mujahideen who sensing his passions, convince him to join their struggle. With Pakistani ISI assistance, they take him by mule across the mountains to their remote Afghan village where aside from taking part in several skirmishes, he meets Rabia, a smart, independent village girl, for whom he begins to have feelings. After two years of bitter fighting, decisively aided by America’s long-awaited weapons, Sikander and the mujahideen prevail, and as the emerging victory underscores what has by now become their outright love for each other, Sikander and Rabia marry. Feeling that his life has acquired more meaning, Sikander takes Rabia back with him to Pakistan, hoping for reconciliation with his parents, who it turns out, are regretful of having driven Sikander away, proud of their son’s role in the mujahideen victory, and overjoyed at his safe return together with his new bride.

The years pass as Sikander becomes a prosperous entrepreneur, a devoted husband to Rabia and eventually, a loving father to their children, all the while, preserving his dream of living in America until that is, late one September evening it is tragically shattered as he and his family members witness live on CNN, the horror of 9/11. When America's military response has her country squarely in its sights, Rabia urges Sikander to do something to help her family to flee for the safety of Pakistan. Assisted by old ISI friends from the Soviet era, he slips across the border to persuade his wife's family members—some of them now Taliban—to leave with him and although his efforts pay off, while briefly separated from his escaping companions, Sikander himself is not so lucky, a fact that places him on a collision course with the one country he’s always dreamed of—America.

Characters/People edit see section history

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Organizations edit see section history

  • Mujahideen: Afghan warriors in armed resistance against Soviet occupation from 1979 through 1989
  • ISI: Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence - a secret organization broadly equivalent to America's CIA
  • CIA: American Central Intelligence Agency
  • DRA: Democratic Republic of Afghanistan - the name given to Afghanistan by the communist governments during the post-Zahir shah era until the end of Najibullah Ahmadzai's toppling from power by the Northern Alliance.
  • SAS: British Special Air Services - similar to America's Delta Force, Navy Seals. Special Ops and Special Services military forces.
  • Northern Alliance: Afghan coalition of several typically non Pashtun tribes and militias
  • Taliban: Afghan movement originating in the early 1990s and forming a government of most of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 when US sponsored Northern Alliance and Southern Alliance displaced them from power.
  • al Qaeda: Movement emerging from aftermath of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and dedicated to what it terms a Global Jihad against with unclear overall objectives but widely reported to vary from elimination of occupation of Muslim lands, to installation of a global Muslim Caliphate, to propagation of Islam to be the sole world religion. It derives much of its spiritual basis from a narrow, conservative sub-branch of Salafism which itself is a small sub-branch of Islam.
  • PAF: Pakistan Air Force
  • RAF: Royal Air Force - United Kingdom's air force
  • Deobandi: Followers of a conservative interpretation of Sunni Islam originating from the town of Deoband, India at the institution called Dar-ul-Uloom. It emerged in the 19th Century as a reaction to fusions of religious practices then prevalent between Hindu, Christian and Muslim religion, in an attempt to distill the pure form of Islam not ridden with imported practices and internally generated innovations of practices.
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First Sentence edit see section history

The late August sun had passed its peak in the northwestern sky, transforming the light in Aftab's classroom from its previously drab gray to a blazing orange yellow hue.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Chapter 1 Difficult Times
Chapter 2 Mujahideen
Chapter 3 Khyber Nights
Chapter 4 Laghar Juy
Chapter 5 Ambush
Chapter 6 Applecross
Chapter 7 Stinger
Chapter 8 Arghandab
Chapter 9 Rabia
Chapter 10 Home
Chapter 11 Wahid Electric
Chapter 12 Students
Chapter 13 Enduring Freedom
Chapter 14 Qunduz
Chapter 15 Sheberghan
Chapter 16 Jahannam
Chapter 17 Family
Chapter 18 Carolina
Chapter 19 Redemption
Appendix A - Glossary
Appendix B – Maps
Acknowledgments
References
About the Author

Glossary edit see section history

  • Glossary: This book has an extensive glossary. Visit the book's website and click on the Glossary menu item at the top of any of the site's pages.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Misunderstanding: How people's lives can ebb and flow based on misunderstanding and the ease with which we fall victim to it. The propensity for misunderstanding at the interface between cultures, oftentimes the small differences make for the biggest misunderstandings. In leaping to judgment about how a moral code functions when it is similar to our own familiar one, we often lose sight of the nuanced differences and act incorrectly based on supposition of matching perspectives when the differences are indeed meaningful.
  • fear of Islam: The perception of inherent evil and manic agenda held about Islam by many non-Muslims is squarely attacked by providing an immersion into the daily lives of generally ordinary Muslim people who have the same hopes, wishes, dreams and weaknesses as most other people. By bringing the reader closer in to the world of a mainstream Muslim life, we can avoid misunderstanding and the devastation caused by it.
  • Fragility of civilization: The inner civilization of "moral compass" and how it curbs misbehavior is examined at its margins when decent human beings fall victim to immoral acts against others. Examples such as the famous Stanford and Milford experiments have shown how quickly we can each slide into inhumanity. William Golding's Lord of the Flies examines this subject also but with characters more in a formative state of development where morals haven't' yet been fully formed and into that vacuum, we find the laws of the jungle increasingly take hold. SIKANDER illustrates how readily this can happen even when we've fully developed as moral creatures.
  • Forgiveness, Salvation, Redemption, Family, Hope: Within family and across cultures. Humanity and its inherent indestructibility in each of us leads to forgiveness and redemption even though we may bury our innate humanity with years of antipathy and hatred toward perceived "otherness".

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. M. Salahuddin Khan (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Pamela Guerrieri (Editor) - Edited the First American Edition
  2. M. Salahuddin Khan (Illustrator) - Cover art and interior maps and iillustrations.Overall book typesetting and graphic design

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: KARAKORAM PRESS - An imprint of QMarket Corporation
Country: United States of America
Publication Date: July 2010
ISBN: 978-0-578-05288-5
Page Count: 586

Awards edit see section history

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
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