Show caption Children of war ... Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian Book of the day 99 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai review – the heart of Afghanistan In this phenomenal debut, a boy’s epic quest across his war-torn country serves as an act of remembrance for a forgotten people Mohammed Hanif Thu 21 Mar 2019 07.30 GMT Share on Facebook

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There is a myth propagated by much of the western press that the current Afghan troubles started after 9/11, when the then Taliban government refused to hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States. What did they expect? Actually, the endless Afghan war started 22 years earlier, when the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan to prop up a fledgling communist government. Many western and Muslim countries came together to pour money into what became a multinational jihad network in and around Afghanistan. What did they expect?

Professional Afghan watchers may have noticed that the province of Logar increasingly shows up not only in news feeds but in the memoirs and fictions of American veterans. In these books, US soldiers go hunting Afghans and in the process develop PTSD, return home and get a degree and write deeply moving stuff about war. These works of literature are as well crafted as their weaponry. They usually show us the beating heart of the poor American soldier caught up in a conflict not of their own making.

In his debut novel, 25-year-old Jamil Jan Kochai, who was born in Pakistan and grew up in the US, has written a book that tells the story of those being hunted. It’s something more than well crafted; it’s phenomenal. The year is 2005, and 12-year-old Marwand returns to his village in Logar along with his parents and two younger siblings. He has been in the US for six years, but now he feels he is back where he belongs. As an outsider and a guest, he is feted by his extended family and reunited with legions of cousins, all growing up in a constant war. He is also reunited with Budabash, the wolflike family dog he used to playfully tease. One day when he approaches, Budabash bites off the tip of his finger and later disappears: Marwand and three of his cousins set out to bring the dog back. During their epic journey they find out more about their land and people and history.

This is more than a coming-of-age novel. It delves into Afghanistan’s past by retelling its stories

But this is more than a coming-of-age novel. It delves into Afghanistan’s past by retelling its stories, as Marwand’s adventures are punctuated by the tales that extended families tell each other. There are stories branching out of stories: of past battles and shit-eating jinns, of impossible journeys and encounters with Soviet invaders, of reluctant Taliban and willing Afghan collaborators, stories of those who refuse to pick up a gun and themselves become a story. Many of these stories are breathtaking. Some are as scary as waiting for a bomb to fall, or for a lost son to return; others are as tender as a little flower that survives the Daisy Cutters.

The only way to endure an unending war is to remember its stories, to remember those who disappeared. Besides being a cracking read, this novel is an act of remembrance for a people the world has forgotten. And it shows that killing other people’s children to ensure the safety of our own is not an adequate security policy.

Kochai’s book has a big heart. He works on a vast canvas, cramming cousins of cousins into every scene and making them distinctive. Women and young girls may be covered in burqas, but they have fully developed personalities. He has a keen eye for class distinctions between the families, and evolving relationships. The fabled Afghan code of honour and strict religiosity is laid to rest here, as some pray, some don’t and some pretend to. People lie and cheat; sometimes they don’t know what to do but wait. These characters are good at waiting. Although the main narrator has a distinctive and hilarious American teenager’s voice, Kochai draws on Persian and Pushto as well as local dialects to keep telling these stories and keep moving ahead with his own.

When reading writers from places such as Afghanistan we burden them with the additional expectation of bringing us revelations that we are too lazy to find in our news feeds. And here Kochai rises to the task with a truth that three generations of thinktanks, after hundreds of billions in war effort and more billions in aid effort, haven’t been able to unearth. While battling to survive a freak flood and find the wolf dog that took away his finger, Marwand says: “Wallah, I am sick of this war that I can’t win and can’t afford to lose.”