An evening with Khaled Hosseini

There’s a reservoir of patience and calm some people carry with them that seems to spring from deep experience. Maybe it’s from being denied what the heart desires, and having to make peace with what life offers. Or maybe it’s acquired by volition and discipline. But watching Khaled Hosseini interact with his many admirers yesterday at the reception, lecture and book signing at Hood College was taking a lesson in patience and grace. Here is a man who knows how to act with equanimity in the middle of turbulence. I never saw an impatient expression or gesture, and had the sense this demeanor would prevail under any circumstance – even one far removed from the idyllic campus of an American liberal arts college.

In fact this patience grew from a life of deferred expectations as Hosseini, best-selling author of “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, came of age in the United States as a refugee from his native Afghanistan. He spent his early high school years hanging out with the Cambodian students, because they didn’t understand English either. But they understood being refugees. Now the accomplished Dr. Hosseini (also a physician) is special envoy for the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees and a spokesman for refugees worldwide.

Clearly spending time at Hood College surrounded by adoring readers, students and aspiring writers is hardly the worst chore he’s endured. Even if some of the questions he’s asked have to be the most mundane, oft-repeated queries imaginable. And even if he’s pestered intermittently by a photographer who’s also a bit star-struck, all while while feeling the bond of kinship only other writers know. People who’ve struggled for years to bring a novel to completion have endured a kind of isolation few others understand – it’s an essential part of the process. He spoke eloquently of that last night as well.

I arrived as the reception was ending and didn’t get many daylight photos; however he was kind enough to let me detour him immediately afterward for a quick photo op at the library entrance. No time for planning or posing, but he gave me about the best one-minute sitting I’ve had with a subject.

Hood provost Dr. Kate Conway-Turner took the stage with Dr. Hosseini and asked questions that allowed the author to express himself over a wide range of issues, Especially fascinating to me was hearing about the transition from a peaceful, relatively prosperous life in Kabul to being a refugee without status or language skills in a place far from home. My brother and I spent six weeks in Afghanistan in the early 1970s. I was 21 then, so I could put visual information to much of Hosseini’s narrative. Anyone who has seen the film “The Kite Runner” also has some idea of the world Hosseini depicts in his stories.

The last part of the lecture was dedicated to audience questions, and then came book signing. The event exceeded my best expectations. This wasn’t an assignment, it was a learning opportunity. It’s why I love working with colleges – it’s far more than a job and they are much more than clients to me. It’s relationships with people and institutions dedicating to sharing knowledge between generations and cultures. I hope you enjoy a bit of our evening from these photos.