After the end of the celebration, the dinner tablecloth is spread out. Pamir is unwilling to eat as usual. He eats a few reluctant bites, leaves the table sooner than others, and goes to the room. He lights up his cigarette and sits on a chair by the window. He fixes his eyes on a faint star flickering in the corner of the sky. The nostalgic grief that the star shoulders is felt and heard as much as its remoteness. It leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, bitterer than the thick cigarette smoke circling his head, bringing his loneliness's in Kabul’s Darulamann in a straitjacket right before his eyes, in a dilapidated house with most of its rooms in a state of severe disrepair and uninhabited. He lit up his first cigarette right at the time the pain of love was running to his bones. Moreover, for fear of losing, being forgotten, and cheated, he counted stars all his nights. “I don’t understand why I have this feeling for you . . .”
Sophia is the name of one of the three main characters in the story. The sad story of Sophia and why she and her husband resorted to illegal immigration is the reality of the lives of thousands of Afghan men and women who have been grappling with countless accidents and disturbances for the past forty years. The story is written in the romantic-social genre, narrated through two (dramatic and fictional) timelines. The Baran character in the story’s dramatic timeline is the same young Sophia of the novel’s fictional timeline. After living in Germany for 20 years, Baran (Sophia) spends the last days of her life in a nursing home. She is forty-eight and suffers from brain cancer. Her adopted son, Ahura, is her only delight that had survived the ravages of time. He is a physician doctor and works in a hospital where Baran would eventually land. Ahura addresses Baran as a mom. Ahura’s childhood is included in detail in the novel’s fictional timeline. He is the son of Mahrokh (one of the three main characters in the story). There is a great secret in Ahura’s life that he himself is not aware. According to Mahrokh’s will, Baran took custody of Ahura after her death and invited him to Germany. Ahura’s mistress is a girl named Mandegar who works as a nurse in a hospital. The madness that brought Ahura to his knees out of this gray love often evokes the past in Baran’s mind. Years ago, not too long after Baran arrived in Germany and right after he was released from the lunatic asylum, he began writing his memoirs. His memoirs narrate the fictional timeline of the novel.
Afghanistan’s civil war between the country’s ethnic and political sects hit the nail of the Taliban terrorist regime in 1996 on the head of an unfortunate population. This marked another beginning for people to flee over the borders.