Memory and Trauma in "Kandahar" and "Woh Jo Khoye Gaye"

Upon comparing the short story "Woh Jo Khoye Gaye" with Makhmalbaf's movie "Kandahar",  one can draw broad comparisons between the two. I believe that what essentially links the two literary works regardless of their different genres, plot and narrative and the time of production, is the role of memory and trauma. I believe that the essential condition of the exilic figure in this comes through not from mere displacement but more from its connection and obsession with the past. Jennifer Yusin's essay called "The Silence of Partition: Borders, Trauma, and Partition History" provides a better articulation of how history is informed by memory and trauma. "History has been rearticulated as a continuous movement across geographical, cultural, and temporal borders, becoming through its non-linear passages a condition or cultural symptom that attempts to rethink the relationship between the past and present. The move to experience and memory has, in turn, focused attention on the individual and the status of testimony... "(454). Imagining the two texts as representing a continuous series of events which are fluid rather than temporally fixed, and which inform the subsequent experiences of the exilic figures allows us to bring "Woh Jo Khoye Gaye" and Kandahar together.

More specifically, they both contain figures preoccupied with and stuck in the past. While Nafas' entire mission is to correct the wrong that was done earlier and rescue her sister, the four men in Intizar Hussain's story are embroiled in a constant struggle to remember and recall. In fact, they are denied the luxury of being able to do just that; remember. Does this represent a position of double exile for them? It is said that trauma is "uniquely characterized by the suddenness of its occurrence and the belatedness" (Yusin 455). As in, trauma is neither immediately processed, nor completely dealt with. This process of trauma for me is symbolized by the loss and search of something in the land that is almost purgatorial in both cases. In the short story, the men have no idea where they came from or where they are headed; what they are stuck in is a long continuous land. They are searching for a companion, but also trying to recover themselves, relying solely on their failing memory to do so. In the movie, the desert land of Iran and then Afghanistan again represents that land which is neither there nor here, and in which the exilic figure is continually searching, hoping and losing. Nafas is not only looking for her sister, but also a part of her that relates to her nationality and her return to the land. Therefore, the land which the figures are traversing in the two texts represents a search for a lost identity that is affected by the memories and trauma of the exilic figures.