Good People, Patmeena Sabit’s stunning novel about an Afghan family in America, begins on a menacing note. One neighbour remarks: “[B]y then, they were all gone.” Something – we don’t know what yet – unspeakable has happened, and as we become more invested with the people involved, our dread builds alongside our curiosity.
Rahmat Sharaf is a wealthy entrepreneur who dreams of his children going to Harvard, but his son Omer sells used cars, and Zorah, his daughter, wears flashy clothes and has a boyfriend. What happens to the Sharafs is related through the recollections of the people who knew them, which when combined with newspaper clippings and police reports, gives the novel the grip of a true-crime documentary.
The book is so easy to hear, you forget how talented Sabit is in conjuring its voices, each distinctive in the clamour. “Our tongues,” says a friend, “sprouted hair trying to convince him.” A cashier describes Zorah as “long long hairs and the big big eyes and doing too much fashion”. It’s so deftly done you barely notice it, but every narrator has their own backstory – Rahmat’s estate agent has been a broker for 27 years; Zorah’s tutor scored 1,580 on his Sats.
It’s Rahmat who is the most richly drawn, a character so big he brims. He won’t drive a cab because he views the world as loaded with chances, and even when he’s a millionaire, brags about “the big bag of socks he bought for ten dollars from Costco”. He brings mangoes to a Georgetown professor because he wants Zorah to become a supreme court justice. That he treats the women in his life like queens is an aspect that goes against patriarchal stereotypes and ultimately proves tragic.
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Much of what matters is expressed in gestures. All you need to know about Rahmat is contained in one lone observation: “I saw him tear a loose thread from his pants and clean his teeth with it.” Family tenderness is casually manifested, like Zorah turning on music and getting her parents to dance. There’s a tactility about the novel that urges you to physically respond. So when a diner owner observes, “as soon as we put the food down, the kids all tucked their gadgets away without being asked”, it makes you smile. Even though you know in your stomach that its story is not a happy one, to read Good People is an exhilaration.
Mei Chin is a writer from New York City based in Dublin.
