Thursday, 17 March 2016

The Zahir

The Zahir is novel by Paulo Coelho .Its all about obsession,love,marriage and Zahir ,Arabic meaning incapable of going unnoticed .In book Zahir is Esther ,narrator's wife. Coelho compares marriage with a set of railway tracks which stay together forever but fail to come any closer and question by railway tracks are 4 feet 8 ½ inches apart. The novel is all about journey of a dormant marriage and increasing true love between two souls.


The story starts unnamed narrator get suspect as his wife got missing so the police and the press ,thought he would be behind in disappearance of  his wife, Esther. The narrator was unable to figure out where she had gone.Thinking is she abducted or demolished their marriage.The unnamed narrator of this story is a wildly successful novelist and celebrity who lives in Paris with his wife Esther.The police and the press suspect him as his wife got missing.When Esther disappears,narrator is getting tormented by the mystery of what has happened to her .Is she abducted or demolished or their marriage in search for another love?. Their marriage has hit a dry spot and she is restless, wanting to move on in search of her own happiness.The last person Esther come in contact with Mikhail, so narrator start searching for him. From Mikhail he found Mikhail that Esther, who had been a war correspondent against the wishes of her husband (the protagonist), had left in a search for peace, as she had trouble living with her husband.So author realizes that first his self then Esther and for him Zahir is Esther. So Mikhail helps him to explore his mission of spreading love by holding sessions in hotels and homeless people living on the streets.Spreading love is not only by saying your love story but the worst truth of their love and marriages. MiIkhail also tells him about the voices he hear from his childhood (Kazakhstan ) but people used to think its a epileptic .As narrator was so frequent in falling in love with any women and his current love Marie,who warns about Mikhail. She always wants narrator to search his Zahir. So Mikhail told him story that Esther had helped him to travel from Kazakhstan to France as a journalist she needs his help to cross the border on foot as her visa was turned down.So Narrator suspects that she may be in Kazakhstan.So he decides to travel Kazakhstan with Mikhail ,and he goes to places where his wife worked, meets the people she met and discovers that she used to hand out pieces of blood-stained cloth from a soldier’s uniform only to certain people. Why she never gave him a piece of that cloth bothers him no end.At last he discover her,who was interested in getting to know herself by making carpets.He meets him and she give him a piece of blooded cloth .So at last Narrator meets his Zahir.

The Zahir ,knows ourself than others  and revive lost love. This is all about love of oneself, of nature, of humanity, and of the beloved.

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