(Matinuddin, 1999, p.81)

Matinuddin perceives the Taliban in an unbiased presence. He perceives the Taliban as a group that tries to not harm or hurt the civilians of their own country instead, they are an army based group who are merely trying to bring some order and control back to their own country. Fawad, a native Afghan child in Busfield’s novel however depicts the aftermath of the real impact of the Taliban and he is not afraid to discuss how it has sadly impacted upon his family life.

Busfield provides characters such as Fawad’s mother with a voice where she is able to recount how the people of Afghanistan had initially welcomed the ‘Talibs’ into their community:

My mother told me that when the Taliban originally