A bacha posh is a girl who is made to live as a boy in society, to supposedly bring good luck to her family. And “One Half from the East follows the journey of one such Bacha Posh, Obayda.

Obayda and her family move from Kabul to a village in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan, after her father’s leg is blown away in a car blast. One day, Obayda’s aunt has an idea to get the family the good luck they desperately need- To turn Obayda, the youngest of four sisters, into a bacha posh. Obayda is now Obayd.

Initially off to a rocky start and missing her life as a girl, Obayda soon discovers the joy of being a boy. Spared from daily chores, she plays outside every day, enjoying her freedom, and hanging upside down from trees. She is allowed to have meat, while her sisters are served sauce and vegetables. And best of all, she starts getting closer to her father than she was ever before…

At school, she makes friends with another bacha posh, Rahim, who was earlier Rahima. Talking to each other, they realize how much they were missing out on when they were girls. And as realization strikes, they feel that they never want to be girls again. But they have to, since they are growing up, and the clock is ticking.

To remedy this, they seek help from a folktale, that says that if you walk under a rainbow, the gender you are at that moment, remains your gender forever. That meant, that if Obayd and Rahim could get to the rainbow, they would be boys forever.

So they set out, to find their rainbow. Obayd talks to his father and learns that in the depths of the jungle near their village, lies a waterfall. And where there is a waterfall, there is a rainbow. So the boys go three times, in search of seven bands of colours, all in vain. Then suddenly, the day they had planned their next trip to the waterfall, Rahim stops coming to school.

After about a week without Rahim, Obayd decides to go to Rahim’s house. He meets Rahim’s father and makes a devastating discovery. Rahim had been changed back into a girl. She was engaged to the warlord of Afghanistan. Rahim was Rahima again. And Obayd was lost…

She decides the only way she can know anything at all, is to visit Abul Khaliq, the warlord’s, home. She sees Rahima there, her dress sitting awkwardly on her body, her shoulders hunched forward, a scarf tied around her head. She looked nothing like the Rahim who had taught Obayd to stand without falling. The Rahim who had taught Obayda to believe, and to live. Rahima tells Obayda to go and find the waterfall, to do whatever she could, to prevent ending up like she had.

And so Obayd goes, in search of the rainbow, at 10 in the morning, and doesn’t return till after dark. When she returns home, she comes back drenched to the eyes, Her clothes muddy, and her legs killing her. Her mother became furious with her and decided that it was time to change Obayda back to her original self. For, the much-needed luck had arrived.

So that was that. Obayda was back, and she started to go to the girl’s school. However, there was a difference. She had realized, that she was lucky to have ever even been a bacha posh. And the truth was, that nothing could change that.

There were so many girls in Afghanistan, that had never known what it felt to run around carefree, to climb trees, to be loud, to come home with dirt on their clothes. And she had experienced all of that. So she decided to embrace who she was, deep down, not who she looked like. And, her father was no more an apparition, a ghost, or a mere spirit. He was back in flesh and blood and loved his daughters more than anything. All was well…

This book is a brilliant one. Although it didn’t bring tears to my eyes like Khaled Hosseini does, it was still a well-written book. I would definitely recommend it to people who like seeing women gain freedom, as well as anyone who is a sucker for happy endings. All in all, well written, and well-plotted…