A Most Wanted Man

Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. You can think that somebody is cruel, then later see that they have a soft side. Or that someone is a hard core nationalist, when in truth they are just in it for themselves. One such man is Karpov, Issa's father. Born and raised in the former USSR, Karpov rose quickly through the ranks to become a colonel of the red army. He was seen by almost everyone as a die hard communist and nationalist. But in fact, he was the opposite. He started out by taking a Chechnyan mistress. The Chechen and the Russian hated each other. The author comments "the Russian pounding the place [Chechnya] to ashes, and the Chechen returning the compliment whenever they got the chance" (Carre 151). The two groups had be fighting ever since anyone could remember, and there was a mutual hate so strong, that when Karpov's mistress's family found out that she had been with a Russian, she was killed. Karpov was able to rescue her boy, later known as Issa. Along with this disloyalty to the USSR, Karpov did something even worse. As the USSR was crumbling, Karpov started selling secrets to the British. The author tells, "A walk-in red army colonel who'd seen which way the wind was blowing decided to sell off his assets before the Big Crash" (Carre 149). The assets were government secrets. Karpov had never cared about the idealism of communism. Instead he was only concerned about bettering his own situation. Very different than the show he was putting on for the USSR.

It is amazing how different people can be after you get to know them. It can be easy to judge a person at first sight. We do it all of the time. But everybody has a side of them that is hidden until you take the time to get to know them. Of course, there is always the chance that that side is less than desirable. But you will never know unless you get to know a person. Yes I know you aren't going to go up to everyone in the street and say "Hi, my name is...", but don't make any major judgments until you know someone. Who knows? You might have more in common with a person than you thought.