The Kite Runner has been on international bestseller lists for all of 2005. It is Khaled Hosseini’s first novel. He is a medical doctor who lives in California. He took sanctuary there in 1980, as a political refugee, seeking asylum.
This is the story of Amir, who grew up in Afghanistan with Hassan, the son of his father’s childhood friend Ali, a Hazara (a minority like the San in Afghanistan) ethnic Shi’a Muslims. Amir felt his father, Baba, hated him since his mother died giving birth to him and because he was more interested in his mother’s books than in the world cup soccer matches.
Amir also hated the national passion, Buzkashi tournaments. Its violence was terrifying and he got sick at the sight of death. Baba’s closest friend, Rahim Khan says to Baba: “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them in with your favorite colors”, but Baba feels Amir is simply too sensitive and defenseless, always relying on Hassan to get him out of scrapes. Rahim Khan says, “So, he is not violent”. “There’s something missing in that boy”, says Baba. “Yes, a mean streak”, says Rahim Khan. Baba can hardly believe Amir is his son.
But there is one area where Amir was mean and that is to Hassan, his constant companion, playmate and his kite runner, who helped him win the kite catching contests of Kabul. Amir is so proud to gain his father’s admiration finally, but it was due to Hassan that he was able to catch the final kite and at the expense of Hassan that he won. It is the ultimate test of his character.
Hassan’s father Ali had married a first cousin much younger than himself and she ran off a week after Hassan’s birth. Everyone mocked Ali, including his wife, for his ugly limp from polio and the neighborhood children chased him, mocking his Mongoloid features. The Hazara have been persecuted since the 19th century when the Pashtun, Sunni Muslims, ruthlessly quashed them. Hassan ‘s mother, Sunnabar, rejected her baby immediately she saw his cleft lip, but we come to love him for his smile and his total devotion to Amir. They are inseparable despite their different stations in life. Ali and Hassan live in a mud hut behind the grand house of Baba and Amir.
Rahim Khan says,
“In the wintertime, Hassan took his son [Sohrab] kite running. There were not nearly as many kite tournaments as in the old days—no one felt safe outside for too long—but there were still a few scattered tournaments. Hassan would prop Sohrab on his shoulders and they would go trotting through the streets, running kites, climbing trees where kites had dropped.
“You remember Amir jan, what a good kite runner Hassan was? He was still just as good. At the end of winter Hassan and Sohrab would hang the kites they had run all winter on the walls of the main hallway. They would put them up like paintings” (page 186).
The story takes place in the 1960s. Baba built an orphanage entirely by himself and it took three years of loving work … he is a successful businessman with Rahim Khan as partner in export trade, running pharmacies and a restaurant. His wife was a teacher of Farsi literature at the university in Kabul, a beautiful woman, descended from the royal family–thus he called her his princess.
He feared and mocked the mullahs who taught his son the virtues of sakat, the duty of hadj and the namaz prayers from the Koran, anticipating their extreme and cruel interpretation of it. When the Taliban came to power the people first welcomed them, but soon they realized that things were worse than ever.
This book is like a thriller as we wait for Amir to redeem himself after he has failed to help Hassan in his persecution. It touches our deepest heartstrings and gives insight into yet another ethnic jungle of the world – Afghanistan’s terrible history.
When Baba and Amir escape to America we see the Afghan community in exile. The trip itself is a glimpse into the dangers lurking in the whole country. They build a life in California from scratch, meeting their friends at the flea markets where they are selling various items. Many of them knew Baba well from before. Father and son can develop a relationship now that Amir turns into a writer who earns money and gets married. But it is Rahim Khan who calls Amir back to Afghanistan in 1986 when he is dying and the resolution to his festering guilt comes through this old friend and the search for his boyhood friend Hassan. Fascinating reading! Especially the first half of the book.
Sheridan Griswold, UB Box 70007, Gaborone, Botswana,
e-mail:
sheridangriswold@
yahoo.com
