The Kite Runner is a novel written by Afghan-American author
Khaled Hosseini. The Kite runner
tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of
Kabul and Hassan who is Amir’s personal kite runner, close friend while also
being Amir’s father's young Hazara servant. The beauty of the story is that
despite being set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of
Afghanistan's monarchy through the military intervention by the soviet union,
the flight of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the
Taliban regime, it is a very personal and intimate story about a boy who lost
his path while he was very young and spent his entire adult life trying to find
his way back.
Khaled Hosseini
is a genius who creates characters that are so easy to relate to, understand,
hate and sometimes also empathize with. He takes us into a world that we have
never seen before yet makes feel as home as we would be in our hometown. Amir
is a typical young boy who wants his father’s love and respect. Amir likes to
write but hides this from his father (Baba) for feat that his father would
criticize him but he is comfortable in sharing his passion with his father’s
close friend Rahim Khan. While he gets the former in abundance he never feels
that he acquires the latter. Hassan is the boy servant of the house, the son of
the servant of the house, Ali. Hassan is the perfect Kite Runner who predicts
the landing spot of every kite perfectly and brings it back to his friend and
master Amir always without fail. On one such kite running event in the village
turns a nightmare for the family. A notorious bully Aseef, who has always
mocked Amir for befriending a Hazara boy, corners Hassan and decides to teach
“the Hazara boy” his place by assaulting him physically and rapes him. Amir
witnesses the act but is too scared to intervene and keeps quiet about in a
fear of losing his baba’s respect for his act of cowardice. But guilt overrides
him and he starts to move away from Hassan and even becomes responsible for
driving Ali and Hassan from the house by accusing Hassan of stealing. Though
Hassan leaves, Amir’s guilt never leaves him. Five years later, in order to
escape from the soviet controlled afghan Amir and his baba leave Afghanistan
and settle in California where Amir finishes high school and college and goes
on to becomes a novelist. Life goes on as Amir marries fellow refugee Soraya
and also baba gets diagnosed with cancer and passes away. Life brings another
twist where Amir receives a phone call from Rahim khan who calls him back to
Peshawar. Amir goes and learns that Hassan was actually his half brother and
also the shocking fact that he was murdered by the Taliban. Rahim also discloses
the fact that he knew about Hassan’s rape all along and urges Amir to set
things straight by rescuing Hassan’s son Sohrab from an Orphanage in Kabul. On reaching
there, Amir finds that Sohrab has been suffering the same that happened to
Hassan on that fateful day. He vows to bring back Sohrab to America. After a
lot of obstacles, he finds Sohrab, brings him back to America, adopts him but never
quite manages to grow close to the kid. Sohrab being highly traumatized and
guilt ridden due to what happened to him in Afghanistan builds a wall around
him and doesn’t let anybody come in. Amir and Soraya try a lot but fail always.
But then, on one fateful day the change begins when Amir volunteers to be Sohrab’s
kite runner.
This book is impeccably written with all the sensitive issues
handled in such a way that we are lost in the story without realizing that the
issue is controversial but in the same time understanding how deep and
troublesome is the issue, be it the portrayal of Taliban, Hassan’s rape or the
illicit affair of Amir’s father with Hassan’s mother. It is a heart breaking
tale of small but vital mistakes that changed the life of two young boys in a
way that they never would have imagined or understood. The book clearly brings
out the effect of a father’s love, words and actions of the young mind of a boy
while also depicting that guilt is probably the most deadly of all weapons in
the world when it comes to self destruction. Amir’s father guilt on his affair
was always a big shadow on his relationship with Amir once Hassan left the
house. Amir’s guilt over his silence over Hassan’s fate formed the basis of who
he became as an adult and was like a dark cloud that never moved away from his
sky. More than that, the background is so well defined in the book that we can
easily conjure up images of the trouble free Afghanistan, the refugee camp in
California and also the post Taliban Afghanistan. We are left with a sense of
nostalgia of Amir’s childhood Afghanistan when he returns to Kabul fifteen
years later. Khaled paints a wonderful picture with words that give every color
a different shade with every stroke. For a single incident, we are left with a
multitude of emotions, pity for the child Hassan, sometimes Amir, hate for
Aseef, respect for the man Hassan became and also a great sense of grief for
the child Sohrab who misses his family so much that you start to hurt for
him. Khaled moves us with the book while
giving us a glimpse of the various emotions a man feels in his lifetimes.
