The Kite Runner – A run towards salvation

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.