The Kite Runner
Summary
This novel opens in the late 1970’s on a young boy named Amir. He is a privileged pre-teen growing up in pre-revolution Afghanistan. He speaks of his experiences with his best friend Hassan. He does not consider Hassan a friend, however, because Hassan is the son of Amir’s servant. They play together only when there are no other boys around, and Amir manipulates Hassan into doing anything for him.
One winter just before Amir’s thirteenth birthday, Amir participates in the annual kite fighting competition. He wins and young Hassan, the best kite runner in town, goes to chase down the losing kite. Amir searches for him only to witness the brutal rape of Hassan by another rich boy in town. Amir does nothing to stop it and Hassan leaves the estate with his father.
The events of that fateful day follow Amir as he flees from a war-torn country to America with his father. There he makes a life for himself much different from the one he had in Afghanistan. His father becomes sick and dies shortly after Amir marries a lovely Afghani girl with a past. Amir is a novelist and his wife is a teacher, and they both hope to add a baby to their settled life. They are unable to conceive so they eventually give up.
In 2001, Amir receives a telephone call from his mentor, Rahim Khan who is now living in Pakistan and is dying. Amir travels there, discovering from Rahim Khan that Hassan was really his half-brother and that he is dead. Hassan’s son is missing and it is Amir’s task to go find him.
Amir travels into a very different Afghanistan than he remembers and eventually finds Sohrab in the hands of the Taliban official, Assif- the same Assif that raped Hassan so many years ago. Amir fights Assif for the possession of little Sohrab and manages to escape. He recovers from his wounds and attempts to take Sohrab home to America with him. When Sohrab learns he may have to go back to an orphanage, he feels betrayed and attempts suicide. Finally, Amir gets him back to America but he doesn’t speak for over a year. The novel ends with a kite fight and the slightest smile on Sohrab’s face, letting Amir know his sins are finally behind him and Sohrab will be ok.
-Written by Meghan Williams
Author Biography
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and History at a large high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then Afghanistan had already witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States. In September of 1980, Hosseini's family moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University where he earned a bachelor's degree in Biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California-San Diego's School of Medicine, where he earned a Medical Degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Hosseini was a practicing internist between 1996 and 2004.
While in medical practice, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, in March of 2001. In 2003, The Kite Runner, was published and has since become an international bestseller, published in 48 countries. In 2006 he was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns was published in May of 2007. Currently, A Thousand Splendid Suns is published in 25 countries. He lives in northern California.
Hosseini, Khaled. "Khaled Hosseini Biography." Khaled Hosseini. 22 July 2007. 13 Dec. 2008
<http://www.khaledhosseini.com/hosseini-bio.html>.
Review
THIS powerful first novel, by an Afghan physician now living in California, tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, Khaled Hosseini's privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy, just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces.
But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in ''The Kite Runner,'' are only a part of this story. A more personal plot, arising from Amir's close friendship with Hassan, the son of his father's servant, turns out to be the thread that ties the book together. The fragility of this relationship, symbolized by the kites the boys fly together, is tested as they watch their old way of life disappear.
Amir is served breakfast every morning by Hassan; then he is driven to school in the gleaming family Mustang while his friend stays home to clean the house. Yet Hassan bears Amir no resentment and is, in fact, a loyal companion to the lonely boy, whose mother is dead and whose father, a rich businessman, is often preoccupied. Hassan protects the sensitive Amir from sadistic neighborhood bullies; in turn, Amir fascinates Hassan by reading him heroic Afghan folk tales. Then, during a kite-flying tournament that should be the triumph of Amir's young life, Hassan is brutalized by some upper-class teenagers. Amir's failure to defend his friend will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Hosseini's depiction of pre-revolutionary Afghanistan is rich in warmth and humor but also tense with the friction between the nation's different ethnic groups. Amir's father, or Baba, personifies all that is reckless, courageous and arrogant in his dominant Pashtun tribe. He loves nothing better than watching the Afghan national pastime, buzkashi, in which galloping horsemen bloody one another as they compete to spear the carcass of a goat. Yet he is generous and tolerant enough to respect his son's artistic yearnings and to treat the lowly Hassan with great kindness, even arranging for an operation to mend the child's harelip.
As civil war begins to ravage the country, the teenage Amir and his father must flee for their lives. In California, Baba works at a gas station to put his son through school; on weekends he sells secondhand goods at swap meets. Here too Hosseini provides lively descriptions, showing former professors and doctors socializing as they haggle with their customers over black velvet portraits of Elvis.
Despite their poverty, these exiled Afghans manage to keep alive their ancient standards of honor and pride. And even as Amir grows to manhood, settling comfortably into America and a happy marriage, his past shame continues to haunt him. He worries about Hassan and wonders what has happened to him back in Afghanistan.
The novel's canvas turns dark when Hosseini describes the suffering of his country under the tyranny of the Taliban, whom Amir encounters when he finally returns home, hoping to help Hassan and his family. The final third of the book is full of haunting images: a man, desperate to feed his children, trying to sell his artificial leg in the market; an adulterous couple stoned to death in a stadium during the halftime of a football match; a rouged young boy forced into prostitution, dancing the sort of steps once performed by an organ grinder's monkey.
When Amir meets his old nemesis, now a powerful Taliban official, the book descends into some plot twists better suited to a folk tale than a modern novel. But in the end we're won over by Amir's compassion and his determination to atone for his youthful cowardice.
In ''The Kite Runner,'' Khaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence -- forces that continue to threaten them even today.
Hower, Edward. "The Kite Runner." The Servant-New York Times. 3 Aug. 2003.The New York
Times.13 Dec. 2008 <http://query.nytimes.com
/gst/fullpage.html?res=9504e0df123ff930a3575bc0a9659c8b63>.
Historical Links
While The Kite Runner is not a history of Afghanistan, relevant background needs to be discussed from a historical perspective in order to better understand the context of the novel in Afghan society.
Before the 16th century, the Safavids ruled in western Afghanistan, the Hazara ethnic group was Sunni but as a matter of pressure and time they converted to the Shia faith. (Adamec, 2003; Gregorian, 1969; Noelle, 1997). The Hazaras are speculated to have descended from the contingents ('hazar' meaning thousand or regiment) left behind by the Mongolian quests into Afghanistan (Adamec, 2003; Gregorian, 1969; Noelle, 1997).
Another Shia group in Afghanistan is the Qizilbash, remnants of the Safavid dynasty. They were believed to have furnished the Safavid kings with a cavalier of 70,000 horsemen. The Qizilbash, literally translating into "red head", were Azerbaijani-Turks of Shia faith who spoke Farsi. The Qizilbash became noticeable in Afghanistan when Nadir Shah Afshar, alleged by some to have Safavid lineage, created the Kandahar and Kabul garrisons during his Indian campaign in 1738-39. The Kabul garrison consisted of about 12,000 families (Adamec, 2003; Gregorian, 1969; Noelle, 1997).
When the Afshari king, Nadir Shah Afshar, was assassinated, his general Ahmad Shah Durrani, a Sadozai nobleman, became Afghanistan's first formal king in 1747. Ahmad Shah Durrani continued to hold the Qizilbash as advisors and ghulam khana (royal personal bodyguards). Ahmad Shah Durrani's rearguard army commander known as Wali Mohammad Khan Jawansher was given one of the settlements in Kabul, the Chindawal District. When Ahmad Shah Durrani's son, Timur Shah, moved the capital from Kandahar to Kabul, he brought with him more Qizilbash families to Chindawal (Adamec, 2003; Ghobar, 1967; Gregorian, 1969; Noelle, 1997). Overall, the Qizilbash continued to serve in high administrative and army positions in successive administrations.
Not the same could be said of the Hazaras. However, practically all-immediate descendants of Ahmad Shah Durrani left the Hazaras in relative peace with the exception of Shah Kamran's 1847 attack on Hazarajat. Then, in the mid-1800s a distant cousin of Barakzai clan took power under Amir Dost Mohammad, born to a Qizilbash wife of Sardar Payanda, was not sympathetic to the Shias and exploited Sunni-Shia differences. Amir Dost Mohammad aligned the Sunnis and Qizilbash to the detriment of the Hazaras. This alliance served for his conquest of the Hazarajat after which Amir Dost Mohammad declared himself 'Amir-al-Mumineen' (Leader of the Faithful) attempting to compare himself to the Prophet's cousin, Caliph Ali (Adamec, 2003; Gregorian, 1969; Noelle, 1997). In recent times, the Taliban referred to their leader, Mullah Omar, similarly evoking memories of Amir Dost Mohammad's conquest.
In 1891 Amir Dost Mohammad's grandson, Amir Abdur Rahman continued the policy of offering Sunnis and tribesmen the title of 'ghazi' (infidel killer) for his conquest of Hazarajat. The result was the destruction of the Hazara tribal system, annexation of Hazara personal property and land, and the enslavement Hazaras to be sold in the Kabul bazaar. What ensued was the massive migration of Hazaras to Quetta and Mashad, currently in Pakistan and Iran, respectively.
Amir Abdur Rahman's son, Amir Habibullah (r. 1901 - 1919) had Hazara 'kaniz' (concubines) in addition to 'ghulam-bacha' (royal slaves who were sons of influential people). Other high-ranking families also had 'kaniz' and 'ghulam' (male slave). However, he decreed that slavery should be outlawed but those already enslaved could not break from the economic bondage or find enforcement of the anti-slave decree. After his son, Shah Amanullah (r. 1919 - 1929) became king he outlawed slavery, discrimination, returned seized land and property returned seized land and property emancipating Hazaras and other Shias (Adamec, 2003; Gregorian, 1969; Noelle, 1997).
While Shah Amanullah outlawed slavery, still after his 1929 departure from Afghanistan until the early 1970s era when The Kite Runner's young Amir grows up in Kabul, the slave-like old practices of Hazaras still continued. While some had broken from this bondage, they were not treated much better earning low pay as servants ('nokahr' or 'muzdur') laboring as attendants, cooks, housekeepers, drivers, midwives, cloth washers, and yard workers in many middle-class to high-ranking households.
In Afghanistan, socioeconomic status was highly correlated with ethnicity stratifying the greater Afghan society. Income inequality was vast as most of the upper class came from the royal tribal clan, while the lower class was comprised of the likes of Hassan's family of The Kite Runner.
Through symbolic structure, Hosseini deals with the inequalities and injustices. The book's political dimension reveals that Hazaras and Shias could never move up the hierarchy unless they denied their identity or became wealthy. It was not just the Shias and Hazaras but also the Kuchis, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and 'atrafiyan or deehatiyan' (rural dwellers) no matter if they were Pashtu-speaking, Panjshiris, or Badakhshis.
It was in reaction to these injustices that many of the likes of Amir and Hassan assisted in overthrowing the feudal regime that facilitated or carelessly observed these injustices. Afghans clunk to the ideologies of the Marxist left or Islamic right, which based on ideology and not on wealth or race gave them the promise of equal status in a utopian society.
Many attribute the late 1970s coming to power of rural natives as a reaction to decades of discrimination of the center against the peripheral Pashto-speakers. In addition, the events of the 1890s prevented the emergence of social or political organization among the Hazaras up until 1980 when a member of the Hazara community finally became prime minister.
Sadat, Mir H. "Afghan History: kite flying, kite running and kite banning." June 2004. Lemar - Aftaab.
13 Dec. 2008 <http://www.afghanmagazine.com/2004_06/articles/hsadat.shtml>.
