The Kite Runner

'The Kite Runner', written by Khaled Hosseini, is a novel based on Afghanistan, describing the plight of the Afghans over a quarter of a century. The readers see that plight through the eyes of Amir, the narrator. Amir is the son of a rich and very respected man of Kabul in the 1970s. But, as Amir grows up, he doesn't live up to the expectations of his father. It becomes clear that he has not inherited any of his father's talents and interests but is completely like his mother, who had died while giving birth to him. On the other hand, there is Hassan, their servant's boy who had not got the joy of seeing his mother either. Hassan's father had served Amir's family for forty years. Hassan was mainly Amir's playmate and did Amir's chores. Although Amir and Hassan were the best of friends, Amir noticed that Hassan was more courageous than him, too loyal to describe in words and was somehow loved by his father greatly, probably even more than his father loved him. So, Amir was desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament in the winter of 1975 to prove a point to his father, to prove that he was worthy of being his father's son.

A kite runner , by the way, is someone who tries to run and gather the kites that fall from the sky after being snapped. Running along with many other boys and beating them all in the chase for the fallen kites and finally holding the kite triumphantly, also happens to be a very important part of the tournament. The one who gets the last kite to have fallen at the end of the kite-fighting, is considered to be almost equal to the one who wins the kite-fighting tournament. Now, Amir won the tournament and as the last kite fell, Hassan ran through the streets of Kabul to fetch it for Amir so that would get the double honour of both winning as well as possessing the last fallen kite. But, what happened to Hassan on that day is the event around which the entire novel revolves. He was sexually assaulted by three other boys. Although Amir went looking for Hassan and finally found him completely cornered by those three boys and on the verge of facing some painful, humiliating moments, Amir did not protest. He just runs away like a coward, being too scared of the other boys. But, when Hassan came home that night, the kite was still with him and he handed it over to Amir...

After that, Amir and his father were forced to flee to America when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. We see how Amir completes his studies there, gets married and gradually manages to bury his guilt about Hassan in the peaceful life that he leads there. But, what he does not get there is redemption. And,so, when Rahim Khan, their old and very close family friend calls him up to say that he is dying in Peshawar, Amir goes to Peshawar to see him. It is then that a whole lot of secrets about Hassan and his life after the Russian invasion are revealed to Amir and it is then that Amir decides to search for Sohrab, Hassan's now orphan kid. I will not give away the end of the story here, in case some of you have not read it. But, the story is so purely beautiful. I don't remember having liked a story so much after reading the Harry Potter books. And, now, this one is right up there with Harry Potter, being my most favourite book. It describes the relationship between two people, one belonging to the Pashtun tribe of the Afghans and the other to the Hazara tribe, one the cowardly master and the other , the ever-loyal servant and friend. As the story nears its end though, one does not find Amir a coward anymore. The Amir-Hassan persona seems to mingle in the end , with the words, " For you a thousand times over", being spoken by Amir just as they had been uttered by Hassan on that winter day when he had run that kite for Amir and the ending could not have been more perfect in this heart-wrenching tale.

Speaking of heart-wrenching, the novel also has another aspect. The readers learn about Amir, Hassan and Sohrab through the years when Afghanistan passes from one ruling hand to another. When Amir describes his and his father's journey to Pakistan in a fuel tank while fleeing from Afghanistan, the suffocation, the sufferings of the people crowded in the tank, the pitch blackness, I just felt that I could not read any more of that. Amir's American life, is , of course, way better and at one point, I didn't feel as though I was reading the same book. It was as though I had suddenly shifted to some other book. Yes, it becomes a bit boring also with the narrations about Amir's falling in love, every detail about his marriage, details of his wife's past life, about their not having children and about deciding not to adopt any children. But, when Amir again enters Pakistan and then, Afghanistan, I feel that the author was probably trying to keep the readers relaxed so that they would be able to overcome the shock of reading about Russian-invaded Afghanistan and fully absorb the bigger shock of reading about Taliban ruled Afghanistan. How can someone be so brutal and inflict such suffering on fellow humans and on those little children? Their terror becomes clear when the author says that although there are lots of children in Afghanistan, there is no childhood. Fathers are a rare commodity there. There are many more such heart-wrenching sentences in the book , describing a nation completely devastated, with the worst sufferers being the children. So, I feel that we are all very lucky. We get three good meals every day, have sufficient clothing and a concrete roof above our heads. Besides these, we have plenty of other things and yet, we waste everything. We have experienced all the joys of childhood while millions of Afghan children haven't and yet, we complain about the most minor things. After reading the novel, this situation seems very unfair and justice doesn't seem to be even-handed at all...