The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I stayed up waaaaay too late last night because I couldn't put this book down for anything. I even took it to the bathroom with me when I had to pee (TMI, I know, I'm just sayin, it's a really fucking good book). And now I'm sharing some commentary when I really should be crashing. In some strange way, even though its pretty tragic, I still want to stay in the world of The Kite Runner.

Okay, SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't read the book, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!

Also, if you haven't read the book, after you abort mission and exit this post so as not to spoil the ending for yourself, go out and get the book, and start reading!



The Kite Runner was definitely the most intense book I've read in a really long time. I cried a lot while reading it. It's pretty heart-wrenching, and just extremely psychologically intense. Which I really love when it's done well, and here, it was.

In the beginning, I only read in tiny chunks, because I was sort of dreading The Event. The first paragraph of the book is, "I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years."

Aside from being an incredible hook (as the aspiring to be published writer in me who reads tons on query letters, proposals and the importance of gripping first pages, paragraphs and sentences, duly notes), it carries incredible emotional impact. I know immediately that some drastic event changes Amir forever, even before I know the main character's name is Amir. And it kind of scared me.

I kept paying attention to the timeline, to how close we were to the winter of 1975, and reading in smaller snippets. In fact, I read a majority of The Kite Runner while on break at work, which was a little difficult, because of the emotional intensity of the text.

When I verrrry, verrrry first began reading, I had a very different impression of what the said event might be. Starting out, all I really knew was that the book took place in Afghanistan, and that some line in one of the testimonials on the back of the book called it "...a story of fierce cruelty..." For some reason I was anticipating some sort of political violence or cruelty, but as the book builds towards chapter seven, it becomes clear that what's going to happen is of a much more personal nature. And in some ways, a lot more devastating.

It becomes clearer and clearer that something happens between Amir and Hassan - Amir's friend who he never quite thinks of as his friend, Amir's first memory, a boy who always read his thoughts, but in many ways, it's such an uneven relationship from the very beginning, before they were born. Partly because of Amir's privilege, being a Pashtun instead of a Hazara, his father's wealth, his literacy, the fact that Hassan is his servant. Early on in the narrative, Amir says,

"Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words.

Mine was Baba.

His was Amir. My name.

Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for what happened in the winter of 1975--and all that followed--was already laid in those first words."

And Amir toys with Hassan - asks him if he'd eat dirt if he asked him to (Hassan says yes, in the end), makes up totally wrong meanings to big words Hassan doesn't know when he reads to him, finds other subtle ways to taunt him, which I think he does in part because of how disappointing he feels he is to his father. He has to one-up someone.

I did not guess what would actually happen to Hassan. I thought Assef (the evil bully who idolizes Hitler and later becomes a member of the Taliban and publicly stones people while wearing John Lennon sunglasses), might beat Hassan into oblivion, maybe kill him, maybe injure him permanently. It wasn't until about two paragraphs before it happened that I realized that Assef would rape Hassan. I was glad Hassan didn't die or get beaten into oblivion, but in another way, what did happen could be worse.

And in the critical moment of the book, Amir watches it happen, and he doesn't do anything to stop it, even though Hassan had defended Amir against Assef earlier. In a way, it's the defining moment of Amir's life, and definitely something I've mulled over in my head ever since I read it. Because it changes him forever. Amir says, "I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan--the way he'd stood up for me all those times--and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run.

In the end, I ran."

After I read that part, I just couldn't stop thinking about that, how one moment could could shape a lifetime, change someone irrevocably for the rest of their life. In some ways, it was hard to sympathize with Amir at this part of the story. I think that what he did was really wrong, possibly, in some ways, worse than what Assef did, because it was a real betrayal of someone who would have done anything for him.

It actually reminded me of this book Back Roads by Tawni Odell (SPOiLER SPOILER SPOILER ALERT). That book was about a very dysfunctional family. The father beat the kids. One of the daughters, Misty, always went hunting with the father. Later in the book it's revealed that the person Misty really was angry with was the mother. I can't remember the exact wording, but (narrated by the oldest brother and seen through his eyes), it becomes clear, Misty was angry with the mother because she had failed the first rule of the wild, she had failed to protect her young. In reading the Kite Runner, I felt a similar way, that in a way Amir's crime of negligence, of running rather than intervening, was in some ways the worse of the evils.

On the other hand, I can identify with Amir and what he did. And I can see how the whole fabric of his life up until that point informed that moment. I pretty much agree word for word with what Rahim Khan writes to Amir later on in his letter. It didn't happen in a vacuum. He was twelve. He was kind of a sensitive kid, not much of a fighter. He was so desperate to win his father's love and he felt like getting that kite would be his ticket into Baba's heart. So he let it happen. In that moment, running away was the easier thing to do. Certainly over the trajectory of his life, it wasn't, but in that moment, it was. I don't know if I was twelve and faced with something like that, I might make the same choice Amir did. In a way, he sacrifices Hassan in order to be able to bring that kite home to Baba. And in a way, Hassan sacrifices himself for that too in his refusal to give Assef and the others the kite, as always putting Amir first before anything.

And, I think, Amir was also affected by the prejudices that he himself internalized, which I think in some ways, is true for all of us to some degree. He says in the paragraph after he runs away, "The answer floated in my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn't he?" It's horrible, but I'm glad that line was there, because I think it's true for Amir as a character. It wasn't something he wanted to openly think, but he did treat Hassan differently even before this - didn't play with him if other people were around, things like that. That line had a certain level of honesty to it that I really appreciated, because like I said, I think all of us at some points are guilty of that, and Khaled Hosseini really does a great job of writing this story from Amir's adult perspective in an unflinchingly candid way. I love that, even when it's difficult.

Just today I brought Derrick Jensen's End Game Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization to work to start reading on my break, and came across this which I think relates to what I'm saying in the above paragraph. End Game starts with a bunch of premises that the rest of the book is built on. Here is Premise Four: "Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinking, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victim." I think this premise plays into what happens in the Kite Runner. Amir is the privileged one, Hassan is the servant. They are of different classes, different religions (Amir is Sunni, though his father doesn't believe in religion at all, and Hassan is Shi'a), and definitely different social classes as defined by their society. I think it's another one of those things that builds the context for what happens on that winter day in 1975 in the world of this book that is there since before either character was born.


And afterwards...afterwards was more heartbreaking than the event itself, for me as a reader. This is where I lost it and cried and cried and cried. The way that Amir pushes Hassan away after this happens, it just killed me. I kept thinking of Hassan, who just survived getting raped - so unspeakably horrible and of course going to change Hassan's life just as irrevocably as Amir's cowardice does his - and then his best friend, the person he would do anything for, the person whose name was his first word, completely pushes him out of his life. Amir does this in a lot of different ways. The one that got me the worst was when Hassan comes to him and asks him what he is doing wrong, asks Amir to just tell him, and whatever it is, he'll stop, and Amir tells him to go away.

I mean, again, I get it. Amir can't deal with what happened, with his own guilt, with what he saw and did nothing about, his betrayal, his conviction that if anyone knew they would hate him, and I think, the fact that Hassan could always read his thoughts, know things about him that Amir never spoke. So he pushes Hassan away. It's so interesting how in this story, and in life, all of these moments are like a tapestry, each woven out of everything that came before. I'm not quite sure how to say what I'm getting at, just that none of this happens in isolation, everything is formed by everything that happens beforehand, so it's not like these are single, separate decisions Amir makes, but more a path he walks down, and each step he takes down that path of pushing Hassan away makes it more likely that he'll take another step on that same path. It's sort of like once you tell one lie, it almost necessitates more lies, makes it harder to start telling the truth. And he does, pushes Hassan and his father completely out of his life partly by planting a watch and some money under Hassan's mattress to make it look like he stole it.

The point I was trying to make earlier, about the social hierarchy playing into the way things played out in that alley in the winter of 1975 after the kite tournament, is brought out also by Rahim Khan and the story he tells Amir at his thirteenth birthday party, about the time he was in love with a Hazara woman. Rahim Khan's father sends the girl and her family away, and Rahim Khan reflects that maybe it worked out for the best, because his family never would have accepted her. He says, "You don't order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them 'sister' the next." I don't think it makes anything acceptable, just that it does show the cultural context for all that happens. And I don't think you can separate out the events of a person's life from their cultural context. Rahim Khan also says, "It was Homaira and me against the world. And I'll tell you this Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins." Kind of a bitter pill to swallow. I wonder if that's true. It definitely reminded me immediately of The God of Small Things, the world (or History) certainly wins there. But it's sort of really horrible to accept that "that's the way it is" or something. I don't know, I dn't have any answers, but it's made me think.

I like how the personal and political are interwoven, inseparable, in this book, because I think our political contexts do shape all our lives, I just think it's maybe more invisible here in America, maybe because of the largeness of the country or the largeness and unreachableness of the governmental hierarchy. It can seem like our lives are divorced from the political landscape and plenty of people go along without ever thinking about it (which is unfathomable to me but I think pretty common).

I also really appreciated, throughout the entire book, getting a view of Afghanistan, because I don't really know much about the country. I mean I ate at an Afghani restaurant once in NYC while visiting a friend. We had dinner and played with tarot cards there, and later I realized I'd accidentally left one of the cards there (which, interestingly enough, was a card in the Osho Zen deck called We Are The World). But aside from that, which barely counts as anything, I really just didn't know much about Afghanistan at all, which is sort of ignorant on my part, considering we're at war there. So I really drank up that aspect of The Kite Runner, anything about the country, the people, the customs, the culture.

The way that the first confrontation with Assef, when Hassan rescues Amir, happens right after the monarch is overthrown, really brings it home how the political landscape and the personal are inherently co-mingled. And it's the same way when Amir and Baba escape to Pakistan, and how it sort of accentuates the differences and the distance between them: Amir being somewhat weak, getting carsick, and Baba defying Russian soldiers on behalf of someone he doesn't know.

In America it seems that things are easier for their relationship, if not necessarily easier for them personally. Baba especially has such a hard time in America, works a job that is really physically hard on him, and does so for Amir. He really does well by Amir in America, in my eyes. I'm not quite sure how to pinpoint what the shift was when they came to America that made their relationship better. Maybe it's because Baba was no longer so overwhelmingly wealthy and larger than life in the community the way he was in Kabul. Also, early on, Amir says of Baba, "With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was hite. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe hating him a little." I think a lot of that sense of Baba evaporates in America, perhaps because he isn't as powerful anymore, just a guy working in a gas station.

The whole sense of Amir being a disappointment to Baba seems to have dissipated, almost entirely. Baba seems proud of Amir, of his graduation, of him going to college, and especially happy about Amir's marriage to Soraya. There is so much hardship in this book, and there is here too, with Baba dying of cancer, and yet it seems like a time of reconciliation in some ways. Not overt ways, but more subtle ones, in the way they seem closer, getting along better. In the way that there's a small sense of peace.

My favorite part of this section is right before Baba dies, when Amir comes home to find that Soraya has been reading his stories to Baba, because in a way it's like Baba finally appreciates Amir for the person he truly is, instead of how he reacted years before, when Amir was a kid in school winning "Battle of the Poems" and Baba was trying to make him into a soccer player, back when Amir said, "That was how I escaped my father's aloofness, in my dead mother's books." It's just really touching to finally see a real rapport between the father and son before Baba dies. And it's really nice that Amir has some happiness, after so much struggle. Happiness with Soraya and with his career.

And then of course is the phone call from Rahim Khan that brings Amir back to his past. In Rahim Khan's telling of life with Hassan in Baba's old house in Kabul, I was also really glad that Hassan had found some happiness with his wife and his son, and living with Rahim Khan, glad he got to reconnect with his mother and find some peace, glad that his unabashed smile had returned, before he met such a violent end. It's funny how out of the two of them - Hassan and Amir - Hassan seems the happier one at this point, the more healed. And the way Hassan's asked Rahim Khan about Amir, and the letter he writes to him, and how clear it is how he's told his family fond memories of his early years with Amir, it just struck me, Hassan's forgiveness, the way he still loves Amir. And just the fact that he seems like he was so much more at peace about things between them than Amir was. It's just interesting to think about, how in a way the whole situation was harder in a long-term way on Amir, the one who wronged his friend, than it was on Hassan, the one who was wronged. Just gives me things to mull over some more.

I was glad Amir decided to go to Kabul to get Sohrab, to take on that journey. Something changed in him that night after Rahim Khan tells him the story of Hassan's life, and the truth that Baba was Hassan's father. It's good to see him finally finding his courage, fighting for himself, for Hassan.

I was again glad to get a sense of Afghanistan and what it was like, because it's important to know, even though it was devastating to read - Wahid's children going so hungry, the destruction in Kabul, the beggars, the conditions at the orphanage, and of course, the public stonings. I just think it's really important to really know what's going on in the world.

It really was hard to read, though.


So one thing I was trying to figure out - when Amir meets Assef to try to get Sohrab, Assef was a heroin addict (or some similar drug)? He has track marks on his arms, and Amir mentions countless times how bloodshot Assef's eyes were, and some other odd physical behavior that made me think of long-term drug use.

What disturbed me most in this section was actually the way that Assef touches Sohrab - it's sick. More than Assef's cruelty, his violence, or the way he tastes the words "ethnic cleansing" like they're some kind of new delicious delicacy, it was the way he touches Sohrab that made me want to throw up, like for real.

The fight was great. Brutal, but great. Amir finally faces almost exactly what he was afraid of facing that winter day in 1975. Later when he says that he and Assef both got what they deserved, it's kind of true. And how can you not love Sohrab here? And see Hassan in him so clearly? Rescuing Amir again, but this time it's on more equal ground, Amir is also rescuing Sohrab. What struck me was how similar Sohrab was to Hassan, both threatening Assef with a slingshot, both being pretty calm about it, almost deferential, saying please.

The book starts with Amir saying that he is what he is today because of that long ago day, and I started to wonder, is that really bad? Maybe his guilt shaped him into someone who could finally stand up for himself, someone who had to. Maybe what Rahim Khan says in his letter about Baba's remorse turning into good in some ways is also true for Amir. Because, as an adult, Amir really is a great person. In the end he even gets involved with humanitarian projects for Afghanistan, the way Baba might've. He includes Sohrab in his life the same way Baba's family had included Ali and Hassan. In a lot of ways, I see Baba's more positive traits in Amir, Amir just had to grow into them. And Amir is very generous - with Farid, Wahid and so on. It would've been better of course, if Amir could've stood up for Hassan way back when, but I think in many ways, he couldn't. And maybe he had to live through everything that followed to get to a place where he could. Maybe he needed that journey.

Where it really becomes clear to me that Amir has really grown to be a great man is how he deals with Sohrab, how gentle and attentive he is. There's real sweetness there, and god knows they both need it, especially Sohrab for everything he's been through. I think this passage exemplifies it the most: "I touched his arm again and he drew away. I reached again, gently, and pulled him to me. 'I won't hurt you,' I whispered. 'I promise.' He resisted a little. Slackened. He let me draw him to me and rested his head on my chest. His little body convulsed in my arms with each sob." I've been pondering the possibility that what happened in that alley shaped Amir from a kid who taunted his friend about not knowing big words into someone who is this tender with Sohrab. I kind of can't help loving Amir here.

I really, really kind of wish the book could have ended there, that they could have easily gone back to San Francisco and lived with Soraya and continued to try to heal the wounds of the past. Amir and Sohrab were on such a good path there. It's funny because just a few days before finishing this book, I was thinking about how in books and movies I think I'm sometimes more okay with "unhappy endings" (ones where the main character dies, for example) than some of my friends are, IF the ending fits the story well. I was even going to make a post about that.

In The Kite Runner though, I was really heartbroken beyond belief when Amir has to break his promise and consider putting Sohrab in an orphanage, and Sohrab tries to kill himself because of it. Things are never the same ever again and Sohrab becomes so terribly withdrawn. On a side note, I was a little puzzled when Amir questions himself about whether he really just fell asleep that night that Sohrab tried to kill himself - I wasn't entirely sure where he was going with that. I just wanted things to be right - Sohrab has gone through soooo much in his young life and Amir had been so good to him and it was just, they were really on the road to some sort of healing.

But maybe that is in a way, too much to ask for the circumstances. I feel like the book was very honest about the difficulties Amir had adopting a child from Afghanistan and how much red tape there was and all the obstacles. And I think this part really shed light on and deepened in some way, my understanding of the suffering that children in Afghanistan might experience. It felt important that that was in there, and how extremely strongly Sohrab reacted to the news that he might have to go to a home for children really brought that home. It conveyed a certain horror, and depth of horror that the earlier visit to the orphanage didn't quite get at. And it felt really honest to the story. So did Sohrab's becoming withdrawn, though I so wanted him and Amir to really connect again the way they were starting to. I was devastated that in a way, Amir had to betray him (not intentionally, it was more the system and the way things worked that did that, but I meant that he had to be the messenger), and that the trust between them was broken. But any other way might have felt dishonest, somehow unreal or not quite down to earth. The ending the way it is feels apt, so suited to the story, and in that way, perhaps more beautiful.

And there is some healing in the end. There isn't happily ever after, but there is some healing. Again I'm not quite sure how to get at what I'm trying to say, but it's like after all that Sohrab has been through, the actual ending of the book feels right, feels realistic. I love how Amir says, "It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight.

But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting."

And I also think that a subtle yet significant real redemption for Amir is just before that. When Hassan ran the kite for Amir in the winter of 1975, he said, "For you a thousand times over." And later, Farid says it to Amir (and he breaks down crying). And finally, Amir is saying it to Sohrab. It's turned around.

That is one thing I really loved about this book, there's so much of what I would call "literary symmetry" though there's probably a better name for it. The way things turn around and reverse themselves. Early on, Amir puts a watch and some money under a mattress to push Hassan out. Later on, he gives Wahid's children a watch and puts some money under the mattress as a gift to them. Hassan starts out with a harelip, Amir ends up with one. The moment where Sohrab and Amir end up standing in the same way as Hassan and Sohrab in the polaroid. The way that Amir's grandfather had adopted Ali into the family after Ali's parents were killed and the way that Amir does the same with Sohrab. The way that Assef tells Amir about laughing while he gets beaten in prison, and then Amir ends up laughing during his fight with Assef, and the two scenarios are almost identical. And especially how in that critical moment in Amir's life when he's peeking behind that mud wall, he says, "In the end, I ran," and then the last line of the book is "I ran." Here, it has almost the opposite meaning this time. He is running the kite for Sohrab, out of love. I love this, it's gorgeous.

In general, I have huge writer's envy. It's sort of giving me an inferiority complex, this book, but honestly, I think that's a good thing. Nothing quite pushes a writer, I don't think, as feeling like, wow, I want to paint magic with words as good as this guy does. The prose in The Kite Runner...just stunning. Seamless. So emotionally evocative. I don't think I have felt this invested in a book I've read perhaps since the first time I read White Oleander or The Secret Life of Bees or The God of Small Things. There is so much depth in this book. It's got a timeless sort of quality, a quality I don't know how to name, something magical, something that is rare to find. I already want to read the book all over again, partly to immerse myself in the story again, but partly to stay in the language, to fall all over myself over how good it is.

I also want to watch the movie (even dreamt about it either last night or today during the day), but have to see if I can see it in English (I just can't keep up with subtitles, and miss a lot of the action while trying, because I have to look so closely at the bottom of the screen). I almost don't see how it could be as good as the book, but I do want to see it. I also want to read A Thousand Splendid Suns. There are also some personal changes that The Kite Runner sparked in me, but those are best left for other posts. This one is already my longest blog entry ever.

It actually took me now five days to complete this post, mostly because I was working loooong hours and could only get to this in bits and pieces, and partly because I'd be writing here, and then just get lost in the book while trying to find passages. I've thought about this story almost non-stop while at work, just contemplating and musing.

To sum up (as someone I once knew always used to say), a masterpiece.


Currently listening:
"Famous Blue Raincoat" - Tori Amos (Leonard Cohen cover) - usually I just let whatever song comes up on iTunes shuffle when I'm done with my post be my "currently listening" but today every song just felt, so, I don't know, so totally not appropriate, and I just kept pushing next, next, next. Until this song came on. I don't know why it feels right, but when it first started, the music just grabbed my heart and it felt right. It was weird, I couldn't even remember at first what song it was, (that happens to me sometimes, a song'll come on and instantly I'll just feel a connection to it, but not quite be able to place it, almost like I'm running through my mind trying to find the right name for what grabs when I'm in a more emotional state, and I'll come up with at first is well I know it's by so and so, this album, track 16. It's like the feeling comes first and then the facts follow), just that the first notes seemed to exactly mirror what I felt.