I picked up The Kite Runner instinctively because I wanted to read a ‘good’ book. And truly enough, my instincts did not fail me. The expatriate author, Khaled Hosseini has written a modern classic that gives us a worldview, so distinct to what became one of the most volatile regions on earth. A vision, seeped in nostalgia for all that the author’s motherland was and could have been. “Zendagi Migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.” And somewhere in between, we discover the truth.

Innocence, Experience and Higher Innocence.

The Kite Runner is not a story of heroes. It’s a story about us. Our failings and misgivings. Our pains and fears. Our crime and punishment. Our acceptance and redemption.

Revolving around a rich Pashtun boy Amir and his Hazara servant Hassan, the author begins the tale with their escapades in what seems like an enchanting and blissful world. The narrator is Amir himself who reminisces his cherished friendship and haunting betrayal with Hassan during childhood. “For you a thousand times over, he’s promised…Good old reliable Hassan. He’d kept his promise and run the last kite for me.” But for Amir, “Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay to win Baba.”

The narrative voice grows with the experiences of Amir who later leaves his country fraught with political tensions for the snug life of a writer in the US. Till one day, he receives a call from his Baba’s friend, Rahim Khan who reminds him, “There is a way to be good again.”

As Amir trails back to his homeland, he goes through a series of epiphanies. He learns the truth of his relationship with Hassan, of his Baba’s character, of the lost innocence of Hassan’s son, Sohrab and of his own insensitivities towards the little boy. He adopts Sohrab and brings him to US but the final moment of redemption eludes him. What was an act of cowardice many years ago becomes an act of salvation as he “ran” on the day of the kite-flying tournament.

The subtle ironies cannot be missed out: the inability of Amir and Soraya to have children – “that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done… It wasn’t meant to be, Khala Jamila had said, Or, maybe, it was meant not to be”; Amir becoming harelipped like Hassan after his fight with Assef to rescue Sohrab – “The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle… Like a harelip”; and the silent withdrawal of Sohrab when he comes to the US – “Sohrab’s silence wasn’t the self-imposed silence of those with convictions…It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.”

The other characters add to the depth of the story – the old man who told Amir about his mother, the driver Farid who accompanied Amir on his journey to Kabul, Raymond Andrews whose daughter committed suicide, Amir's wife, Soraya, Baba, Rahim Khan, Hassan’s father, Ali and many more. But it is Hassan, the quiet illiterate boy who evokes the deepest of human feelings in us. The faithful friend and servant will enamour the readers in more ways than one.

The poignancy of the tale touches us somewhere deep within. One of the most gifted storytellers of our times, Khaled Hosseini weaves the narrative with unusual simplicity and grace. Kabul is as much a character as a geographical location in the book. The setting and nature of the imagery intensify the inner struggle of the protagonist. A characteristic Afghan humour and sense of honour intersperses with the human tenderness as we move from innocence to experience with the protagonist. The book ends with the Amir’s initiation into higher innocence in the company of Sohrab.

My review finishes here but I hear myself saying, for a book like The Kite Runner, a thousand times over…

Satarupa Ray

Coming next: Review of A Thousand Splendid of Suns

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Children on tank in Kabul Photo Courtesy: Mark Schweizer

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