Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
A vivid read. I actually meant to read this a lot earlier, but somehow or another never got around to it until last week. This story, of a skewed friendship and a haunting past, that ultimately circles back onto itself, served as a great mirror of the human faults, as well as the human beauty. It raised a lot of important and poignant questions in my mind: When courage fails and fear overtakes you, what should one do? When faced with the decision of personal safety or justice for others, what should one do? Can any one person be blamed for anything bad that happens in life? I loved the way this book left me to ponder these, and so many more important life questions as I flipped past the last page.
The main character Amir is not lovable. He does nothing to beholden himself to his readers; rather, he comes off as cowardly and whiny, always trying to justify his selfishness and wrongdoings. At the same time, though, the reader must empathize with him. Empathy is demanded. Not just because of his thirst for a father's love, as universal as it is. I connected with Amir in his descriptions, his voice. The brilliant flashes of his childhood days, colored gold in the good parts and bloodstained red in the bad, are similar to the childhood memories that we often have. We don't remember the good old days as an unbroken roll of film. Like Amir, our childhood pervades our lives in short bursts of vivid detail. Ordinary objects call to mind something that happened in the past, and more often than not, it is the little, unimportant memories that we recall, rather than the big grand ones. So it is with Amir, and I loved that--as much as he shuts out Hazzan and Kabul from his life, the way he talks, the way he describes things, the way every other paragraph always alludes back to his Hazara friend, is beautiful in its humanity. And in his humanity, we find a fellow human being to connect with.
Hazzan embodied perfection, I felt. Rather than being a down-to-earth, real-life person, this other boy felt more like a foil for Amir himself. Everything Hazzan says or does provides a detail with which we compare Amir. Hazzan can skip stones better than Amir. He is the nicer one. The braver one. The one who is favored by Baba. The one who can beat Amir in cards and can solve all the riddles Amir gives him. The one who can run a kite better than any other kid in the neighborhood. These qualities are downgraded by Amir, who emphasizes Hazzan's lowly status, his hated heritage, and the fact that Hazzan will always obey Amir's will, no matter what. Amir tries his best to make sure Hazzan never becomes the better of the two. Amir is full of flaws, and the irony of Amir being the priveleged boy while he seems inferior is not lost upon the reader. This contrast between the two boys is a natural foreshadowing for the tragedy that follows.
What I'm still wondering is, how did Hazzan know? How did he know that Amir knew what happened? This is the only unexplained part in the book that I thought worth mentioning. It could be that the author left that answer blank on purpose, to really show the void left behind by Hazzan's death. In Hazzan's gruesome end, this question will remain unanswered forever. Or perhaps Hazzan knew, because just as Amir saw the resignation in Hazzan's eyes, perhaps the servant boy saw the fear in Amir's.
I want to read Hosseini's other work, A Thousand Splendid Suns, as soon as I have the opportunity. There is much to be gleaned from his writing. The growth of the characters is heartening to follow, and the slow process of redemption is clearly ongoing as the book comes to a close. While it does not end on a 'happily ever after' note, it is definitely not a tragedy. It is a book that endlessly emphasizes hope: "There is a way to be good again."
