The Kite Runner

Kite Runner

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead Hardcover, 2003

The story of the Kite Runner is told in a circular fashion. The narrative of the book begins and ends with the same incident, but the reader perceives that incident differently because of what has transpired over the subsequent pages. The book begins in the present, with the young Afghani-American Amir remembering a deadly incident from his childhood past. Amir remembers how he was once a wealthy young Afghani boy living in Kabul before the Taliban takeover of his home nation. Amir was a friend of Hassan, the son of a servant in the household of Amir's businessman father. The two boys were such good friends, despite their difference in wealth, status, and literacy, because they shared a common bond -- they were both motherless, and had suckled the same wet-nurse. Still, there was an unspoken tension -- Amir was a Pashtuni and Hassan is of the Hazara caste, a lower and despised 'race' in Afghanistan.

Thus, in childhood and through the affection of Amir's father for Hassan, race was only temporarily transcended through the creation of artificial family bonds. Indeed, Amir was jealous of his father Baba's greater admiration for Hassan's physical prowess and courage, while Amir, was more bookish and less physically confident than his father might wish. (Hosseini, 2003) Still, Amir's will always held sway because of his greater wealth and social status when the two boys played together. The boy's favorite pastime was participating at the annual kite-fighting tournament. Kite flying and kite running was a traditional pastime in Afghanistan. During the national tournament, children participated in a kite competition where flyers and runners attempt to cut the strings of their competitor's kites with glass-coated strings. The winner was the boy, whose kite remained the last kite standing, and the runner was the boy who retrieved the last cut kite from the ground -- both the kite's flyer and runner were honored at the end of the competition. However, quite often the owner and flyer received greater approbation, because the owner came from a wealthier class, as did Amir.

Ironically, soon Amir's wealth would not protect the boy from trouble or give him greater status than his fellows. Amir and his father had to leave for America after the takeover of the Taliban. The rule of the Taliban made it too dangerous for wealthier and formerly powerful people to remain in their native land. But class, caste and money is a relative measure of human wealth -- the two men learn that although their family was considered wealthy in Afghanistan, even their previous wealth is deemed poor in the United States, according to American standards of largess. Amir's father is distraught because of this revelation. So much of Baba's esteem was tied up with his ability to confer material benefits upon his family. He was also upset that Amir showed more talent for literature and writing, than business and boyish pursuits.

Baba was also torn apart, as a member of a formerly high caste, by the prejudice Amir and Baba experienced in America. Ironically, this prejudice was inflicted upon the two men because of the hatred Americans felt at the Taliban regime Baba and Amir fled. "People sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz, the Taliban's last stronghold in the north," but not in a way that encouraged them to feel compassion for Amir and his father Baba. (Hosseini, 2003, 316) the author noted that this was an ironic consequence that many exiles from nations hostile to the United States experienced, not just Afghanis.

Unlike his father Baba, Amir, because he remained haunted by his cowardly actions and the disloyalty of his childhood, bore the slings of fortunes and insults of the American land of his refuge and torment far better than his father. Amir saw these difficulties as deserved punishments for his past crimes, rather than undeserved suffering. Amir could not escape the negative parts of his past in his own mind, even in America. "Swimming classes. Soccer.... And the Taliban scurried like rats into the caves." (Hosseini, 2003, 316) as he said at the beginning of the novel, and at its end "I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975," not because of the takeover of the Taliban. (Hosseini, 2004, 3) Life rather than politics punished him, in Amir's view. In contrast, his father also cannot forget the past -- but only what was good, rather than bad about the past. Baba saw his suffering as part of his nations, not a personal affliction.

Thus both men remained essentially frozen in time, hence the circular fashion of the narrative. Amir could not escape his guilt for his childhood wrongdoings. Baba could accept the loss of his wealth, status, and family name. The fluidity and transience of such personal attributes as money, religion, and social approbation come into sharp relief in the contrast between the lands of America and Afghanistan -- but not because America is so democratic, but because America is so judgmental of Muslims and of Afghanis in particular, just as Afghanis were so judgmental of one another based upon religion and caste.