Book Talk: The Kite Runner

Yesterday I spent traveling across the United States. It's a long trip, and I spent it reading The Kite Runner--the entire book of 371 pages. It's one of those that's almost impossible to put down.

The story of two boyhood friends is set in Afghanistan. Amir--the narrator of the story--is a child of privilege, living with his father in a fine home in Kabul in the 1970s. His best friend is the servant's son, Hassan, who also serves as a personal servant to Amir. The history of the boys is that Amir's mother died in childbirth, and Hassan's mother, seeing his harelip when he was born and not loving Hassan's father, ran away with another man. The two boys are nursed by a hired woman, and thus the brotherly bond is established even though they are of different backgrounds. The social inequity between the boys is an accepted fact. The social lines are not crossed, and it exacerbates the trouble that comes between them.

The story turns abruptly when the two boys are twelve years old. Amir comes upon three bullies attacking Hassan, who has run after a kite felled by Amir in a kite fighting contest. Amir chickens out from doing anything to stop the bullies from raping his best friend in a deserted alley. Running home without intervening, Amir hopes Hassan hasn't seen him although he rightly suspects for years to come that Hassan knows; Hassan eventually finds his own way home, hurt and bleeding. The guilt of this event so deeply affects Amir that he turns against Hassan, causing a rift that changes the lives of all of the characters in the book.

How did the book work for me? I'll start with context. Having grown up overseas, I could "see" much of it. I haven't been to Afghanistan, but I've been to northern India as a child and have interacted enough with friends from Pakistan that I had some context for the story. I know and like some of the foods mentioned. The clothing was familiar and the male-dominated culture is one that I have observed, although I've not been subject to it, thank goodness.

More to the point: I found the book deeply disturbing on so many levels, I'm not sure where to begin. On a gut level there were interpersonal dynamics described that touched a difficult chord, bringing up some things I continue to struggle with and not talk about much. Some of the scenes brought back memories that weren't so happy for me. The description of the inequities between servants and the hiring family were familiar to my own experience, and unsettling. The rifts caused by harm done, the guilt carried through the years, and the narrator's description of a person despising himself and at the same time trying to redeem himself through his actions, were all so human and familiar and sad. But there was also the willingness of some characters to go on with life, and to let some things go. I think I'll be processing it all for a while.

Beyond reading of a very human experience that could take place in any country, it was also depressing to read of the devastation caused by warring tribes in Afghanistan. The vivid picture drawn in words of the issues between the Pashtun and the Hazari people reminded me of the racial issues in my own childhood country of Malaysia (another Islamic country). There are groups which are privileged in every country; the people in Afghanistan have experienced unspeakable horrors and violence as the situation deepened into ethnic cleansing.

Would I recommend the book? I don't know. I guess it depends on your frame of mind and the shadows you deal with in your own life. I think you have to possess a pretty strong psyche to make it through the book. I can't say I think it makes a person's life better for having read it. But it did leave me thinking, more cognizant of the plight of the Afghanis, a people I have not known much about.

And yes, I do plan to read the second book by Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which focuses on the lives of Afghani women.