jc_hall's Full Review: Marc Forster and Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner...
To all outward appearances, Amir is a lucky boy. He lives in the most beautiful house in an affluent neighbourhood of Kabul. His Baba is a wealthy merchant, a well-loved and highly-respected man. Young Amir has as constant companion a boy his own age--Hassan, the cleft-lipped son of Ali, Baba's servant. As the story begins, Amir and Hassan are living a relatively care-free existence, their childhood like an extended summer as they play cards, fly kites and get into mischief together.
But Amir is a very troubled little boy. Having lost his mother who died giving birth to him, he shares the big house with only his Baba, the two of them enduring long silences during mealtimes. A strong and courageous bear of a man, Baba is deeply embarrassed that his only son is turning out to be a bookworm who has no aptitude whatsoever for sports and needs Hassan to fight his battles for him.
Desperate for his father's attention and approval, Amir discovers that there might just be a way in to his Baba’s heart. With Hassan as his kite runner, Amir sets out to win the local kite-fighting tournament. What happens after Amir cuts the last kite and sends Hassan to run it down, sets off a string of events that propels Amir and Hassan down two separate winding paths that prove devastating to both of them.
First-time author Khaled Hosseini has created a modern-day parable set against the turbulent politics of Afghanistan. The author paints a stark picture of the destruction of a way of life and the ruin of a country. While Amir and his Baba escape the Soviet invasion and flee to the US, Hassan and Ali are left to a fate doomed by the worsening socio-political situation that culminates in the Taliban hijacking the religion of Islam and using it to justify their thuggery, greed, and corruption.
We are treated to a glimpse into an ancient culture with all its inherent history, customs and tradition. The author, born in Kabul, son of a diplomat whose family received political asylum in the US, gives us an insider's view of displaced Afghanis struggling for their livelihood and identity in California, a new world so different from their own.
Amir grows up tormented by a moment in time when he forbore to act, and the almost unendurable regret that has clung to him ever since. But when a phone call comes from Pakistan and holds out the promise of redemption, Amir travels halfway across the world, twenty odd years later, back full circle to Afghanistan. There, he learns hard truths about the country he left behind and the people he loved, and struggles his way to a hard-won redemption.
The protagonist, Amir, is a flawed and utterly believable hero. Other characters are similarly well-rounded, from the honourable and fearless Baba to the smart, loyal and forgiving Hassan, and the kind, wise and knowing family friend, Rahim Khan. Reading Hassan's and Rahim Khan's letters to Amir is, for me, the most moving part of the novel.
The sepia-tinted photograph on the cover (Anchor Canada 2004 ed.) breaks my heart. It shows a young boy peeking into a deserted alley. A band-aid around the index finger of his left hand covers a kite-fighter's wound (one of many deep cuts made by the ground glass-impregnated kite-string). The little boy is Amir. Unlike the covers of most novels, this cover complements the story in a powerful way. We see just how small Amir was at the turning point of his life, and we understand that self-preservation can sometimes be misconstrued as cowardice.
The author's message seems to be this: Yes, loyalty betrayed can cause a lifetime of guilt and regret, but only to a man of conscience. And redemption is possible, but it must be hard-won. And sooner or later, we have to forgive, not just others, but ourselves.
Brightly-coloured kites, a symbol of freedom, joy and hope, lit up the skies of Afghanistan before the country lost all these attributes of peace. But by the end of the story, the kites are resurrected, in the land of the free, with another kite runner, and hope springs again in the heart of one man.
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