Khalid Housseini's novel is a page-turner, regardless what critics may say about his somewhat simplistic writing.  His gift is indeed that of a storyteller - even if all the elements and characters are contrived, who cares?  A good story is worth telling!

This book has sold 10 million copies around the world, but of course it's hard to get hold of in Afghanistan.  The film which followed is banned.  But the material inside the story is deeply engrained in their lives: pederasty and sodomy, class differences, ethnic tensions, jealousy, cowardice, hatred, love, loyalty.

Amir is a boy growing up priviledged with a powerful father, but he has no mother:  she died in childbirth with him, and his father begrudges his son this loss.  In their household is an old and lame male servant, with his own motherless son, Hassan.  Amir is not popular with the neighborhood rich kids, and Hassan, as a minority boy (Hazara), a poor servant's son, has no other friends.  They grow up together, play inside and outside together, and their fathers are good friends.  Hassan's own mother ran off when he was born with an harelip, so they share their motherlessness in common as well.

At about age 12, with Amir in school and Hassan at home making tea, cleaning, ironing and cooking for Amir, the class differences are growing as Amir awakens slowly to his own Afghani identity.  He is a Pashtun, of Indo-European blood, and his servant Hassan is Hazara, of Mongolian descent, with slanted eyes.  Hazaras are despised by the Pashtuns for their Kenghis Khan descent, and their Shii'a religion, yet they make up about 40% of Kabul's population, mainly as servants, street vendors, streetwalkers, and hakelon - boys as sex toys.

Bad rich boys in the neighborhood terrorize the Hazaras, with Hassan as no exception.  Their attitude of ethnic superiority leads to an extremely cruel crime, namely, the rape of little Hassan, while the cowardly Amir looks on mutely, then runs in fear and remorse at his own inability to help his Hazara servant.  His feelings of anguish and then anger at Hassan provoke him to push Hassan out of the house, in a very cunning way - and that act makes his father even angrier.

The story intensely examines Amir's feelings - his confusion over his true relationship with Hassan, his jealousy that his father stands by the Hazara servant, even paying for his harelip repair operation.  He cannot overcome feelings of guilt that he killed his mother.  He is, in sum, a lonely, bookish and tortured soul, while his father's business and social life mainly leads to his being ignored at home.

Ultimately, Soviet invasion and Taliban takeover destroys both boys' realities - sending lucky Amir and his father to Fremont, California, with Hassan and his father back to their homeland, Hazarajat, far away from Kabul. 

The book veers off into new material - Amir and his father trying to make it in America, with no great luck at the San Jose flea market.  His father's descent to the working masses and unwelcome immigrant-dark skin group indeed does bind them better together.  Finally, the father's own smoking leads to his death from cancer, leaving Amir an orphan at 21, still in college.

We follow by unbidden command into his further struggles - marriage, work, childlessness, in-law trouble, and nonstop worry about the homeland, dear old Afghanistan.

Amir will ultimately return to his home and become involved again with Hassan's family, to rectify the guilt of his early teens, to do good again. 

Perhaps this meager plot description cannot do justice to the gripping nature of the story, as we see the twisting and turning of Amir's emotions amidst the turmoil of his own family life and then overwhelming political events, followed by financial crashes and immigration.  It is truly the story of a life spent in serious thoughts.

What struck me is that the core of the story revolves around the sexual mores of Afghanistan:  firstly, that Hassan is in fact his half-brother; that his father slept with a Hazara woman and cannot admit that he disgraced his bloodline, yet cannot push the child away.  So the sin of illegitimacy is a strong one, and prevents these two boys from knowing the truth of their own lives:  a shared father.  So powerful are the ethnic and class rules, the father cannot tell the truth.  Amir has to travel back home to hear if from the lips of a dying man, and of course, it's too late:  Hassan has been executed.

Secondly, that the role of male-on-male rape as a punishment against the weak, the poor and the minorities is so widespread, that even 12-year-old bullies dare to do it in the streets:  this surely makes that part of the world different from our own.  It is not pederasty - these are boys who grew up hearing and/or seeing boys and minorities get raped, and dare to do it themselves in public.

The whole tradition of the bacha baazi, the habit of taking a poor boy with good looks as one's property, to keep him as a sex toy, a 'lover' to spoil with clothes and toys, to train to dance as a woman at male-only parties:  this custom goes far back in Afghanistan, and is growing stronger again.  The Taliban tried to stop it.  It is also a custom in old Tibet, where the married wealthier monks would keep a wife and/or wives, along with a boy, all in the same big bed, with the boy grateful to live with a rich man and service him, in exchange for room, board, and education.  Baacha baazi, young boys dancing in woman's clothing, beaten by their masters, can be seen on YOUTUBE!

No doubt, therefore, that the "evil" Assef, teen rapist and later wealthy Taliban leader, saw and heard about such things at home.  Perhaps his own father kept a Hazara boy in his home for such things.

In all the different reviews online of this book, very few Western people seemed to think it an odd scene - but it rang untrue with me.  If the Hazara servant Hassan was used to submission, daily small humiliations to his father and himself, and knew his people's role in the greater Pashtun Kabul culture, why would he be so shocked at this treatment?  Would a 12-year-old boy like Amir - if he grew up in the West - even understand what the nasty rich kids were doing to Hassan in the street?   I wonder.  It had to be commonly known.

The book gives very interesting insight into the male and wealthy perspective of Afghanistan, jarred into greater awareness by transferring to the San Francisco area, plunged into working poverty, considered minority status.  Amir becomes Hassan in the Bay Area.

Those wealthy enough to escape were called "dogwashers", considered cowards by the less wealthy who stayed behind in Kabul to suffer the Soviets and then the Taliban.  "Dogwasher" is the job they considered the former elite of technocrats doing in the USA.  They are not welcomed back at all - considered greedy landowners returning back to grab former property.

This kind of book and its film will help nonAfghanis see another world from the inside - especially its very different sexual mores.  The level of homosexuality (or bisexuality) is very high in Afghanistan amongst men - perhaps starting in teen years by the opportunity to rape servants - or getting raped if one was a servant.

The exclusion of women almost all the way through this story is also indicative of a very different culture.  Until Amir marries halfway through the novel, we do not consider women at all through his eyes.

Yes, read it - but read the Internet to find out more about their very old customs of sexual slavery, too.

Recommended: Yes