Life’s Second Chances
Reviewed by Navneet Mattu
January 8, 2008
Khaled Hosseini’s powerful debut novel fulfills every requirement for an extraordinary book. The novel revolves around family relationships, guilt, atonement, the price of betrayal, the inhumanity of a class system, and unforgettable images of a war-torn country. This novel will take you on a roller coaster of emotions, and you won’t be able to get off until you’ve read the last sentence.
Khaled Hosseni’s first novel, The Kite Runner, delivers a provocative realization of life in Kabul before the Soviet Invasion and during the Taliban rule. Amir’s father is a wealthy, respected Pashtun. Amir has a privileged childhood, is provided with an education, and can always count on the company of Hassan, the son of his father’s servant. The two have a special bond, a kinship described as, “…one that not even time could break.”
Every morning, Hassan serves his friend, Amir, breakfast before he goes off to school in his father’s luxurious Mustang. Meanwhile, Hassan and his father cook and clean the house. When Amir returns from school, Hassan is eager to hear Amir read old Afghan folk stories aloud to him. Always, in return, Hassan protects Amir from cruel children in the community.
After an important kite-flying tournament, Amir, the champion, finally wins the respect of his otherwise preoccupied, father. This is a big accomplishment for Amir, who is constantly trying to impress his father, enough to just be noticed.
That day, Hassan, Amir’s kite-runner, followed the winning kite for hours until he was abused by upper-class, Pashtun children. The children fought Hassan for the winning kite. However, Hassan did everything he could to save that kite for his friend Amir. Finally, the worst happened and Amir, hoping Hassan hadn’t seen him standing there, could only watch his lifelong friend be tortured. His inability to defend Hassan haunts Amir forever just as Hassan’s words, “For you, a thousand times over,” follow Amir into his new life.
Hosseini does an excellent job recollecting the environment which surrounds Afghanistan during the pre-revolutionary period. He captures the tension between the nation’s different ethnic groups every time Hassan and Amir encounter one another. Amir and his father share what is thought to all outsiders to be an odd relationship with Hassan and his father. However Amir has been taught to treat others with nothing but respect and continuous loyalty.
As war begins to tear their country apart, Amir and his father take up an opportunity to leave the country. Finally they settle in Fremont, California where Baba, Amir’s father, works as a middle class gas station employee while Amir attends school. For the first time in their lives, the once extravagantly wealthy member of the Pashtun tribe now finds himself collecting old garage sale items for an auction where other Afghans get together to try and sell their secondhand goods. Though Amir and Baba struggle to make a living, they maintain their personalities of respect and honor just as the other Afghans in the community manage to do.
Hosseini marvelously describes the feeling of depth between the characters’ lives in Afghanistan and in California. Once Amir graduates, Baba says he wishes so much that Hassan could have been there to celebrate with them. Soon, Amir gets married and becomes the man of the house after his father’s death. Amir dwells on his past with Hassan even more now and wonders where Hassan’s life has taken him back in Afghanistan.
The relationship between Amir and Hassan resembles the relationship Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in the Rye, shared with his brother Allie. Holden spoke of Allie with gratitude, much in the same way that Amir speaks of Hassan. Amir values and remembers the treasured friendship and brotherhood he had with Hassan and misses him as much as Holden misses his brother. The deep meaning of his friendship is not defined until Amir decides to return to Afghanistan in hopes of reuniting with Hassan.
Hosseini describes the Afghanistan that Amir returns to as a country in endless suffering from Taliban rule. There are awful images of the streets that Amir once played on with his childhood friend, Hassan. The same streets they flew kites on are now full of shattered windows, dead bodies on the streets, a man, now hardly recognizable, hanging from the end of a rope tied to a beam, his clothes torn, and children with amputated limbs.
The story of Amir returning to Afghanistan reminds readers of how long the people there have been suffering from the same violent forces that continue to threaten them today. Nothing can deter Amir from the second chance he has been given to make things right. And in the end, it is Amir’s determination to atone for his mistake as a child that leads him to success.
Throughout this book I was engrossed by how lives can be turned upside-down by political turmoil, but what makes the story especially intriguing is that it is more personal than any other book I have read discussing the Middle East. It has the power to remind us how we all have responsibilities towards the ones we love––even if it means facing our fears and having to go back to a place we thought we had left long ago.
For another perspective on The Kite Runner, check out Raheem’s or Katherine’s review.