The Kite Runner

Amir’s childhood home in Kabul has fallen into disrepair. Farid tells Amir it is best to forget the past. Amir tells him, “I don’t want to forget anymore” (230). Amir is overcome by nostalgia and ignores Farid’s hurried honks. A Taliban truck leaks oil in the driveway and still Amir feels compelled to explore. Amir climbs the hill to the wilted pomegranate tree, still marked with the epitaph they carved there as children: “Amir and Hassan. The Sultans of Kabul” (231). Looking out over the city, he notes the missing trees, the missing verdant green of his childhood Kabul now wasted.

Amir and Farid travel to Ghazi stadium, and Farid elbows them toward the front. At halftime, a man and a woman are driven out to two large holes dug at the end of the pitch and buried up to their chests. A cleric recites a prayer from the Koran and then announces that the two will be stoned for adultery, carrying out God’s justice. Amir and Farid spot the Taliban official who Zaman described; he is wearing round John Lennon glasses. The official picks up a rock and stones the man until he is mangled and declared dead by a man with a stethoscope. Then the soccer match resumes. Farid approaches one of the Taliban roaming the stands with a whip, stating that he and Amir “[…] had personal business to discuss with the man in white” (237). The message is relayed back, and Farid and Amir are told they have a meeting at three o’clock the next day.

Farid drives Amir to meet the official at a big house beset by willows. Farid hesitates, and Amir excuses him from coming into the compound with him. Even as Amir tells him that he will be back, Amir is unsure that he will be. Inside the compound, two Taliban frisk Amir and lead him upstairs to a room where he sits alone waiting. In the silence that follows, something in Amir warns him that he is a coward and acting dangerously out of character. After a short time, the guards return with the official wearing the John Lennon glasses. At the official’s command, a guard pulls off Amir’s fake beard.

The official asks if Amir enjoyed the show, going on to brag about the “public justice” he carried out in 1998, and he mimes the recoil of a sweeping machine gun, depicting the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif. Amir tells Talib that he is looking for Sohrab. When Talib suggests that Amir has committed treason by being away for so long, Amir calms himself by thinking of Soraya at their wedding ceremony. When he shifts his attention back to the room, Talib asks if Amir would like to see Sohrab. Sohrab enters with bells on his ankles and makeup, made to dance on command. Then Assef reveals himself behind the John Lennon glasses, asking Amir, “Whatever happened to old Babalu, anyway?” (345).

Assef recounts his experience in prison when a raid by the communist party in 1980 stormed the homes of many of Kabul’s prominent families and imprisoned them. Assef was tortured while also suffering the excruciating pain of a kidney stone. At the hands of a sadistic comandante, Assef was kicked with steel-toe boots until the stone finally passed. Believing himself in God’s protection, Assef laughed hysterically and was removed from the comandante. Assef describes his holy purpose to cleanse Afghanistan, telling Amir that he is a traitor without “[…] pride in your people, your customs, your language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage” (249).

When Amir offers to pay for Sohrab, Assef pushes Sohrab forward. Assef tells his guards to leave, saying he will fight Amir to the death, and should Amir win, he should be allowed to walk away. Once the guards leave, Assef wields his brass knuckles and brutally beats Amir in vicious hand-to-hand combat. During the ensuing brawl, Amir can feel his bones snapping, but he begins to laugh, enraging Assef. Amir knows that this confrontation is the punishment he has been hoping for since Hassan’s attack in Kabul. 

Finally freed from his guilt, Amir braces for Assef’s final blow when Sohrab appears with his slingshot in hand. Sohrab, who has witnessed the fight, asks Assef to stop. When Assef tries to grab Sohrab, he shoots a brass coffee-table adornment into Assef’s eye. Amir grabs Sohrab as the Taliban guards rush to Assef’s side. Farid puts Amir and Sohrab in his Land Cruiser, and Amir loses consciousness as they drive away.

This chapter provides glimpses of Amir’s vision as he slips in and out of consciousness: the faces of surgeons looking down at him, intense pain, a bubbling sound. Amir dreams he is in the Sulaiman Mountains of Baluchistan. He sees a youthful Baba wrestling the black bear. Then Amir sees that he is wrestling the bear. When he wakes up, he recognizes a man he glimpsed while under anesthesia. The man’s name is Dr. Faruqi. Faruqi reveals to Amir that he is in a hospital in Peshawar. His jaw was wired shut after the trauma sustained from his fight with Assef. His spleen was also ruptured, and his broken ribs resulted in a punctured lung, which forced surgeons to intubate Amir with a chest tube to prevent the lung from collapsing. Amir’s upper lip was split, and Dr. Faruqi tells him that there will be a scar. 

Farid comes to visit, bringing Sohrab. When Amir introduces himself, Sohrab says that he recognizes him from stories his father told him. Farid gives Amir a folded piece of paper and a small key, all that was left behind when Farid went looking for Rahim Khan. Amir asks that Farid leave Sohrab with him for a while. Sohrab is despondent, refusing to eat or speak. When Amir falls asleep, he wakes up and sees Sohrab has not moved from the stool at his bedside. 

After Farid picks up Sohrab, Amir reads Rahim Khan’s folded letter. In it, Rahim Khan expresses regret for helping Baba keep the secret of Hassan’s parentage, acknowledging that both Amir and Hassan had a right to know but also that the Kabul of those days “was a strange world, one in which some things mattered more than the truth” (263). Rahim Khan also alludes to Baba’s dual sides, one socially legitimate and respected and the other guilty for the secrets that he was forced to keep to maintain his privilege: “When your father was hard on you, he was also being hard on himself” (263.) Rahim Khan finishes the letter by telling Amir that he has left him money at a bank in Peshawar. He asks Amir not to look for him. 

The following day, Amir’s chest tube is removed, and Farid returns with Sohrab, warning Amir that Peshawar is not safe from Taliban retribution. Farid says he will take Amir to Islamabad when he can walk. Amir writes down the names of the couple Rahim Khan told him would take care of Sohrab, and Farid goes looking for them, leaving Sohrab with Amir again. 

Amir and Sohrab play with a deck of cards Amir has found in the dresser beside his hospital bed. As they play, Amir tells Sohrab about his friendship with Hassan and how they used to play a game called panjpar on days when it was snowing. Amir suggests that he could have been a better friend to Hassan and that he would like to be Sohrab’s friend now. He tries to touch Sohrab’s hand, but the boy flinches and retreats to the window, where he had been watching pigeons on the windowsill. When Amir sleeps, he dreams that he can see Assef in the doorway, telling him that they are the same. 

The next day Farid arrives and tells them the Caldwells, the Christian couple that Rahim Khan suggested would take Sohrab, were never in Peshawar, and according to the consulate, never existed. Together with Sohrab, Farid and Amir retrieve the money from Rahim Khan’s safety deposit box and place it in a paper bag. On the drive to Islamabad, Amir has more feverish dreams.