91 pages • 3 hours read
Khaled HosseiniThe Kite Runner
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 24-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary
When they arrive in Islamabad, Amir considers the city more modern and better kept than Peshawar. Sohrab perks up at the passing of a large mosque, the Shah Faisal, on the way to a small hotel that Farid has found for him. Later, after having lost Sohrab, Amir remembers the mosque and finds the boy has returned to the mosque’s parking lot. Sohrab tells Amir that Hassan took Sohrab to a mosque in Kabul once, allowing him to feed the pigeons.
As they speak, Sohrab confesses that he misses his parents but that he is glad they are not here to see how dirty and “full of sin” he is. When Amir tells him he is not dirty, Sohrab allows Amir to embrace him, but he does not answer when Amir asks if he wants to go to America with him. A week later at a hilltop park, Amir and Sohrab play panjpar together again. Amir tells Sohrab that Hassan was his brother, explaining that he only found out recently. Sohrab asks whether Amir’s father loved Hassan and Amir equally. Amir thinks of the day at Ghargha Lake when Baba put his arm around Hassan for skipping a stone, and he tells Sohrab that Baba loved them both equally but differently. That night Sohrab agrees to go to San Francisco, making Amir promise never to leave him in an orphanage.
At the American Embassy, Amir and Sohrab meet with Raymond Andrews, who tells Amir that he cannot adopt Sohrab without proof that his parents were killed. In English, Amir explains that Sohrab’s parents were executed in the streets by the Taliban. When Raymond asks for a witness, Amir tells him that the only witness, Rahim Khan, is missing and unreachable. Raymond pressures Amir to give up his petition to adopt Sohrab and asks if he has promised Sohrab he will take him. When Amir asks why, Andrews tells him it is dangerous to promise children anything. As he leaves, Raymond stops Amir and gives him the business card of a local immigration lawyer named Omar Faisal. When he speaks with Raymond’s secretary, Amir learns that he has not been the same since his daughter died by suicide.
The next day Amir and Sohrab meet with Omar Faisal. Omar suggests that Afghanistan’s government is so flooded with emergencies and disaster reliefs that Amir’s best chance is to place Sohrab into an orphanage and file a petition for an independent adoption. When Amir tells Omar that he promised Sohrab he would not do that, Omar suggests that there may be no other way. In the hotel room, Amir breaks the news to Sohrab, who becomes hysterical, sobbing until he falls asleep. On the phone with Soraya, Amir learns that she has found a loophole. Instead of placing him into an orphanage and then waiting for a petition, through Soraya’s connection to the immigration and Naturalization Service, she has learned that petitioning a humanitarian visa once Sohrab has reached American soil will be easier and faster. Amir is overjoyed. Returning to tell Sohrab the news, he finds Sohrab unconscious in the bathtub, his wrists cut by a razor blade.
Chapter 25 Summary
In the emergency room, Amir is stricken with panic and helplessness. Using a bedsheet, Amir prays for the first time in years, deciding that Baba was wrong when he said there was no God. Now Amir believes that God is in the halls of the hospital, working through emergency workers. Later, a surgeon tells him that, although Sohrab has lost a devastating amount of blood, he will make a full recovery. Amir stays at Sohrab’s bedside for several days. Amir dreams of Sohrab in the bloodied bathtub. When he is awake, Sohrab is despondent and traumatized by his brutal experiences following the death of his parents. Amir tells him that he does not have to stay in an orphanage—that he has a humanitarian visa to go to America. Sohrab tells Amir that he wants his old life back, the life he led at Baba’s house: “I want Father and Mother jan. I want Sasa. I want to play with Rahim Khan sahib in the garden. I want to live in our house again” (309). Amir apologizes for breaking his promise and asks Sohrab if he will forgive him and if he will still come to America, but Sohrab never responds.
After Amir and Sohrab arrive in San Francisco, Sohrab still refuses to speak. At dinner with the Taheris, Soraya’s father demands to know why Amir has brought back a Hazara boy, concerned with the “community’s perception of our family” (315). Amir forcefully responds, telling him that he should tell the community that Amir’s father slept with his servant woman and they had a son named Hassan; “Hassan is dead now. That boy sleeping on the couch is Hassan’s son. He’s my nephew. That’s what you tell people when they ask” (315). Amir tells him that he is never to refer to Sohrab as a Hazara in his house again.
Months pass, and Soraya finds it too painful to deal with Sohrab’s despondency. Withdrawing as a maternal influence in Sohrab's life, she describes a “‘[h]olding pattern’ waiting for a green light from Sohrab” (320). In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Amir and Soraya reopen a small hospital on the Afghan border that was shuttered without funding. Together they manage the hospital remotely from their home in San Francisco. The following year, Amir takes Sohrab, Soraya, and Soraya’s mother to an Afghan gathering at Lake Elizabeth Park in Fremont. Sohrab is still distant, opting to avoid the canopy’s gathering of strangers and stand out in the light rain. There are other children fighting kites at the park, and Amir buys one from a kite vendor, speaking to Sohrab of his father, telling him stories of Hassan’s deftness in learning the direction of the wind.
Sohrab gradually shows an increased interest in the kite. When Amir runs, releasing the kite behind him, he finds Sohrab is still at his side, having followed him. When a green kite begins to approach, Sohrab joins Amir, offering to hold the spool as they engage the competitor together. Amir uses the trick he performed at the kite tournament in Kabul, allowing his kite to drop and cut the green kite loose. Beneath the canopy, a handful of on-lookers cheer for them, and the other children run for the spiraling green kite. Amir asks Sohrab if he should run the kite for him, then he sees Sohrab briefly smile. Amir tells Sohrab what Hassan told him at the kite tournament in Kabul: “For you, a thousand times over” (323).
Chapters 24-25 Analysis
In these final chapters, Amir is forced to reckon with one of the narrative’s central themes: the fragile nature of childhood. When Amir falls asleep, losing track of Sohrab, he turns to the hotel manager, Mr. Fayaz, for help. Fayaz chides Amir for his carelessness: “Boys must be tended to, you know” (274). The sentiment cryptically foreshadows Sohrab’s attempt to die by suicide but also teases a deeper meaning laced throughout The Kite Runner. From the narrative’s beginning chapters, countless children, especially orphaned children, are depicted in various states of peril. As Hosseini chart Amir’s life, from his own childhood to adulthood, he describes various encounters with neglected boys who often become hardened or tragic men.
Amir often observes the men in his culture use lies to control the way they are seen, Amir himself having carried the lie of Hassan’s attack with him through most of his life. When General Taheri despairs at the presence of a Hazara boy in his home, Amir is not only asserting himself in a long-running tension with his father-in-law, but also overcoming a central obstacle to his own happiness. By telling the General he should share the full truth of Baba’s affair with Sanaubar, he is forfeiting the constructs of nang and namoos, honor and pride, once and for all. This simple gesture flies in the face of the custom and tradition that has dominated the lives of key figures in The Kite Runner. The interaction suggests a permanent shift in the status quo of masculinity in Amir’s culture.
Earlier in the novel, Amir muses, “There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood” (277). Therefore, when Sohrab becomes despondent following the death of his parents, his treatment at the hands of the Taliban, and his own attempt to die, Sohrab is in danger of becoming one of these hardened and tragic men. However, the narrative’s falling action ends when Amir convinces Sohrab to take part in kite fighting with him. By reenacting the joys of his and Hassan’s youth for Sohrab, Amir is breaking the cycle of violence that consumed the others. Ultimately, Hosseini leads us to understand that the epidemic of orphaned children is still very alive in our modern lives.
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