The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

People say that eyes are windows to the soul. Never was that more true than with Ali, who could only reveal himself through his eyes.

“But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice,” I managed between bursts of tittering. “So did Genghis Khan,”

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing. But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either.

I was going to toy with him and challenge his loyalty, then he’d toy with me, test my integrity.

And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.

“For you a thousand times over!”

We’d actually deceived ourselves into thinking that a toy made of tissue paper, glue, and bamboo could somehow close the chasm between us.

“It was Homaira and me against the world. And I’ll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”

“Israel does this, Israel does that,” Baba would say in a mock-Arabic accent. “Then do something about it! Take action. You’re Arabs, help the Palestinians, then!”

For me, America was a place to bury my memories. For Baba, a place to mourn his.

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins. If for nothing else, for that, I embraced America.

I dream that my son will grow up to be a good person, a free person, and an important person.

He charged me $75, an unthinkable price given the run-down appearance of the place, but I didn’t mind. Exploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another.

good, real good, was born out of your father’s remorse.

And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.

There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.

So what I took as a yes from him was in actuality more of a quiet surrender, not so much an acceptance as an act of relinquishment by one too weary to decide, and far too tired to believe.

After all, life is not a Hindi movie. Zendagi migzara, Afghans like to say: Life goes on, unmindful of beginning, end, kamyab, nah-kam, crisis or catharsis, moving forward like a slow, dusty caravan of kochis.

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.

IT WOULD BE ERRONEOUS to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquillity. Quiet is turning down the VOLUME knob on life. Silence is pushing the OFF button. Shutting it down. All of it. Sohrab’s silence wasn’t the self-imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.

when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.