The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

And suddenly Hassan’s voice whispered in my head: For you, a thousand times over. Hassan the harelipped kite runner.

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.

We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name.

The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

“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?”

Because the truth of it was, I always felt like Baba hated me a little. And why not? After all, I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I?

“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

“You just need to let him find his way,” Rahim Khan said.

“If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son.”

High on hashish and mast on French wine, they struck and killed a Hazara husband and wife on the road to Paghman.

That boy was Ali.

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.

Most days I worshiped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.

“Well,” he said, “if I may ask, why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn’t he have just smelled an onion?”

By the following winter, it was only a faint scar. Which was ironic. Because that was the winter that Hassan stopped smiling.

Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. Kites were the one paper-thin slice of intersection between those spheres.

The real fun began when a kite was cut. That was where the kite runners came in, those kids who chased the windblown kite drifting through the neighborhoods until it came spiraling down in a field, dropping in someone’s yard, on a tree, or a rooftop.

For kite runners, the most coveted prize was the last fallen kite of a winter tournament. It was a trophy of honor, something to be displayed on a mantle for guests to admire. When the sky cleared of kites and only the final two remained, every kite runner readied himself for the chance to land this prize.

But Hassan was by far the greatest kite runner I’d ever seen.

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

And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother.

There is no monster, he’d said, just water. Except he’d been wrong about that. There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.

“I don’t know what I’ve done, Amir agha. I wish you’d tell me. I don’t know why we don’t play anymore.”

“The people behind the Taliban. The real brains of this government, if you can call it that: Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis,” Farid

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