The Kite Runner

by Khaled Hosseini

Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion.

After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons?

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.

The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.

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 tension in the air was as taut as the glass string I was tugging with my bloody hands.

My hands are stained with Hassan’s blood; I pray God doesn’t let them get stained with the blood of his boy too.

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.