It was a crisp clear January morning, where the deeper you inhaled, the more bitter the sting from the chilled winter air. The streets and countrysides were teeming with children, most battling kites far above the ground, into a remarkable silvery gray canopy of clouds. Those children who were not controlling the air campaigns above, chased down and attempted to capture the paper gladiators which had not been triumphant. The Place was Kabul, Afghanistan. The time was 1975, and the best Kite Flyer/Runner tandem to be found was Amir and Hassan. It is the relationship surrounding these two that spurred The Kite Runner to be hailed as a masterpiece of contemporary literature. Published in 1992, The Kite Runner was Dr. Khaled Hosseini’s inaugural attempt at authoring a novel. Issues such as violence, family, loyalty and displacement all come to bare as this tale unravels, all told through the eyes, ears and above all, heart, of Amir. All of the themes unearthed within the pages have been carefully crafted, as to resonate a mirror like parallel of Afghanistan’s own battle worn history. That history, scarred with ethnic cleavages, religious rifts and a tidal wave of political instability, has all but extinguished what has become a heavily diluted sense of pride and hope for the people of Afghanistan. Has that tumultuous history raised the price of peace so high that redemption has become as much a work of fiction as the novel itself?

The parallels begin by breathing life into the characters of Amir and Hassan. Amir, the son of Baba, a well to do merchant, was a Pashtun, while Hassan, his servant and later revealed half brother, was a Hazara. The relationship between these two was, at it’s core, duplicitous. They were, while in only each others company, the best of friends. They would play together, dream together and cause mischief together. Aside from Amir’s teasing and childish cruelty, they were, by most accounts, friends. In public however, they were Pashtun master and Hazara servant. Both knew their respective roles and neither ever attempted to deviate from them because, even at such a young age, both knew and respected the Afghan mores. Ironically, Hassan was the epitome of everything the Afghan culture admired; Honor, pride, loyalty, integrity and courage. Amir though, would not come to represent these qualities until much later in life. Baba too, shows a sense of duplicity. While acknowledging Hassan’s status of servant, he is treated much like a son (and fittingly so). His surgery is paid for by Baba and his care is never neglected. Because of the society, he is forced into living two lives, the inner and the outer. The parallel is an awkward one, displaying the impact culture can play in the lives of individuals within a society. Because the facet of religious and cultural status is capriciously held above that of merit, a natural attrition is created, lying feverishly dormant until finally compounded into combustion. The continual deprivation of a class of people by another leads to senseless bloodshed and avoidable war. This is illustrated not just by those in Afghanistan, but by most all of the nation states comprising the entirety of the globe. Look no further back than WWII to see how the world can be savaged by the disgustingly numbing truth.

Another parallel, mentioned quite fittingly after the first, is that of hypocrisy. One is hard pressed to find a character within the novel, aside from Ali, Hassan and Sorhab, that is not, to some level, plagued with this affliction. Much a fruit of the duality noted earlier, hypocrisy serves as a devil in waiting, kept below the surface in almost all of the characters. Baba’s culpability regarding his often quoted “one sin“, that of theft, being perhaps the most poignant literary example. Also, the General, who’s national pride and façade of Afghan perfection, is exposed through his collection of welfare, his refusal to take up gainful employment and his treatment of others. The reign of the various governments throughout the novel, too, is a seething hotbed of double standards. The Mujahedeen and the successor government of the Taliban were given control of the country, after the soviet withdrawal, under the pretext of equality, righteousness and Afghan propriety but soon began imposing self serving laws and butchering arbitrarily to genocidal proportions.

The value placed on family within the novel is paramount. Although there are elements of self righteousness and hypocrisy, there is also a tender sincerity and a bond between blood that is perhaps matched, but never surpassed in any other known culture. It is mentioned more than once in the book, how important family is to the Afghan community. It is even said that if you put two Afghani strangers in a room, within fifteen minutes they could find out how they were related. It was this reason, above all others, that Baba kept Hassan’s identity one of secrecy. If those in the Afghan community were to find out that a family’s bloodline had been “tainted” by Hazara blood, it would have meant shame and a veritable loss of everything he had worked to achieve. During Amir’s conversation with his In-Laws about adoption, the General went on a diatribe about the importance of blood and his point was never refuted. Amir and Soraya, although more Americanized than most Afghans, actually agreed with him. The bond of family is expressed quite bluntly and serves as one of the Afghan’s most endearing qualities but ironically, at the same time, shows all that is troubled within the culture.

Another word often used disparagingly and when extremism is displayed with regards to the focus on family, is tribalism. When the attribute of loyalty to a faction, group or family supercedes all other agents, including the ethics and thoughts of the individual, the term tribalism is given shape. It is the very waylaying of personal ethics and thought, and the promotion of a centralized, if not skewed, idealism that widens the cleavage of chaos within a society. This sense of tribalism, though not fully expressed within Baba’s or the General’s families, is seen in full when describing the reign of the Taliban. Dr. Hosseini illustrates quite effectively how fervently death and mutilation was cheered on within the football (soccer) stadium by Afghani spectators. Although we later learn about Baba’s sense of guilt and self hatred over his outward treatment of his son Hassan, he too displayed a sense of tribalism in accepting and complying with the cultural standards within his community. The parallel to reality here is self evident. Dr. Hosseini, while being interviewed, said he had gotten the depictions of the Taliban circling the arena in Pick Up trucks from actual footage of the events as they were broadcasted around the world. The destruction that the wars had so brutally generated, from the Soviets to the Taliban, was noted first hand from his visit to the crumbling rock, twisted steel and broken lives that had stolen the memory of his once beautiful homeland.

The reason Amir’s reaction to returning home was so honestly tragic, was because the words on the page were filled with the passion of Dr. Hosseini himself, having made the trip home and seeing the utter devastation firsthand. Before Afghanistan was totally raped by the dreadfulness of hate, both the author and main character had been displaced into America, much to the character, Amir’s, appreciation. He had carried such a weight of guilt for so long that he whole heartedly embraced his journey into America, a place that “had no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.” Before long he realized that no matter the geographical distance, his shame would continue to wage its own war within him. That was the reality of many of the displaced Afghans within the story. The General, Baba, and probably many of the other notables that they conversed with inside the Flea Market carried and tended to their own struggles with lives left behind. This is not to say that the displacement was an all bad thing. Much like the Bazaars back home, the Flea Market served as an makeshift Afghani marketplace. They had their mosques and their homes and most of Fremont, as mentioned by the author, was populated with Afghans. America, in a way, served as a place where the great aspects of Afghan culture could be remembered and practiced, but the negative aspects, unless harbored individually, could be forever left behind and lost. America also placed a large responsibility onto the character of Afghanis. Because Americans, the author noted, places much less, or at least different, value on family, there was no longer an outwardly social inclination towards tribalism. This meant that the Afghan experience, at least in America, ideally, could evolve.

The price of peace would appear to be quite high to those who remain in the war riddled country of Afghanistan. Throughout the novel, Dr. Hosseini makes mention of the escalation in violence and the even greater separation of ideas within the troubled country. These elements serve as fuel, continually poured over an already blazing environment. He writes at one point within the story that “Maybe….It was a hopeless place”, however the title of the book carries a symbolism that might suggest otherwise. Kite running was and is a great national past time within Afghanistan. It is a symbol of their heritage, history and pride. The soviet occupation prevented the running of kites due to obvious safety concerns, and under the Mujahedeen and Taliban it was outlawed. Only recently has the practice been re-instituted. Perhaps that is what hope is represented by within the novel. The kite represents hope. The novel begins with kites soaring high into the sky. Throughout the novel, kites are referred to less and less, except in memory. The last kite to be seen until the last page of the book had been the one clipped by Amir to win the festival and run by Hassan. Seemingly, as a harrowing foresight, the running of that kite signaled the ending of an era and the slow destruction of hope for what would turn out to be a very long time. As if to parallel Amir’s experience at the end of the novel with Afghanistan’s equally questionable future, Hosseini closes the novel with a particularly optimistic insight. “Because when Spring comes, it melts one snowflake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.” By writing this, Dr. Hosseini illustrates that he is not yet certain of his homeland’s future. He admits that the price of peace has risen greatly, but where a kite can be flown, maybe hope can still be risen. Perhaps, in Afghanistan, hope can still soar among that same silvery gray canopy of clouds that watched over them all so long ago.