Every guilt craves redemption, and the craving seldom goes so acute that it demands the culprit to shuttle across frontiers in the face of great odds to feel evenly redeemed of it. Khalid Hosseini builds a gripping narrative on the same line in his 2003 best seller, The Kite Runner. Its protagonist, Amir, now settled in California, is heaved into a long trek of adventures by a call from Rahim Khan, a loyal friend of his late father, telling him that he should take measures to rescue Sohrab, the son of his illegitimate brother, and childhood friend , Hassan.
Everything that follows is a flashback to Amir’s life as a child in the Wazir Akbar Khan District of Kabul, Afghanistan, in the 70’s. The household constitutes two ethnicities, that of Amir and his rich father on the one side as Pashtun masters, and Hassan and Ali, their Hazara servants on the other. Hassan was born a cleft-lipped child to Ali’s wife, Sanauber, who ran away after his birth believing that she was too beautiful for this drudgery of having to rear an unsmart looking child, and that in a dingy servant quarter. On the other hand, Amir’s birth had some more ominous bearings. His mother died the moment he came to this world, leaving Amir’s father too regretful to accord his full fatherly affection to this boy.
Though they are in a master-and-slave relationship, Amir and Hassan grow up as friends completely unaware that they share the same blood. Hosseini clinically draws his readers’ empathy towards these two boys, whose personal bond of friendship defies all imperatives of blood, culture, prejudice and prerogative. Amir loves to read him the stories he has created, and Hassan, on the other hand savours every word he hears. Besides they have honed their kite flying skills over the years. Hassan’s craft in running a kite they have cut is simply uncanny. Amir invests high hopes in his friend’s talent and looks forward to winning the upcoming kite-flying tournament, wherein he himself seeks the opportunity to win his father’s long evasive love.
The tournament does bring Amir the coveted victory, but he soon realizes that it heavily rests on Hassan’s bruised body and character occasioned by his molestation. This feeling of guilt starts taking its toll on Amir. Overwhelmed by it, Amir devises a theft ploy to rid himself of Hssan’s sight at home. And that’s where the things change for the worst. What was deemed as a temporary solace from an inner battle soon gets taken over by a large scale social unrest caused by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Driven by the survival instinct, they flee their home.
The plot now shifts to California where this once well-off family of two i.e. Amir and Baba settles for some odd jobs. Amir makes a career in writing and finally marries an Afghan girl, Soraya just a few weeks before Baba’s death. Hosseini’s description of these distant lands immaculately pictures life in its truest throb. Amir’s apparently peaceful life gets a call for duty to right the long-due wrongs from his past. He answers Rahim khan’s call by visiting him in Pakistan; gets told about his true relation with Hassan and prepares to rescue his orphaned nephew, Sohorab from an orphanage in Afghanistan. Hosseini takes us along to run this errand with Amir and see for ourselves the now war-torn Afghanistan, disfigured the whole kit and caboodle.
All things come together whole circle at the end of the novel. Injured and bruised, Amir finally gets Sohorab back home in California and adopts him as his son. The goodness finally prevails as Sohorab’s dim smile at a kiting event suggests his long-desired approval to settle with this pair of childless parents.
This contemporary piece of literary fiction allows us a real-time sneak peek into the peace hungry land of Afghanistan from a chunk of time between 1970 till 81, and later through the rule of Talibans. This emotionally draining piece of literature will leave you wanting more and more of Khalid Hosseini stuff, if you really want your hand on the pulse of contemporary time.
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