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Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini Father-son love, misunderstanding
(Later we learn that this is 6 months after the call that
pulled him to Afghanistan again.) 2 Hassan covers for Amir when they do mischief. Hassan’s mother Sanaubar, a beautiful woman with a bad reputation, left a week after Hassan’s birth with a clan of singers and dancers. Amir’s mother died after childbirth the year before Hassan was born. 3 Baba builds an orphanage, raising Amir’s level of jealousy. 17 Baba tells Amir that theft is the only sin. Baba explains his broad understanding of theft, but obviously Amir takes him only literally; he later tries to frame Hassan for theft. 23 Amir cried to see a rider trampled, later overhears Baba talking with Rabin Khan about his shame that he has a son so weak and unlike himself. 4 Amir reads often to Hassan; Amir begins to tell, then write his own stories. 29 Story of Rostam and Sohrab from the Shanamah, 10th c epic of ancient Persian heroes. “After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons?” Amir wants Baba to read his first story; Baba has no interest. Rahim reads the story and praises Amir, telling him that he has understood an important literary device: irony. 34 Amir reads the story to Hassan, who points out that he has missed a “plot hole” though he doesn’t use that term. Hassan points out that the man whose tears turned into pearls could have merely used an onion to make himself cry, didn’t need to kill his wife. 5 Amir and Hassan and Ali are terrified by guns during the night. 38 Assef the sociopath is introduced. 40-42 Hassan saves Amir from Assef by threatening with his sling shot. 45 Hassan’s birthday present form Baba is surgery on his hare lip, successful, 47 “But that was the year that Hassan stopped smiling.” 6 Winter, kit flying, kite chasing 54-55 Amir sees 2 Hassans, servant and person; Amir tests what Hassan would do for him: eat dirt. The master/servant relationship is shown to corrupt the master. 55 Big kite tournament. 56 Amir reflects that if he wins “Then maybe my life as a ghost in this house would finally be over.” 58 Hassan is so pure “You always felt like a phony around him.” 7 Hassan has a dream that there is belief there is a monster in a lake, that he and Amir swim far into the lake to prove it is not so. Hassan uses the dream to urge Amir to go through with his plan to fly in the tournament, that Amir’s fears are unreal, that there is no monster in the lake. 65 Amir: “But this was my one chance to become someone who was looked at, not seen, listened to, not heard.” 66 Amir wins the tournament. “And that was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.” 70 Amir hunts Hassan, who is chasing the last losing kite. “Lucky Hazzara., having such a concerned master. His father should get on his knees, sweep the dust at your feet with his eyelashes.” 71-73 Rape of Hassan by Assef, Amir revealing his shallowness by hiding, not defending Hassan as Hassan had defended him. 73-74 – 2 memories and a dream: 2 fed from the same breast are brothers. “Sakina . . . a fair, blue-eyed Hazara woman from Bamiyan and she sang you old wedding songs.” Fortune teller starts to tell the boys’ fortunes, begins with Hassan. When the fortune teller touches Hassan’s eyes and “a shadow passes across the old man’s face” and he returns Hassan’s rupia, Amir won’t let him tell his own fortune. Dream: Amir is lost in a snow storm; a hand appears to rescue him; the snow leaves and grass appears; there are colorful kites in the sky. 75-76 Rape of Hassan, details 77 Amir: “I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. . . . In the end, I ran . . . because I was a coward. . . . That’s what I made myself believe. I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. . . . He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?” 78 Amir waits for Hassan and pretends he’s been looking for him, hasn’t seen the rape scene, ignores the fact Hassan is disheveled and bleeding. 79 “Baba held me close to him, rocking me back and forth. In his arms, I forgot what I’d done. And that was good.” 8 Baba asks why Hassan has not been around. Amir asks Baba for a trip to Jalalabad. Baba agrees, asking whether Hassan would like to go. Amir lies that he is sick. Amir tells no one about the rape. Amir had wanted the trip to be just the 2 of them, but Baba, as usual, invites many others. Amir is carsick in the van on the way to Jalalabad. 86 That night as many men slept in one room at the relative’s house in Jalalabad, Amir says to no one: “I watched Hassan get raped.” He reflects that he himself was the monster in the lake in Hassan’s dream, that he had “grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom.” “That night I became an insomniac.” 89 The rest of the winter Amir avoids Hassan though Hassan tries to rekindle the relationship. Finally Amir asks Baba whether he has “ever given thought about getting new servants.” 90 “I never laid a hand on you, Amir, but you ever say that again. . . You bring me shame. And Hassan . . . Hassan’s not going anywhere.” 88-90 Hassan and Amir go again to the pomegranate tree. Amir taunts Hassan: “What would you do if I hit you with this?” Amir pelts Hassan with pomegranates and orders him to hit him back. Hassan takes a pomegranate and crushes it against his own forehead. “’What am I going to do with you, Hassan?’ . . . But by the time the tears dried up and I trudged down the hill, I knew the answer to that question.” 93- Amir’s huge 13th birthday party. Assef taunts Hassan, who is serving at the party; Baba seems to admire Assef; Assef’s parents don’t say a word. Assef gives Amir a biography of Hitler as birthday present. Escaping from the party, Amir is joined by Rahim Khan, who tells him the story of his love for a Hazara woman, daughter of neighbors’ servants. His family reacted violently, the servant family was sent away. 99 “It was Homaira and me against the world. And I’ll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins.” 9 Amir ignores his pile of birthday presents in the corner of his room. 102 Amir reflects that Rahim Knan had said his father’s dismissing the servant family (previous chapter had said they were neighbors’ servants) “had been for the best in the end. She would have suffered.” . . . Amir rationalizes that “Maybe it would be fore the best. Lessen his suffering. And mine too. Either way, this much had become clear: One of us had to go.” Ali and Hassan, cleaning up the day after the party, give Amir their present, a beautifully illustrated copy of the Shahnamah. Amir plants the watch Baba had given him for his birthday and some of his birthday money under the mattress in Hassan’s hut. He lies to Baba that Hassan has stolen the items. [Baba had told Amir that the only sin is theft.] 105 Baba asks Hassan whether he stole, and Hassan says yes. Amir understands that Hassan is once again covering for him. Amir expects that Baba will dismiss Ali and Hassan; instead he forgives. Ali announces they are leaving and will not stay, though Baba begs them. “Ali glanced my way and in his cold, unforgiving look, I saw that Hassan had told him. He had told him everything, about what Assef and his friends had done to him, about the kite, about me. Strangely, I was glad that someone knew me for who I really was; I was tired of pretending.” 107 Baba weeps when Ali and Hassan are driven by him off to the bus. 10 March 1981 Baba and Amir are on a refugee truck with a few possessions, fleeing Shorawi-occupied Kabul for Pakistan. Amir is again carsick. At a checkpoint, a Russian soldier on drugs tries to rape a woman in the truck. Baba stands up to him, though he holds a gun. A superior officer stops the confrontation and the truck passes. In Jalalabad, where a truck is to carry them to Pakistan, the driver admits his brother’s truck is broken. Baba threatens to choke him. They stay in a cellar with other refugees the driver has brought for a week. The truck is never repaired. They travel to Pakistan in the tank of a fuel truck. Before they board, Baba stows a box of Afghan dust in a box in his pocket. Panicking in the fuel tank, Amir is told by Baba to think of something good. Amir thinks of a day when he and Hassan are in a grassy place flying a kite. 122 “Not a word pases between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don’t have to say anything. . . . 123 a perfectly encapsulated morsel of a good past.” 124 In Pakistan, they await a bus to Peshawar. “My eyes returned to our suitcases. They made me sad for Baba. After everything he’d built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life: one disappointing son and two suitcases.” The father of Kamal (studious boy, raped also) shoots himself when, after the ride in the fuel tank, he finds that his son has died during the journey. [Amir has there an example of a father’s unquestioning love, in contrast to his own father, who he feels does not understand him.] 11 Fremont, California. 1980s Baba works in a gas station. Amir goes to high school. Baba has political ideas other Afghan refugees disagree with. He thinks only the US, Russia, and Israel are “real men.” “It has nothing to do with religion.” He hates Jimmy Carter: “Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won’t come swim in your pool.” 126 Baba loves Reagan for calling the Shorawi “the Evil Empire.” 127 Baba trashes a Korean grocery store when the owner asks for ID when Baba tries to pay by check. 128 “What kind of a country is this? No one trusts anybody!” “In Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker. He’d carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he’s pull for us from the tandoor’s roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.” 129 Baba misses being in a place where everyone knows everyone and their ancestors. 130 Baba refuses food stamps; other refugees take them, including the future father-in-law of Amir, who waits to be called back to a desk job in a reconstituted Afghanistan. Amir graduates from high school. Baba is very proud, takes pictures of Amir, takes him out eat, to a bar to drink, starts a party at the bar, 133 gives him a car at the end of the evening: “You’ll need it to go to college.” Baba ruins the day for Amir when he says “I wish Hassan had been with us today.” Amir says he will major in English. Baba would favor medicine or law. 135 “But I would stand my ground, I decided. I didn’t want to sacrifice for Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself.” 136 Amir tries to drown himself in America, pushing away Kabul (“a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.”) “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.” Baba buys an old VW bus and the 2 of them gather goods from garage sales on Saturdays and sell at a flew market on Sundays. There Amir meets the girl he falls in love with the daughter of another refugee, Soraya Taheri. Amir later asks Baba about some story that Soraya had some incident back in Virginia. [Later we find that she ran away with a man and her father came for her.] 142 Baba warns him that “It may be unfair, but what
happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a
whole lifetime, Amir.” Yelda is the long night when lovers wait for each other to appear at dawn. Amir feels that every night is yelda since he met Soraya. Amir and Soraya eventually talk at the flea market, though to do so is bad for Soraya’s reputation. Soraya wants to be a teacher, had earlier taught a servant to read and to write her own letters, that made Soraya very proud and sealed her ambition to teach. 151 Amir thinks of how he, on the other hand, teased Hassan about big words he didn’t know. Soraya’s father catches the 2 talking once at the market and throws away the writing Amir had brought for Soraya to read (one of his stories).
153 Amir hasn’t time to worry about what Soraya’s father thinks. Baba is sick. He has lung cancer but will not accept treatment. 156 Amir objects when Baba declines chemo. Baba: “Don’t you challenge me in public, Amir. Ever. Who do you think you are?” Baba sickens further but doesn’t want anyone to be told of his illness. 161 Amir asks him to go kastegari for him—to ask for Soaya’s hand. 165 The proposal is accepted, but Soraya will agree only after she has told Amir of her past. Amir says it doesn’t change his feelings. “How could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past? . . . I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a forty-year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn’t.” (feels this means that he lacks courage) 13 Amir and Soraya marry, the period of engagement shortened because of Baba’s health. Soraya joins them to live in their apartment, cares for Baba. Amir finds Soraya and Baba reading from his notebook—at Baba’s instigation. Soraya praises his writing, and the implication is that Baba too likes it. Baba dies a month after the wedding. Amir learns about his wife’s family: that the mother Kranum Takeri (Khala Jamila) had been a wonderful singer but the father will never allow her to sing in public; that the father (the general) is proud, accepts government assistance because he considers menial work below him, is waiting to be called back to a desk job in Afghanistan. The General will not listen to the health complaints of Kranum, his wife. Amir does, and she loves him for that. 178-179 the story of Soraya’s disgrace comes out in full when Amir and Soraya attend a wedding and overhear remarks about how virtuous the bride is. Soraya’s father made her cut off her hair after he brought he back home from the man she had run away with. She wasn’t allowed to leave the house for weeks, and faced gossip when she did go out. The General gives Amir a typewriter as a present when the couple move to a new apartment—so he is softening a bit about Amir’s ambition to be a writer. He stills castigates Soraya for her wanting to teach—“Anyone can teach.” 182 Summer 1988 Amir finishes his first novel (father and son story set in Kabul) and it is accepted for publication. 184 1989: Berlin Wall tumbles, Tiananmen Square; Afghans continue to die at the Soviets’ hands but that news is buried by other more notable. Amir and Soraya try to conceive but eventually are resigned that they cannot. They talk of adoption, but the General thinks that is a terrible idea, that Afghans don’t do that because they value family lineage so much. 188 Amir thinks “someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment.” 14 June 2001 Amir resolves to answer Rahim Khan’s phone call and goes to Afghanistan. 15 In Pakistan, he finds Rahim Khan ill, is told that he lived with Hassan in Baba’s house. 16 (From the PV of Rahim Khan) Rahim Khan found the house to much to care for eventually, went to the village Hassan lived in and prevailed upon him to come help him. Hassan comes with his pregnant wife, who delivers a girl who dies. Hassan eventually has a son, delivered by his mother, Sanaubar, who is ill and comes to live with them. The family is very loving now that they are reunited. The son is named Sohrab, after the son in the favorite hero from the Shahnamah. Hassan will not live in the big house but in his old hut. Sanaubar does live in the house and after some time she dies. Hassan has become literate, teaches his son to read and write and to be expert with a sling shot as was Hassan when he was young. 1996 the Taliban defeat the Russians but ban kite flying. 1998 the Taliban massacre the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif. 17 Rahim Khan gives Amir letters from Hassan and a photo of Hassan and Sohrab. He tells of the killing of Hassan and his wife by the Taliban. He wants Amir to rescue Sohrab and suggests the boy can be placed with “Thomas and Betty Caldwell,” who look after some orphans in Peshawar. He tells Amir that Sohrab is his nephew, for Hassan is the son of Baba. Amir storms out: “I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve just found out my whole life is one big fucking lie!” 18 Amir reconsiders and returns to Rahim Khan. 226 “Baba and I were more alike than I’d ever known. We had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for us. And with that came this realization: that Rahim Khan had summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too.” 227 “I was older now, but maybe not yet too old to start doing my own fighting.” 19 Amir goes to Afghanistan, driven by Farid, who is rude to him because he assumes Amir is going back to sell property and take the proceeds to America. Farid has lost 2 daughters to a land mine that also injured him. 229 Farid gives Amir lemon slice for his car sickness. It doesn’t help, but Amir tells him it does. “As an Afghan, I knew it was better to be miserable than rude.” 230 Amir has along a false beard since the Taliban enforce their version of Sari’a, requiring beards for men. 231 Amir regards this journey as his “one last chance at redemption.” 232 Farid is derisive that Amir regards Afghanistan as his country, since Amir’s family had been wealthy, driven American cars. “He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path. . . . ‘That’s the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That’s the Afghanistan I know. You? You’ve always been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.’” In Jalalabad they overnight with Farid’s brother Wahid. Wahid silences Farid’s ridiculing Amir. Amir tells them that he is going to Afghanistan to get his half-brother’s child. Wahid praises Amir. Amir is fed and assumes that the 3 little boys are admiring his watch. He gives them the watch but they soon lose interest. Amir overhears the mother asking for food for the children and realizes that the boys were instead looking at his meal. 239-240 Another dream, this time with a man in a herringbone vest holding a rifle at a kneeling blindfolded man who is saying “A thousand times over . . . For you a thousand times over” and has a scar on his lip. The rifle sounds. Amir sees that the face of the man is his own. Before he leaves the house next day: 242: “I did something I had done twenty-six years earlier: I planted a fistful of crumpled money under a mattress.” 20 Farid is helpful now that he knows Amir’s purpose in Afghanistan. Amir is horrified by the ruin in Kabul. Taliban in red Toyota trucks roam the street looking for sinners. Amir is chastened never to meet their eyes. 249-250 Amir happens upon a beggar, former university professor who taught with his mother. He learns that she liked almond cake with honey and hot tea. The beggar can remember no more but asks Amir to return in case he thinks of anything; Amir never finds him again. Amir wonders again why Baba never told him any details about his mother: Was thinking of her too painful? Did he blame Amir for her death? They arrive at the orphanage but are not trusted by the director until Amir supplies the information that Sohrab knows how to read and write and is good with a slingshot. The orphanage is run down, the children have little to eat. Sohrab has been taken by a Taliban member who comes periodically for a child and pays the director. Farid nearly chokes the director for selling children, but the director says it is the only way he can get money for food for the rest. (Another instance of good and bad in the same person; Amir can’t face that about himself, distrusts that he is worthy after what he did as a child to Hassan.) 21 Amir and Farid leave, see a man selling his artificial leg, presumably to get food for his children. 260 They drive to a relatively preserved district where live “The people behind the Taliban. The real brains of this government, if you can call it that: Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis.” They find Baba’s house. 262 Amir reflects on a turtle he and Hassan found and painted red. 264 Amir won’t leave, as Farid begs him to. He climbs the hill he and Hassan used to climb and finds the carving on the now barren pomegranate tree: “Amir and Hassan. The Sultans of Kabul.” 267 They stay in a wretched hotel for a high price. Farid asks Amir why “that boy? You come all the way from America for . . . a Shi’a?” Amir finds Afghanistan a hopeless place, here yet another example of hatred. They go, as the director told them, to the Ghazi Stadium to find the man in the sunglasses. They witness a halftime ceremony at the soccer game (players in long pants). The man in the sunglasses leads the execution by stoning of a man and a woman in separate chest-deep holes after a prayer led by a cleric. 270 Amir remembers Baba saying “Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys. They do nothing but thumb their rosaries and recite a book written in a tongue they don’t even understand. God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.” Amir sends Farid to arrange a meeting for him with the man in John Lennon sunglasses. 22 Farid drives Amir to the meeting place, a well-kept house. Amir goes in alone to find that the man in sunglasses is Assef. Assef has needle marks on his arms. Assef recalls with pleasure the Mazar-i-Sharif massacre of Hazzara by the Talib soon after their takeover. 277 “Door-to-door. We only rested for food and prayer.” Assef calls in Sohrab, who wears makeup and dances to music for Assef. Assef caresses Sohrab. Assef reveals he recognizes Amir. 282-283 Assef tells of his “conversion” when he was in pain from a kidney stone, imprisoned by the Soviets. The commandant would choose a prisoner to beat each night. When Assef was beaten he finally laughed because the blows had made him pass the kidney stone. 284 “I kept laughing and laughing because suddenly I knew
that had been a message from God: He was on my side. He wanted me to
live for a reason.” 289 Amir is laughing during the batering. “I felt at peace. I laughed because I saw that, in some hidden nook in a corner of my mind, I’d even been looking forward to this. I remembered the day on the hill I had pelted Hassan with Pomegranates and tried to provoke him. . . . I felt healed. Healed at last.” 291 Sohrab uses a brass sphere from the overturned coffee table as a weapon in his slingshot and puts out Assef’s left eye (just as Hassan had threatened Assef years ago to save Amir). They run away, helped by Farid to the car, and drive to a hospital. 23 297 The doctor tells Amir “The impact had cut your upper lip in two, clean down the middle. . . .there will be a scar.” (like a harelip) Sohrab stays with Farid while Amir is in the hospital. A man comes and stares at Amir. Amir fears he is Talib. Farid says Rahim Khan is gone, that he left a package for Amir with the landlord. 301 Rahim Khan’s letter: “What you did was wrong, Amir jan, but do not forget that you were a boy when it happened. A troubled little boy. You were too hard on yourself then, and you still are. . . . A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer. I hope your suffering comes to an end with this journey to Afghanistan. /. . . But your father was man torn between two halves, Amir jan: you and Hassan. He loved you both, but he could not love Hassan the way he longed to, openly, and as a father. So he took it out on you instead.” 302 Rahim says in the letter that the good in Baba (orphanages, alms) was his way of redeeming himself. “And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good. . . . Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But, most important, forgive yourself.” Rahim has left money in a safe deposit box and included the key with his letter to Amir. Amir continues at the hospital in a difficult recovery from his many injuries. He dreams that Assef is at his door, brass ball still in his eye socket. “’We’re the same, you and I,” he was saying. ‘You nursed with him, but you’re my twin.’” 308 Farid has searched for John and Betty Caldwell (orphanage to take care of Sohrab) and found there were never persons by that name in Peshawar. 24 Amir and Sohrab go to Islamabad and stay in a hotel. Sohrab admires the great mosque. Amir awakens to find Sohrab gone, eventually finds him looking at the great mosque. 318 Sohrab asks “will god put me in hell for what I did to that man?” (boy having the same feelings of guilt that Amir has had for life) Amir explains that some people are only bad, not good; that the man tried to hurt Amir years ago and that Hassan saved him and the man hurt Hassan in a very bad way. 319 “What you did to that man is what I should have done to him all those years ago. . . . You saved my life in Kabul. I know [Hassan] is very proud of you for that. (to console Sohrab that his father is not disappointed in him for what he did to Assef) 320 Amir asks Sohrab to come live with him in America. 323 Amir tells Sohrab he and Sohrab’s father were brothers. Sohrab guesses that the reason they were not supposed to be brohers is because Hassan was Hazara. 325 Amir tells Soraya his whole history by phone, also that he wants to adopt Sohrab. 328 Amir and Sohrab go to the American consul, who discourages Amir in his plan to adopt (can’t prove Sohrab is an orphan, adoptions have to be done according to the rules of the home country—impossible under Taliban, Moslem regulations sometimes do not permit adoption, no one can prove that Sohrab is Amir’s nephew). The functionary, Raymond Andrews seems unfeeling, fiddles with tomato plants, smokes; but Amir finds out from the receptionist that his daughter recently committed suicide, which might account for his rudeness. 334 Lawyer Omar Faisal is sympathetic but suggests ultimately the only way to adopt would be to put Sohrab in an orphanage and wait out the 2 years. (Amir had previously promised Sohrab that he would never again have to go to an orphanage.) 340 Sohrab remembers that his mother told him the importance of waiting when he got sick from eating green apples. Amir tells him about the orphanage plan, suggesting it is just another instance when waiting is the right thing. Sohrab is despondent. Amir falls asleep during Sohrab’s usual long bath. 342 Soraya calls to say that the friend with INS connections has the issue solved, a humanitarian visa that can allow adoption within a year. Amir rushes to tell Sohrab, has to break down the bathroom door. Sohrab has tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists. 25 Sohrab is hospitalized. Amir is frantic, turns to god, begins to pray, says Baba was wrong about there being no god. 354 Sohrab wants his old life back. Amir reflects that he does also but that for both it is impossible. 355 Amir begs Sohrab to agree to go to America with him. “As I waied for his reply, my mind flashed back to a winter day from long ago, Hassan and I sitting on the snow beneath a leafless sour cherry tree. I had played a cruel game with Hassan that day, toyed with him, asked him if he would chew dirt to prove his loyalty to me. Now I was the one under the microscope, the one who had to prove my worthiness. I deserved this.” Sohrab has said he is tired. He will not speak again for another year. 357 Amir once told an American asking about a film the ending—he had committed the sin of Spoiling the End. In Afghanistan that’s what everyone wanted to know about a story: Does it end happily? “If someone were to ask me today whether the story of Hassan, Sohrab, and me ends with happiness, I wouldn’t know what to say. / Does anybody’s?” 361 Soraya has prepared for Sohrab. Her father calls him “Hazara boy” and Amir tells him never to use that term again in his presence. Sohrab is silent for a year, shows no interest in games or toys or people. 363 Twin Towers are destroyed. 364 The General is summoned back to Afghanistan for a military position. 365 Amir prays daily, knows the words now. 367-371 On a rainy day at a gathering, Amir buys a kite and Sohrab shows some interest in it. Their kite cuts another and Amir asks whether Sohrab wants him to run it for him. It seems Sohrab nods. Amir: “For you, a thousand times over. . . . It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. . . . But I’ll take it. . . . I ran. . . . I ran.” (last sentence)
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