The Kite Runner

Amir recounts his relationship with Hassan, their days of endless play, Hassan’s deadliness with a slingshot, and the trouble they would get into at Amir’s instigation. Hiding in the branches of a tree, Amir tells Hassan to use his slingshot on the neighbor’s German Shepard, and ever obedient and loyal, Hassan reluctantly complies. Hassan and Amir are not only friends, but they also live together on the grounds of Amir’s father Baba’s home, said to be the “prettiest house in all of Kabul” (4). As Baba’s servants, Hassan and his father, Ali, live behind the house in a mud hut. Hassan was born here only one year after Amir’s mother died giving birth to Amir. 

Hassan’s mother, Sanaubar, is also absent from his life. Sanaubar and Ali were first cousins in an arranged marriage, though she openly detested Ali for his features slackened by a congenital paralysis and right leg atrophied by polio. Less than a week after Hassan was born, Sanaubar left with a troupe of performers. Consequently, Baba hired a woman to nurse Amir and Hassan, and they are said to share a special bond exclusive to those who feed from the same breast.  

In Baba’s study, Amir discovers one of his mother’s history books that outlines a history of violence between the Pashtun and Hazara people. The book explains that there was a Hazara uprising in the 19th century that was violently quelled by the Pashtuns, who subjugated the Hazara people as second-class citizens. When Amir shows this book to a Pashtun teacher, he discounts it as racist lies. Much of the hardship that Ali and Hassan face is due to their ethnic backgrounds as Hazara, a marginalized group of people in Afghanistan who are persecuted for their Mongolian features. In the streets, jeering children call Hassan and Ali “Babalu” or “Boogeyman.”

Baba is well-liked and respected in Kabul, especially after he funds the construction of a local orphanage. He is known for his generosity and headstrong nature, which earns him the nickname “Mr. Hurricane” from Rahim Khan, his business partner with whom he started a successful carpet-exporting business and restaurant. On the day before the orphanage’s opening, Baba takes Amir to Ghargha Lake outside of Kabul. Baba asks Amir to invite Hassan, but Amir lies, telling his father that Hassan is sick and cannot come. Amir recounts a previous trip when Hassan skipped a stone eight times across this lake’s surface. Having seen this feat, Baba patted Hassan’s shoulder and “even put his arm around his shoulder” (12).

While he has no royalty in his bloodline, Baba married Sofia Akrami, Amir’s mother, a beautiful and virtuous professor of literature with ties to a royal bloodline. When Amir is in the fifth grade, Mullah Fatiullah Khan teaches Amir’s class the Islamic faith and its intolerance for drinking. When Amir asks his father if he is a sinner for enjoying whiskey in his smoking room, Baba expresses his distrust of organized religion, explaining to Amir that the only real sin is theft: “When you kill a man, you steal a life [...] When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth” (16). 

Baba and Amir are opposites in many ways. While Baba is athletic and strong, Amir avoids physical shows of competition and loves reading: “That was how I escaped my father’s aloofness, in my dead mother’s books” (17). Amir participates in competitive poetry recitals at school. He reads ravenously from his mother’s collection of literature. Still, Baba yearns for Amir to have an interest in sports the way he does, signing up Amir to play soccer despite Amir’s lack of interest. When Baba takes Amir to watch Buzkashi, an ancient Afghani sport involving riders on horseback fighting to snatch a cattle carcass and deliver it to a scoring circle, a player is trampled and killed. Amir weeps all the way home. 

That night, Amir overhears his father on the phone with Rahim Khan complaining about Amir’s behavior. Baba says that he has been observing the way Amir is harassed by other children, each time defended by Hassan. Rahim Khan argues that Amir simply does not have Baba’s mean streak; he is of a gentler nature. Baba responds: “A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything” (20). Baba suggests that if he had not been present on the day of Amir’s birth, then he would have never believed that Amir was his own son.