"There is a way to be good again"

Reviewing "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

It's one of those books that shocks you with countless illustrations of the depravity of the world -- but you can't put it down anyway.

I started reading "The Kite Runner" less than a week ago and finished it tonight, all 400 pages. An impressive feat considering my usual excruciatingly slow reading pace and hardly any skimmed paragraphs at that.

The story is enjoyable, but much like a kite -- there are times when it soars toward the heavens and times when it takes a death dive of improbability at the ground.
Set in the shadows of ever-growing tumult in Afghanistan, the reader is swept into the life of Amir, a privileged, wealthy boy who lives with his father and servants after his mother died. His personal servant, Hassan, is one of the meekest, most sacrificial characters you will ever encounter -- like the proverbial lamb led to slaughter, only with deadly slingshot skills. Amir's father, Baba, is an important figure in the city of Kabul and seems to his son to care little about his accomplishments. Perhaps this frustration at his father's indifference is what leads Amir to behave primarily selfishly for most of his childhood, including thinly veiled cruelty toward Hassan, whom he believes his father favors. Despite Hassan's good natured spirit and serving attitude, he is hardly rewarded for his efforts and takes the brunt of tragedy in the book, without ever seeking revenge. The contrast of self-centeredness and self-sacrifice is frustrating, especially as Amir initially escapes any punishment for his actions. However, a terrible conflict between the two boys and some neighborhood rivals pushes Amir over the edge as he witnesses unspeakable behavior, fails to protect the dignity of himself or Hassan and is consequently haunted by guilt for more than 20 years.

Of course, situations in Afghanistan worsen with time, as the story conveniently takes place at the dawn of political turmoil in the region, begininng in the 1970s. Amir continues his self-centered rampage until he and his father are forced into exile, moving to America at the beginning of his adulthood. From there, the requisite romance is developed, the education completed and the career began before a phone call from an old friend is the catalyst for Amir's return to Afghanistan, a journey that is the classic guilt-redemption phase of any good novel. The trip turns into a nightmarish affair as Amir realizes that most of his good friends are gone, the havoc the Taliban has wrecked on his homeland and that he must perform a seemingly impossible mission. From there, several gut-wrenching twists play out as the reader is spared no details on the horrors of modern extremism and the sufferings of Amir and Hassan's son Sohrab, whom he must rescue from work as a child slave. Amir escapes one predicament after another, only to be tripped up by agony once more, a sequence that seemingly will never end. Although it is clearly implied that Amir believed he deserved all of it for his past wrongdoing, it seems too much for one person to bear. Finally, the two escape back to America...to live happily ever after? That's never established after Amir's harrowing trip to Afghanistan, but the reader at least feels some sense of peace that his ever-present guilt may have finally been released.

But the best part of the book is Hosseini's description of childhood in the Middle East, albeit an extraordinarily privileged one. Especially exquisite are Hosseini's descriptions of seemingly simple childhood events, such as waking up on the first morning of vacation, a kite tournament, or reading to a friend outdoors. His writing in these passages gave me a better appreciation of tradition in the Middle East and the realization that in many ways, we all value the same things as children. The development of the complex relationship between Amir and Hassan, and later, Amir and Hassan's son, is heart-wrenchingly realistic, and Amir's efforts to give Sohrab a better life in the face of adversity is a much-needed act of kindness.

This is not a perfect tale -- although I was convinced for the first half of the book that it was an autobiography of the author's life, the second half grew more and more improbable as the story came together. We never really understand why Amir's father, who seemed to have little clue on how raise his child, suddenly became the model parent after the two move to America and how quickly tension between them vanished. Assef, the requisite villain, serves as a well-crafted bully in Amir's childhood, but his reappearance later in the novel and overly-violent encounter with Amir seems highly unlikely. Everyone seems to be related to each other in some way and although it adds significance to trivial characters, it also smacks too much of small world syndrome. And when I learned, nearly at the end of the novel, that Hassan and Amir are half-brothers, it came as little surprise, serving as a cliched sub-plot and their true connection having been overly foreshadowed during the description of Amir's childhood. However, considering that this is a novel and makes no claim of factuality, it is wonderfully well-written in spite of some outlandish occurences.

At the beginning of the novel and later on in Amir's adulthood, when he makes his decision to travel to Afghanistan, we learn that an old family friend has told him "There is a way to be good again." Amir is never a totally depraved character but makes poor choices throughout his childhood, destroying several relationships and forcing him to seek ways to end the guilt that plagues his life. Ultimately, he finds redemption in rescuing the child of Hassan and renewing a long-lost faith in God. It is refreshing to see a character turn toward faith instead of away from it, even though he is a Muslim, and by the end of the book, we see that his faith plays a highly significant role in his life. As Christians, we know that we are a messed up group of people -- examining the plight in Afghanistan only illustrates this. Despite our bad nature, God gives us the chance to be good by accepting His unconditional forgiveness and relinquishing our self-centered guilt to Him. At the end of the novel, Amir is running, light on his feet, caught between the pleasant memories of his childhood and the hope of a promising future, running back into self-acceptance, running to reclaim what was lost, to remember what was once good. If we give it up to Him, we can have that same wonderful peace and find our way, like Amir, to be good again.