THE KITE RUNNER

Book Review: Chapters 1~5

Chapter 1

The date is December 2001. The narrator who is Amir, is telling his story in the first person. He recalls an event that occured in 1975 when he was twelve years old and was growing up in Afghanistan. The narrator does not mention what the event was but says that it made him who he is now. Following this, he tells the readers about a call which he received last Summer from Rahim Khan, a friend in Pakistan. Rahim asks Amir to come to Pakistan to see him. After the call, Amir strolls through the streets of San Francisco, the place he lives currently. He observes kites flying the sky which recalls him of his past, including a friend named Hassan, a boy with a cleft lip and whom he calls a kite runner.

Chapter 2

Amir, the narrator then describes his childhood, back in the past. As children, Amir and Hassan used to climb trees and use mirrors to reflect sunlight into a neighbour's window or they shot walnuts with a slingshot at the nieghbour's dog. All of these bad behaviors were Amir's ideas but whenever they were caught, Hassan never blamed Amir. Amir lived with his father, Baba, in a luxurious house in Kabul. On the other hand, Hassan and his father, Ali, lived in a small mud hut on Baba's estate. Ali also worked as Baba's servant. 

Unfortunately, neither Amir nor Hassan had a mother. Amir's mother died giving birth to him while Hassan's mother ran away after giving birth to him. 

One day, the boys were walking together until they met a soldier. The soldier told Hassan that he slept with his mother, Sanaubar, before. Sanaubar and Ali were an unlikely match. Ali was faithful in the Holy Koran, his bottom half of the face was paralyzed and polio destroyed his right leg's muscle which gave him a severe limp. Sanaubar was nineteen years younger than Ali. She was beautiful and reputedly unethical. Most of the people believed that the marriage was arranged by Sanaubar's father to restore honor to his family. Sanaubar merely loathed Ali's physical appearance. As a result, she ran away with a group of travelling performers just five days after Hassan was born.

The soldier referred Hassan to a Hazara, which we learn in the book that it is a ethnic harassment in Afghanistan. The Hazaras orginially came from further East Asia and their features are more Asian. Hassan herited his looks from his parents. Whilst  Amir and Baba are Pashtun. The opposite of Hazaras. Once, Amir discovered that Hazaras had an uprising during the nineteenth century while he was looking through history books. But it was brutally restrained by the Pashtuns. The book also gives some disrespectful names they are called, such as mice-eating and flat-nosed. It says a part of the reason for the antagonism is because the Hazara are Shia Muslims although the Pashtuns are Sunni Muslims.

Chapter 3

In the third chapter, the narrator mixes his memories with Baba. Baba was a huge man, six feet and five inches tall with a thick beard as well as wild, curly hair. According to a story, Baba even wrestled a bear! He did all the things people said it was impossible. Even though he never trained as an architect, he designed and built an orphanage himself! People around him once again said he had no business sense, but he became one of the most successful businessmen in the city! Nobody thought he could marry well for he wasn't from an eminent family, he married Sofia Akrami, Amir's mother. She was a beautiful and intelligent woman from a royal bloodline. Baba also has his own strong moral. When Amir told Baba that a religious teacher; Mullah Fatiullah Khan, at his school said its sinful for Muslims to drink alcohol, Baba told his son that there is only one sin: theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. For example, murdering a man is stealing his life. Then he calls Mullah Khan an idiot including men like him.

Amir wants to please Baba by resembling him but he is not successful. He admits that he feels responsible for his mother's death. Since Baba likes soccer, Amir tries to like it and play it well but there's no hope in soccer. With the exception of poetry and reading, Amir is unable to catch up with his father. Later on, Amir mentions when he and Baba went to see a buzkashi match. It is a popular game in Afghanistan in which a rider has to put an animal carcass in a scoring circle while the other riders try to take it away from him. A rider was trampled after falling from his horse. From this view, Amir cried and Baba could not hide his detest for his own boy. Baba tells Rahim Khan that he is worried that Amir might not be like the other boys and not be able to stand up for himself as a child, then so will he be unable to stand up in his adulthood. Amir overhears this conversation with the business associate.

Chapter 4

The novel jumps back in time to the year 1933, when Baba was born and Zahir Shah became the King of Afghanistan. Around the same time, two drunk men who are driving at a high hit accidentally kills Ali's parents. Amir's grandfather takes the young Ali in. Eventually Baba and Ali grew up together. However, Baba never calls Ali his friend. Similarly, because of their ethnic and religious differences, Amir also denies Hassan as a friend. Nevertheless, Amir's youth seems like a long stretch of playing games with Hassan to him. But while Amir woke up and went to school, Hassan would do the housechorse and get groceries. Hassan was illiterate so Amir would often read to him.

During a reading session under their favorite pomegranate tree, Amir began to make up his own story while reading to Hassan. Hassan compliments that it is one of the best stories he has ever heard of. That night, Amir proudly writes his first short story. It is about a man who finds new ways to make himself sad for his tears turn into pearls. So he tries to find ways to make him richer using his tears. The story ends with the man sitting on top of a mountain of pearls, sobbing over his stabbed wife. Amir tried to show Baba the story while he was speaking to Rahim Khan but Baba doesn't show much interest. Instead, Rahim takes the story. Later on the same night, Rahim passes Amir a note. In the note, he tells Amir that he has a great talent in writing. Amir directly wakes Hassan and reads him the new story. When Amir nervously finished reading, Hassan exclaims that the story is stupendous! But he asks Amir why the man couldn't cry onions. Amir annoyed, thinks that he never thought of it and started nasty thoughts about Hassan being a Hazara but never said it aloud.

Chapter 5

The chapter starts with gunfires in the streets. Ali, Hassan and Amir hid in the house til morning. Amir says that the night was the beginning of the end of the Afghanistan they knew. It slipped away further in 1978 with the communist takeover and disappeared completely in 1979 when Russia invaded. The gunshots were actually part of a coup in which Daoud Khan, the King's cousin took over the government. Baba didn't arrive home until dawn because the roads were closed that night. In the morning, Amir and Hassan hears what happened on the radio, but they didnt understand the meaning of Afghanistan becoming a republic. Instead, they decided to climb a tree.

A rock hit Hassan while the narrator and Hassan were walking. They discover that Assef and two other boys from the neighborhood threw it. Assef is described as a notorious bully. He also mocks Ali's limp and calls him names. He carries a set of brass knuckles and calls Hassan a flat-nose and ask if they heard about Afghanistan becoming a republic in the radio. He says that his father knows Daoud Khan and that next time, Daoud would be over for dinner and was going to talk about Hitler. The narrator wrote that Hitler had the right idea about ethnic purity. Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns and the Hazaras pollute the country. Assef takes his brass knuckles out and says that Amir is a problem being friends with a Hazara. For a second, Amir thinks of Hassan as his servant but soon realizes that his thought is wrong. As Assef approaches Amir to hit him, he suddenly freezes because Hassan aimed his slingshot at him. Hassan's good aiming allowed them to run away.

After Daoud's coup, life goes back to normal. On Hassan's winter birthday, Ali calls Hassan inside. Baba is waiting for him with a man called Dr. Kumar. We get to know that Dr. Kumar is a plastic surgeon. Dr. Kumar explains what he does and soon Hassan's lip is raw as well swollen. But he smiled during the period his lips were recovering. As winter passed, Hassan's remains of his cleft lip was only a light scar.