Shelf life: Looking at secular books

THE KITE RUNNER
By Khaled Hosseini
Bloomsbury. £12.99
ISBN 0 7475 6652 6

I’m a bit slow on the uptake with this book. It was first published three years ago, and I’d not heard of it until a month ago, when a friend pressed it into my hands and insisted that I read it. Well I have, and now I want to urge others to read it, too.

Written by an Afghan doctor who left his homeland for the US as a teenager during the days of Communist rule, the novel encompasses the recent past of Afghanistan’s violent history, and also a deeply personal story of friendship, betrayal and atonement. Amir narrates his story of growing up as the privileged only son of a wealthy widower and with Hassan, motherless son of a household servant. Every morning Hassan prepares Amir’s breakfast, irons his school clothes and then spends the day working with his father until Amir returns from school.. Then Hassan is free to play with Amir and to listen to him read. The friendship between the boys and also the intense jealousy Amir feels towards Hassan are acutely described, in simple, concrete language.

Betrayal

The jealousy fuelled by the attention Hassan receives from Amir’s own forceful father results in a terrible betrayal which will haunt and shape Amir’s life for the rest of the book. We see him growing up, fleeing the Communists in a dangerous undercover escape, and settling with his father in America. Although he attempts to bury his past, he fails and eventually returns to Afghanistan during Taliban rule for a dramatic repayment of his debt.

Both sides of Islam

There are elements of fable throughout the story as we see past mirrored in the present, and the lives of the main characters paralleling each other. The huge themes of betrayal, father-son relationships and atonement contribute to this. Hosseini has created an engrossing and challenging world which forces the reader to think about responsibility and faithfulness. We also see Islam portrayed in its extremes, from the barbaric horror of the Taliban to the faith that rises in Amir when he has reached the end of all his resources, ‘I will pray...I will fast...I will go on pilgrimage...if only He grants me this one wish’.

Tragedy

The smells, weather and people of Kabul are fleetingly but powerfully evoked providing a credible backdrop to the dramas of Hassan and Amir’s lives; the metaphor of kite flying (the winter pastime of Kabul youth) is apt, as it conveys the fragility and yet the competition within these all-male relationships. I was left with a sense of the tragedy that is Afghanistan’s history, and the insufficiency of all our human atonements; all that Amir undertakes, however noble, cannot repay his debts and he deals with an unknown god who cannot answer his prayers. We must pray for Afghanistan.

Sarah Allen