It is not wrong to say that every man is nothing but a proper name with a set of significations attached to it, our identity marked by a mere word consequently is highly relative. This is the situation that Amir in The Kite Runner finds himself in. He is not a single entity as such, but a tortured self defined by the factors that are external to his self. Always pinning his identity on the “otherness” created from his relationships with Baba and Hassan, we find his self being linked to the social set up he found himself in -- a self veiled by the curtains of ideologies. This self engrained in the guilt of his past always made him drift about without finding a definite point.
The cover page which depicts a boy peeking into the alley is in fact a very touching way of pointing out the fact that this looking back is critical to the whole of the novel and to Amir. In fact in the first chapter, a prologue to the novel, we find Amir going back a quarter of a century, to conjure up the words: “For you a thousand times over”. In so doing so, he triggers off a long link of factors—Hassan, Baba, Ali, Kabul, and inevitably the winter of 1975—which “made me what I am today” (2). The notion that identity is a construct of societal and cultural interactions is depicted through these lines. But a hint of a change is foretold in the words, “There is a way to be good again” (2). The construction of Amir’s self thus becomes dependent on Rahim Khan; to comprehend his journey it is easier to divide the novel as before and after Rahim Khan’s narrative.
All the way through his life we find him in quest of a sense of completion -- an undeviating outcome of the choices and the memories that seem to make Amir. The whole narrative focuses on this and the visible change that dawn on his nature, involving an intricate process of “lost and found”. A weakling by nature he is always dependent on others—be it Hassan or Baba—and most of the time sees himself through their eyes. Thinking himself as unworthy of Baba’s love he fills himself with regret at not being a real man like Baba. This insecurity makes him run away from all the critical instances in his life.
His whole identity was so engrained in his past guilt that he accepts Soraya who had lived with another man as he believed that he of all people had no right to chastise someone for their past. Even when he succeeds as a writer and publishes his first novel, Amir feels that he does not deserve happiness because of what he had done to Hassan. The idea of fatherhood also unleashes a swirl of emotions in him. In all the relationships that Amir finds himself in, he is driven by a sense of lack, regret, and of course guilt, which have seeped in from his past filled with “unatoned sins”. It is this which makes him undertake a trip to Pakistan after a phone call from Rahim Khan—he seeks a way to do away with his past.
With Rahim Khan’s revelation a whole new aspect comes to Amir as if he has got a mission to complete at thirty-eight. In a daring attempt to end what “had been a cycle of lies, betrayals and secrets”, he plunges into Kabul, meets his nemesis Assef, fights him, and as atonement for his and Baba’s sins, rescues Sohrab,the son of Hassan. Hereafter we find that his choices amount to a way of realizing his self—he gets away from the ideological factors that govern his identity, asserts his loyalty to Hassan-proclaiming his redeemed status as his half-brother, stops running from his past, faces all his demons and opens out his heart to Soraya.
The kite as a metaphor is crucial to Amir’s journey—whether it is the physical or the mental. It was the kites that had reduced the chasm between Baba and him. It was a kite that tore the bond between Amir and Hassan, making Hassan’s “life of unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase” (192). But it is the same kite that brings Sohrab to him, with a glimmer of trust lighting up the corner of his mouth. All his dreams and memories of happy days merge in a sky filled with kites. Moreover, it is the pair of kites he finds flying in the San Francisco skies that takes him on a ride to the past. His self is framed between two kite tournaments—in the first, in 1975, we find Amir plunging into a sense of guilt that haunts him for twenty six years. But a similar tournament in 2002 exorcizes that ghost from his past and brings with it a certain peace and self contentment, joining and strengthening the severed bonds.
A strange twist to the kite fighting, this tale brings to the forefront the fact that the winner who emerges ultimately is not the one who slays the kite, but it is the one who has the resolve to run and capture safely the slain kite. This fresh perspective showers a new light on the novel, while the kite run is an effort for redemption to Amir, it is exorcising the “survivor’s guilt” for Khaled Hosseini.
It is a tale depicting the bonds of ordinary people, severed and mended by their own thoughts and deeds. Born into the centuries-old discourses of ethnicity, socio-politics, religion and culture, a child is reduced to a coward, but like any ordinary man he takes on these same aspects and gives an extra ordinary sweep to his life. The value of this book lies in this very fact that if circumstances can demand it, it is possible to turn a normal everyday being into a hero.
This insight into the contours of humanity and the ability to transform it with a realistic yet sensitive stroke has in a way opened our eyes to the way we perceive ourselves and also those around us. A whole new dimension is opened up before us once the realization dawns on us that we are also governed by these very same discourses.
It took Khaled Hosseini and The Kite Runner to throw light into the simple yet hitherto incomprehensible truth that it the common man that can make a difference, not heroes of epic proportions. His characters therefore are not unique to either Afghanistan or San Jose but can be sighted in the nook and corner of the world. The saving grace of humanity lies in this transformation of the ordinary into extraordinary. At this point it cannot be helped to say that it would not be a marvel if we stumble on kite runners around us as well.
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