THE KITE RUNNER, by Khaled Hosseini, Riverhead, 324 pages,$24.95.
"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years."
After reading this opening paragraph, from "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, in an ad, I desperately wanted to know what he saw down that alley. I had some ideas. I knew it had to be something shocking, painful or terrifying, and curiosity just consumed me.
Everyone makes mistakes, deals with tragedy, so what was it about this situation that time didn't heal? It was the alley that lured me to search for the book, but once I found it, I learned Hosseini's first novel was about so much more than what happened in that alley.
"The Kite Runner" is about friendship, love, loyalty and forgiveness. It's about how there is always redemption and always hope, regardless of the mistakes we make. It is billed as a story about two boys, Amir and Hassan, who grow up together in Afghanistan. They are both motherless and share the same wet nurse, which sets the tone for all they jointly experience. But despite having so much in common, religious and social differences dictate what their relationship will be almost before they can even make conscious choices.
Amir is a child of privilege with what appears to be the perfect father — attractive, athletic, brave and intelligent. His father, Baba, is a business leader in an Afghanistan that knows nothing of war with the Soviets or the Taliban yet. Everyone admires him, consults with him, and while some initially doubt his seemingly revolutionary ideas, most come to eventually respect him. In the eyes of his son, he never fails, and is never subject to the embarrassing frailties that befall the rest of humanity.
He's the kind of father everyone wants, except the children with whom he shares his name. While he is many wonderful things, he is also aloof and unaffectionate with his son, who does not share his physical abilities or interests. Instead, it is Baba's servant, Ali, a deformed Hazara who showers his son, Hassan, with the affection and emotion that Amir longs for in his relationship with his own father.
While society scoffs at Ali — and in fact, he becomes the object of ridicule for Amir's classmates — Amir finds himself envious of their relationship. Amir loves both Ali and Hassan, but in spite of that, he does things that humiliate and hurt both of them without understanding the full impact of his actions.
Ali and Baba have their own interesting relationship because they were raised together by Baba's father, a respected judge who took Ali in and raised him after his parents were killed by a drunk driver in a case he presided over. Their relationship from the outside is one of business, but it becomes clear that the two men feel more for each other than just a professional loyalty. It is also clear they love each other's children, and all of this has ramifications throughout the lives of all four men.
The story is powerful because it is so much like life. It is complicated, messy and beautiful at every turn.
There are political and social lessons to learn as well, which are sewn into the human experience so well, they almost seem inseparable.
It is a fictional story written with such detail and passion that when I finished, I flipped to the author's biography hoping to learn that Hosseini or one of his relatives had actually experienced some version of this story. My initial disappointment was quickly tempered by the fact that the lessons learned by fictional characters are very real.
And maybe that's what makes "The Kite Runner" so moving and memorable; one really does hope that compassion and forgiveness are at least as certain as change and tragedy.
E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com