Kite Runner

Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini

Innocence…a child’s life, each day a chance to improvise
Storybooks read to the illiterate with pieces revised
Hills to climb trees to climb, dads car to go to the bizarre in
Pomegranates aroma, a true friend to find yourself in
A pledge to eat dirt or not to define who you are or not
Hazara and Suni unaware of their world as children they sing
In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things

A larger Afghan world of traditions bent on stature
One up over one down One man determined to rupture
A divergence of advantages mixed upon the disadvantaged
Bound together by a family in secret genetic heritage
Brute upon hero as in David and Goliath
Innocence faces brutality in a Kite Runners undoing
In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things

A secret to bear, a load to carry
Denial begets deceit, a truth destined to burry
Betrayal of oneself then portrayed upon ones brother
Courage defined by an act of cowardice and lies to cover
Loyalty defied by fear of ones reality
Divided by fate bestowed by a cruel traditional rue
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth

Half a world’s journey a weight carried on sunshine’s beam
Casting shadow in the sunshine of an American dream
Refuges in a haven as they discover freedom to express
They bring tradition to bend against free will they trespass
Aided by American tax contributions they wait for their return
To outward life they know if here or there their inner soul is to move
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth

Then a call to duty to face fiddlers music, but all men? truth or myth?
Secrets revieled by elder as tradition’s veil is removed in eminent death
Forgiveness and god are called to duty, a cry in vein
Passed on from father to son the sins remain the same
Separate from truth are the conditional pleas at salvations alter
The drama of life meets with a surrender to death but denied it
But surrender to silence remains until the spark of Fathers’ spirit.


This book was a profile in courage of a boy that meets the traumatic experiences of a violent world at a young age. Outwardly his actions in conjunction with the fact that he allowed it to manifest through deceitful ploys against his best friend, display an act of cowardice. Over time these same actions are revealed as a true badge of courage by a forgiving elder. The book also displays the complex dynamic of the deep-rooted division between Suni and Shia. It exposes the roots of Suni’s oppression upon Shia that we have also seen through leaders such as Hussein and Nasser. There are numerous levels of divisional strife the Muslim world and is masked over with its lying rants on the West. The reader witnesses not the simple fact that oppression exists, but how it feels from both sides. It also provides a secondary portal into thought on a government that allows free will to prosper. And questions those that shrink from its challenges.

In the Afghanistan era of the pre Russian invasion there existed centuries of traditional dominance of one man over another for the simple reason of the family he was born in to. To this I question, in the same way the prime character questions himself, any Western voice that would have the lack of courage to stand between the oppressor and the oppressed and make an active call for free will for all men as we are all One in God, whether Muslim, Christian, or atheist. Keep in mind I only question because in the context of this book it is the oppressed who suffer the outward affects of oppression, but for some Godly reason realize the highest degree of inner peace.

Not to let inner peace be the loophole to escape the responsibility of the active oppressors or the casual passive observers of oppression, the author tells a wonderful story aimed at the remedy. That solution is not a call to God to pray on a rug on the condition that lives may be saved. It is a prescription of forgiveness, beginning with ones self, the enabler to forgive one another. So that rather souls may be saved. It is the enabler to see the God given spirit of One man with his strengths and weaknesses as an equal call for free will. The author carries the plot to a head with a lopsided battle of two torn individuals where each find themselves surrendering to this reality.

Are there lessons to the author is conveying? “ Let me list them here.
¨ “In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the way of things.”
¨ “I didn’t want to sacrifice to Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself
¨ “There is only one sin. And that is theft…When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to truth.”
¨ “A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.”
¨ “I know in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But most important, forgive yourself.”
¨ I wonder if that is was how forgiveness budded, not with fan fare of epiphany, but with plain gathering of things, packing up and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night”

My interpretation of his lessons: Reality exists. Accepting this with unconditional love for life is a mere choice of surrendering to it. Doing that with passion for life will bring a new dawn. Hassan did it from the very beginning, Amir fought it but found a way do it. In the end Sohrab discovered the act of letting go.