The above is the resounding line of this international bestseller of Khaled Hosseini. If there would be anything good typhoon Frank had caused, it was that it made me stay home that rainy, floody Sunday and have me the grand time finishing ‘The Kite Runner’.
Kite Runner is a riveting, moving account of an Afghan life from its pre-Soviet splendor, to Russian domination, until the present Taliban rule. It puts face of the lives affected, I mean ravaged, by the always ill-causing war. It was like getting into the world and the lives of the war-torn Afghanis I only sigh whenever they take a slot of CNN or BBC news. While the novel is fictitious, it can never be far from being real. Amir and Hassan can just be anyone among the best of friends who tire themselves of playing, who love climbing trees, and enjoy kite tournaments. It would be easy for me to believe it’s a memoir of Amir, or any Afghan for that matter, who might be somewhere out there, exuding the prize of atonement after years of evading responsibility he should have carried long before. Some scenes were like my experiences when I was young (and probably yours too). Only that Afghanistan can never be anything like any other place on earth.
The message is universal, the effect is personal. I do have halts along my way to the last leaf of the book, that for me to give way for air to pass through my lungs and to hide those drops, they call it tears, which threatened to fall from my eyes at any time. I did not wonder why Tita Phoebe kept recommending for me to read it, more than watching its movie version (which she has watched too). She’s right, it was not like any of my reading experience.
