Although these days are overwhelming with news reports in Afghanistan, and all kinds of online opinions on the Taliban, they have not helped me to enter Afghanistan and understand Afghanistan better. What we hear and know is still limited to only a few words. As for what kind of people there are on that land and how they live, we don’t know much.
After reading so much related information, I couldn’t help but sigh in the end:
These divergent remarks are far less real and shocking than the feeling I felt when I read “The Kite Chaser” for the first time.
While telling about the friendship between the little master Amir and the little servant Hassan, it also shows us the many changes in Afghanistan from before the Soviet invasion to the present-it is in this process that we truly understand the Afghans Suffering fate.
Compared with news reports and Internet chat, “The Kite Chaser” is more immersive.
Taking the escape to Peshawar and eventually settled in the United States as the boundary, “The Kite Chaser” is divided into two parts.
The first half is based on the friendship and interaction between the young master Amir and the servant Hassan; the second half is based on the adult Amir becoming a writer in the United States, returning to Afghanistan to save his soul and saving Hassan’s 11-year-old son Sohrab as the main line-it is under this theme with self-salvation as the core that author Khaled Husseini reveals many truths of human nature, such as selfishness, cowardice, and kindness through keen brushstrokes and delicate words. And bravery, betrayal and redemption, faith and sacrifice, etc.
Amir was born in the affluent district of Kabul, Afghanistan. The servant’s son Hassan is his best playmate. The two are almost inseparable: Hassan is extremely loyal to Amir, and Amir also enjoys Hassan’s blind worship.
The two of them often float together, watch movies, and participate in kite competitions every winter.
Kite competition is a tradition in Afghanistan. It not only competes whose kites fly higher and farther, but also attack each other by cutting off each other’s kite line. After the cut line kite falls, it belongs to the person who catches it. It is a symbol of honor. .
Amir is good at cutting lines, and Hassan always knows where the kite falls.
Whenever he wins, there will be such a scene-Amir asked Hassan hesitantly: “Are you willing to chase the kite for me?” Hassan ran and jumped happily and replied: “For you, Thousands of times!”
But when chasing a kite once, ethnic extreme youths headed by Assef surrounded Hassan, who was protecting the kite from being stolen, and sodomized him—in Islamic culture, this is The most extreme insult to men.
Amir witnessed all this secretly nearby, but did not dare to make a sound. He even lied that Hassan stole his watch because he couldn’t face Hassan, and eventually forced Hassan and his son away.
Soon after, in 1973, with the support of the Soviet Union, Daoud launched a coup d’etat, and Afghanistan entered the stage of Soviet envelopment. At the same time, the Taliban began to rise, and Afghanistan began to suffer from continuous wars and infighting. Amir fled to the United States with his father and grew up as an American writer who could not let go of the past.
As an adult, Hassan returned to Amir’s home in Afghanistan and helped him take care of the house. Eventually, he was killed by the Taliban because of protecting the house left by his master. He left his 11-year-old son Sohrab and became The Taliban’s prostitute, and the Taliban who raised him, is the extreme youth Assef who had bullied Hassan.
It was also at this time that Amir learned that Hassan was originally his father’s illegitimate child, and Sohrab, who was raised as a prostitute by the Taliban, was his nephew.
”The Kite Chaser” can be regarded as an outstanding novel.
The first part is about self-salvation. The author puts it between nobles and untouchables, friends and brothers, history and reality. It not only gives readers the opportunity to appreciate the deep-rooted ethnic, religious, cultural and historical issues of Afghanistan, but also makes it easier. Let readers see the complexity, evolution and cruelty of human nature in such a grand background.
That’s why, Amir clearly discovered that Hassan was bullied by Assef to protect him. It’s fine if he doesn’t help, but he has to design and lie to drive away Hassan-except for being unable to face his own cowardice and The greater reason for incompetence may be the difficulty of identity:
Amir is a Pashtun who believes in Sunni Islam, and Hasan is a Hazara who believes in Shia Islam.
The biggest reason Assef bullied Hassan, isn’t it because Hassan is a Hazara?
And when Assef raised Hassan’s 11-year-old son Sohrab as a prostitute when he became an adult, it was not because the Taliban were almost all Pashtuns, and what they had to do was to cleanse for religious purposes: remove Kazakhstan. Zara, let them disappear in Afghanistan.
The hatred of these two races is not far away, but from the end of the 19th century: due to differences in religious beliefs, nearly half of the Hazaras were killed and their property was taken away by the Pashtuns.
This is why the Taliban wanted to blow up the Bamiyan Buddha: The Bamiyan Buddha was built by the ancestors of the Halazha people-in the novel, after Hasan left Amir’s house, he went to the Hazara people. The center of the settlement “Hazarajat” is Bamiyan.
In fact, Hassan had no need to go to Kabul to give Amir a guard house, because in 1996, the Taliban, who had risen less than two years ago, occupied Kabul and became the new master of Afghanistan and began to commit genocide against the Halaza people.
At this time, Hassan, who refused to transfer Amir’s house to the Taliban, was executed by the Taliban.
That is to say, on the branches and leaves of this main line, “The Kite Chaser” focuses on the suffering of the Afghans.
This is the second reason why it is a masterpiece: the author Khaled Husseini did not avoid the disasters, injustices and contempt that are happening in his native land just because he is an Afghan, but avoids the history and culture of his own nation. , Accumulated for a long time of backwardness and obsolescence. Similarly, he did not stand on the sidelines or deliberately ridicule.
Khaled Husseini upholds the tradition of humanism, upholds a broad compassion, to look at Afghanistan, and the joys, sorrows, happiness, and misfortune of the people living there.
Khaled Husseini did not deny the protagonist Amir, but restored and understood as much as possible, in that environment, his fears and choices, as well as his ultimate courage and determination.
This is why, when he learned that Hassan’s 11-year-old son Sohrab was still alive, Amir resolutely rushed to Afghanistan: he could not forgive his betrayal of Hassan-the happier his life, the better. Think of Hassan.
With guilt, confession and longing for Hassan, the heart of atonement helped him overcome years of cowardice and evasion, and courageously negotiated with Assef, who has become the leader of the Taliban.
Although Assef broke his ribs one by one, Amir smiled quite calmly because he knew he was making atonement.
The body is painful, but the heart is calm.
Since then, Amir has reached a reconciliation with the unbearable past. There are no lies, betrayals and secrets in his life, but he can live frankly and honestly in his life, full of love and peace.
After “The Kite Chaser”, people linked Khaled Husseini to Afghanistan.
People are fascinated by the stories he wrote: the love and sacrifice for redemption, the kindness of humanity in war and poverty, and the gathering and parting of people. He described Afghanistan with almost paranoid enthusiasm, in his words:
”(I) is determined to wipe the dust from the faces of ordinary Afghan people, and show the throbbing of the soul behind to the world.”
This is why in “” After “The Kite Chaser”, Khaled Husseini wrote “A Thousand Suns of Brilliant Suns” and “The Reasons for Singing Back the Mountains”-if “The Kite Chaser” is about the story of two Afghan men , “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is about the story of two Afghan women saving each other.
If you can’t understand how terrifying the Afghan women’s experience is, then “A Thousand Bright Suns” is definitely worth watching.
If you can, watching it with the animated film “The breadwinner” will definitely have a deeper understanding of this issue.
