Memories of Yesterday. Review on Kite Runner, The - Khaled Hosseni

These days when some one asks me about my favorite book, two books come to mind. One of them is the Bible which of course for a Christian is not all that strange. The other book that comes to mind almost immediately is Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”. It has been quite a while since I read the book and I have read it only once but its pivotal moments remain emblazoned in my memory long after. Why is that? Partly because in its pages is captured the history of our sub continent in allegory. The Kite Runner is part history book, part fiction, part autobiography and part the conscience of this part of the world. The page where it describes the end of King Zahir Shah’s reign captures in a few pithy sentences the end of the liberal era in Afghanistan and the beginning of an era of unending agony that carries on till today. These few lines portray the end of a generation “huddled together in the dining room and waiting for the sun to rise, none of us had any notion that a way of life had ended. Our way of life. If not quite yet, then at least it was the beginning of the end”. With the end of the chapter ends the narration of the golden age of Zahir Shah’s rule and the stirring of communism and the subsequent rise of Islamic fundamentalism in its pages, I recognize people who have shaped my life. In Baba I see an uncle who had his frailties but who also encompassed all that is noble. In the character of Rahim Khan, I see my own father who as he aged became the gentle advisor and counselor I still miss, years after he died. And then of course in Hasan, the loyal friend, I see the man I will never be endowed with all that is noble and best in God’s image. The narrator himself, Amir is all things to all men, in his failures, his fall, his struggles, his guilt and his desire to redeem himself there are shades of each and every one of us.

There are many books that are good and well written. But some have to be read more than once to get its real message Shakespeare and most of the classics would probably fall in this category. And then there are disposable books – mostly thrillers which lend themselves to be read only once and passed on. Even the author does not expect it perhaps to be read more than once. Dan Brown’s Da Vanci code probably belongs to this genre. You read the book once, see the movie once and by next year it is all over- it is no more than a faint memory stored some where. But The Kite Runner occupies none of these niches. It is a book that you read once and its imprint stays engraved on your soul – for a long, long time