I jus finished readin The Kite Runner the other day. I think its one of the most depressin books i hav ever read. U hav no i dea how sad i felt at the end of this book. I am the kind of person who laughs out loud when i read sumthin funny and cry when i read sumthin sad. But i wasnt jus cryin when i was readin this book i was sobbing like sumbody had died or sumthing. No kidding. Infact my poor sis thot that maybe sumthin had happ that thats why i was so down. Ok now enough abt me. I think the book has been very well written, the author Khaled Hosseni doesnt waste time on unnecessary descriptions ( I u hav read Gone with the wind then u'll know wat i am talkin abt) and i luv that. Also one on reasons i decided to read this book was becuse after readin Shantaram i really wanted to know more abt Afghanistan. There is so much more to that contry than terrorism and its such a pity that the world doesn't know it. Their culture is kinda similar to our Indian culture. I think i wud luv to meet an afghan an get to know more abt the country. You get an idea about the spirit of the country thru the character of Amir 's baba (the main protagonist of the book). I think the part abt the book that made me really sad was not the war and the destruction it caused but the part where Hassan the adorable little boy gets raped and then years later his son is raped by the same man. For sumboby who like me jus luvs children that was too much to take. Also in a way the book's tryin to say that we all hav our demons and we hav to face them sooner or later so no point runin from them.
This is one of may fav parts of the book
He smiled. “Sit with me, Amir agha.”
I dropped next to him, lay on a thin patch of snow, wheezing. “You’re wasting our time. It was
going the other way, didn’t you see?”
Hassan popped a mulberry in his mouth. “It’s coming,” he said. I could hardly breathe and he
didn’t even sound tired.
“How do you know?” I said.
“I know.”
“How can you know?”
He turned to me. A few sweat beads rolled from his bald scalp. “Would I ever lie to you, Amir
agha?”
Suddenly I decided to toy with him a little. “I don’t know. Would you?”
“I’d sooner eat dirt,” he said with a look of indignation.
“Really? You’d do that?”
He threw me a puzzled look. “Do what?”
“Eat dirt if I told you to,” I said. I knew I was being cruel, like when I’d taunt him if he didn’t know
some big word. But there was something fascinating--albeit in a sick way--about teasing Hassan.
Kind of like when we used to play insect torture. Except now, he was the ant and I was holding the
magnifying glass.
His eyes searched my face for a long time. We sat there, two boys under a sour cherry tree,
suddenly looking, really looking, at each other. That’s when it happened again: Hassan’s face
changed. Maybe not _changed_, not really, but suddenly I had the feeling I was looking at two faces,
the one I knew, the one that was my first memory, and another, a second face, this one lurking just
beneath the surface. I’d seen it happen before--it always shook me up a little. It just appeared, this
other face, for a fraction of a moment, long enough to leave me with the unsettling feeling that maybe
I’d seen it someplace before. Then Hassan blinked and it was just him again. Just Hassan.
“If you asked, I would,” he finally said, looking right at me. I dropped my eyes. To this day, I find it
hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.
“But I wonder,” he added. “Would you ever ask me to do such a thing, Amir agha?” And, just like
that, he had thrown at me his own little test. If I was going to toy with him and challenge his loyalty,
then he’d toy with me, test my integrity.
I wished I hadn’t started this conversation. I forced a smile. “Don’t be stupid, Hassan. You know I
wouldn’t.”
Hassan returned the smile. Except his didn’t look forced. “I know,” he said. And that’s the thing
about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
I think its so true that people who mean wat they say expect the same from others. I think i made the same mistake. Just because sombody says sumthin doesnt mean that they actually mean it. Many think its very naive to expect the same from people but i think its more about how pure your soul or your conscious is. Some people jus don't hav a clear conscious and for sum1 like me its very hard to believe that cos sumhow a part of me jus refuses to believe that a person can be that bad. And that part jus keeps hopin that there has to be sumthing nice in this person maybe i just havn't seen it yet. And that is the reason why i dont give up on people or relatioships that easily. But now i hav learned to ignore that voice within me cos its jus not worth putin yourself thru crap to find goodness in others...
Wat i really luved about afghans is the way they talk with so much luv and respect for the other person. This part where Rahim Khan Amir's beloved uncle writes him a letter tellin him to let go of the past is very beautifully written, i jus luv the language.
Amirjan, _Inshallah_, you have reached this letter safely. I pray that I have not put you in harm’s
way and that Afghanistan has not been too unkind to you. You have been in my prayers since the
day you left. You were right all those years to suspect that I knew. I did know. Hassan told me shortly
after it happened. What you did was wrong, Amir jan, but do not forget that you were a boy when it
happened. A troubled little boy. You were too hard on yourself then, and you still are--I saw it in your
eyes in Peshawar. But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does
not suffer. I hope your suffering comes to an end with this journey to Afghanistan.
It so true that maybe sum people jus hav no good within them.....but i person with a good conscious jus has a very hard time believing that.
His face twisted and strained to stay composed. “Father used to say it’s wrong to hurt even bad
people. Because they don’t know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.”
“Not always, Sohrab.”
He looked at me questioningly.
“The man who hurt you, I knew him from many years ago,” I said. “I guess you figured that out that
from the conversation he and I had. He... he tried to hurt me once when I was your age, but your
father saved me. Your father was very brave and he was always rescuing me from trouble, standing
up for me. So one day the bad man hurt your father instead. He hurt him in a very bad way, and I... I
couldn’t save your father the way he had saved me.”
“Why did people want to hurt my father?” Sohrab said in a wheezy little voice. “He was never mean
to anyone.”
“You’re right. Your father was a good man. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sohrab jan. That
there are bad people in this world, and sometimes bad people stay bad. Sometimes you have to
stand up to them. What you did to that man is what I should have done to him all those years ago.
You gave him what he deserved, and he deserved even more.”
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