Running away and coming back with a kite in hand

The first thing we did, after having brunch in a lovely Pasadena restaurant, when Tamar, Dan & Damian picked me up at the airport on that warm September Saturday (just a month ago), was to go to a (very big) bookstore. As I was standing there suggesting titles to Dan, telling him which books I had found such good reading, a woman, overhearing and connecting to what I like in books, suggested a book for me: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I bought it, read it, and think it was a very appropriate recommendation. Except that it was painful to read the first part of the novel. Painful enough that I had to skim through to get the flavor of the resolution so that I would be able to continue reading.

In the voice of the narrator Amir, the novel, written with spare and honest prose, explores a young man’s yearning for love/respect from his father and the jealousy he feels at the attention given to another child. Jealousy that leads to vindictive acts with enduring consequences. I know a lot about jealousy. As a child also yearning for familial acceptance and love, I felt intense jealousy of every other child who seemed to have something I didn’t have, to know happiness. And I was not nice about it. Sometimes quite petty and mean. This novel takes the personal struggle of Amir into a broad arena, from the peaceful setting of Afghanistan before the Russian invasion in the 1970’s to the Bay Area of San Francisco and back again in the 21st century to view the devastation brought on by political struggles, greed and intolerance. The story stays always within the view of Amir, giving it vivid, haunting power.

Amir’s friend from childhood, a friend of his father’s who was always supportive and kind to him, tells Amir that he has a second chance to be good, to make peace within his own personal world. “There is a way to be good again,” he tells Amir. Rahim, the friend, feels all the good deeds the father did, which were many and made him a very well loved man in his community, were a way of redeeming himself for the guilt he felt about his own behavior, his own secrets and shames. “And that, I believe is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good……..but most important, forgive yourself.”

Not an easy (but oh so important) thing to do.

Posted by leya at October 23, 2004 12:46 PM