Kite_Runner

As a man who has witnessed his home land go through so many changes, it is not surprising that Khaled Hosseini dedicated his first book about the struggles of life in Afghanistan. He shows his compassion for Afghanistan by showing how Afghanistan was before the war. Also by foreshadowing the turning points of afghan history he is able to draw the reader’s attention towards it. By describing the Pashtoon attitudes towards the hazara, he shows the racial tension and unfairness in the afghan culture. By all these points and foreshadowing, Khaled Hosseini does an outstanding job of showing the reader about his afghan roots and his compassion towards his homeland, his watan. Khaled Hosseini mentioned Amir’s house as being very big and expensively built with mosaic tiles form Isfahan which covered the floors of four bathrooms, gold stitched tapestries form Calcutta and even a crystal Chandelier, a major of people were able to afford such luxuries unless they were hazara or poor. This states that it did have riches and luxurious houses which were at one point still intact n beautiful. He also displays the culture as respectful and very social. Although there were some social bullies like the soldier that refers to Hassan’s mom in a sexual way or Assef who holds Hitler as a role model, the country still had wise citizens like baba who wanted to do good like build an orphanage and didn’t let the power corrupt them. People had the right to do as they wanted and actually had a choice whether practice Islam of not. He mentions the kites which are a tradition in Afghanistan to have kite battles during the winter, a tradition which was later shut down by the Taliban as they took over. All of these are now a rare sight in Afghanistan today, due to the Taliban. The writer hence does an amazing job as portraying Kabul, the capital of the country, as a very beautiful, rich and free place to live in before the Russian invasion. The Russian invasion changed everything for Afghanistan; people were too scared to roam in the streets without fear of getting shot. “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. The end, the official end, would come in April 1978 and then in December 1979, when the Russian tanks would roll into the very same streets where Hassan and I played, bringing the death of Afghanistan I knew and marketing the start of a still ongoing era of bloodletting”(39). In this paragraph Hosseini through Amir expresses how the Russian invasion changed everything about Afghanistan till this day. Mentioning the Russian invasion, which was followed by the mujahedeen defeating the Russians, which seemed like freedom, but was more of a extremist Islamic takeover of the land by the Taliban. The Taliban did nothing in favour of Afghanistan and they took away the freedom of women, introduced flawed sharia law and bought extremism into view. These events showed the authors feelings towards how his mother land was stripped of him and would never be the same as it once was. The hate for the hazara’s grew as the Taliban took over. He also points out that in Afghanistan some religious sects were believed to be higher then others. The sunni muslim, pashtoon were more preferred and held more power then the shi’a hazara’s , who were considered to be a minority according to the social sect system. Hazara’s were degraded, mistreated and did not receive any right or privileges which a normal Afghani person would be given. They were not allowed to go to school, given and opportunities to succeed in the future. Hassan for example did not know how to read or write and was not privileged to go to school. Hazara’s were discriminated to the point where certain people were considering their extermination. Assef is a perfect example as he quotes “ I’ll ask the president to do what the king never had the quwat(will/power) to do .To rid Afghanistan of all the dirty ,kaseef hazara’s”(45). He refers to a Nazi type extermination of the hazara’s and takes Hitler as a role model. Khalid Hosseini in my opinion after research shows through the relationship of Amir and Hassan, the relationship between him and his hazara servant. This relationship made him feel upset about the hazara massacre which in my opinion is the reason for why Hosseini put so much emphasis and focus on the mistreatment and false portrayal of the hazara people in Afghanistan. Khaled Hosseini shows his compassion for his homeland by telling the reader how Afghanistan used to be a very beautiful place to live in before the wars and Taliban take over. He also showed that the Russian invasion would change Afghanistan forever, culture, freedom and peace wise. He revealed the discrimination which the hazara’s went through, channelling into his sympathy towards the hazara massacre at the blue mosque. All of these events showed that Khaled Hosseini had great sorrow and feelings for his homeland and felt discomfort, just like any other afghan person I know, at the thought of how their culture, their homeland, their way to live was changed forever because of injustice and hate.