Chapter Four – The Kite Runner In this chapter we learn that it was Baba’s father that adopted Ali, Hassan’s father, into his household, after his parents had been killed by wealthy young men who were“high on hashish and mast on French wine.” Amir’s grandfather had been the judge. Ali was tutored by the other servants and he and Baba “grew up together as childhood playmates-at leat until polio crippled Ali’s leg – just like Hassan and I grew up a generation later.” Baba was always telling Amir and Hassan about the mischief he and Ali used to cause – apparently it was Baba who caused the mischief. “But, agha sahib, tell them who was the architect of the mischief and who the poor labourer?? Baba would laugh and throw his arm around Ali.” We see from this that Baba regarded Ali as more than his friend – a brother. “But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend.” Amir starts to think about his relationship with Hassan. Was he a friend? A brother? A servant? “…I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. …Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands…Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites.” The differences in their religious and socioeconomic-racial background stood between them being on the same “level” in society. “never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.” But nothing could come between the background of their upbringing as brothers, either. “we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either. I spent most of the first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan.” …”Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afganis and we spent it on warm Coca-Cola and rosewater ice cream…” They had different daily routines thought. Hassan as servant to Amir until Amir came home from school. “By the time I dragged myself out of bed …Hassan had …prepared my breakfast… all neatly placed on the diningroom table. While I ate and complained about homework, Hassan made my bed, polished my shoes, ironed my outfit for the day, packed my books and pencils….Hassan stayed at home and helped Ali with the day’s chores: hand-washing dirty clothes …sweeping floors…” After school Hassan and Amir would meet up and go to the pomegranate tree near the entrance to the cemetery. Here they were on an equal footing. “One summer day, I used one of Ali’s kitchen knives to carve our names on it: “Amir and hassan, the sultans of Kabul.” Those words made it formal: the tree was ours. After school, Hassan and I climbed its branches and snatched its bloodred pomegranates. After we’d eaten the fruit and wiped our hands on the grass, I would read to Hassan.” Amir read Hassan stories that he couldn’t read for himself because Hassan was illiterate. Amir did not question why Hassan grew up illiterate, it was just the way it was in Kabul. “…after all, what use did a servant have for the written word?” But Hassan was innately [born that way]smart, insightful and intelligent. “…despite his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words. I read him poems and stories, sometimes riddles-…” Amir can’t get over his jealousy of Hassan. “…I stopped reading those when I saw he was far better at solving them than I was. So I read him unchallenging things, like the misadventures of the bumbling Mullah… and his donkey.” Amir shows off his education to Hassan and then ends up feeling bad about it afterwards – so buys his conscience off by offering Hassan some of his toys. “My favourite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a big word that he didn’t know. I’d tease him, expose his ignorance….’But it’s such a common word!’ ‘Still, I don’t know it.’ If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face didn’t show it.’ ‘Well everyone in my school knows what it means…Let’s see. ‘Imbecile.’ It means smart, intelligent…I would always feel guilty about it later.” So Amir has this jealousy that ruins his support of Hassan’s learning. He shows off to himself by trying to make Hassan feel the way his father makes him feel – put down. But Hassan passes it off. Hassan’s favourite story was one about two rivals in battle. Finally one kills the other and then finds out that he kills his son. Rostam hears his son’s dying words: ‘If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained they sword in the life-blood of they son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy.”[ killed his son by being stubborn] Is this a bit like Amir’s treatment of Hassan? Amir can’t see tragedy in Rostan’s fate. “Personally, I couldn’t see the tragedy in Rostam’s fate. After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbour a desire to kill their sons?”Poor sad Amir. Fancy feeling so guilty about killing his mother during child birth, that he feels his father would be thinking about killing him! Amir discovers a new talent – in the middle of trying to play a trick on Hassan by pretending : Writing. His father is disinterested. Rahim Khan encourages him. He tells a story to Hassan who asks him to carry on reading. “That’s fascinating,” I muttered. I meant it too….”Fascinating.” I repeated, a little breathless, feeling like a man who discovers a buried treasure in his own backyard. Walking down the hill, thoughts were exploding in my head like the fireworks at Chaman. Best story you’ve read me in a long time…I had read him a lot of stories.” “I climbed the stairs and walked into Baba’s smoking room, in my hands the two sheets of paper on which I had scribbled the story. ‘What is it, Amir?’ Baba said…His glare made my throat feel dry. I cleared it and told him I’d written a story…I probably stood their for a minute, but, to this day it was one of the longest minutes of my life. …I was breathing bricks. Baba went on staring me down, and didn’t offer to read…” Rahim Khan rescues Amir from Baba. “He held out his hand and favoured me with a smile that had nothing feigned [pretend] about it. ‘May I have it Amir jan? I would very much like to read it.’ Baba hardly ever used the term of endearment jan when he addressed me.” Rahim later said “Bravo!” to Amir. Amir is very hurt by Baba’s disinterest. “Most days I worshipped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.” …”When I left, I sat on my bed an wished Rahim Khan had been my father.” Then Amir’s feelings of guilt kick in again. He is physically ill. “Then I thought of Baba and his great big chest and how good it felt when he held me against it…I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink.” Later Amir reads Hassan another story and Hassan questions the plot. Amir’s feelings of jealousy and insecurity caused by his bad relationship with his father, leads him to think “How dear he thoughts”. “… Hassan, of all people. Hassan who couldn’t read and had never written a single word in his entire life. A voice, cold and dark, suddenly whispered in my ear, What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? He’ll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticise you?”
In this chapter we learn that it was Baba’s father that adopted Ali, Hassan’s father, into his household, after his parents had been killed by wealthy young men who were “high on hashish and mast on French wine.” Amir’s grandfather had been the judge.
Ali was tutored by the other servants and he and Baba “grew up together as childhood playmates-at leat until polio crippled Ali’s leg – just like Hassan and I grew up a generation later.”
Baba was always telling Amir and Hassan about the mischief he and Ali used to cause – apparently it was Baba who caused the mischief. “But, agha sahib, tell them who was the architect of the mischief and who the poor labourer?? Baba would laugh and throw his arm around Ali.”
We see from this that Baba regarded Ali as more than his friend – a brother. “But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend.”
Amir starts to think about his relationship with Hassan. Was he a friend? A brother? A servant? “…I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. …Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands…Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites.”
The differences in their religious and socioeconomic-racial background stood between them being on the same “level” in society. “never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.”
But nothing could come between the background of their upbringing as brothers, either. “we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either. I spent most of the first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan.” …”Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afganis and we spent it on warm Coca-Cola and rosewater ice cream…”
They had different daily routines thought. Hassan as servant to Amir until Amir came home from school. “By the time I dragged myself out of bed …Hassan had …prepared my breakfast… all neatly placed on the diningroom table. While I ate and complained about homework, Hassan made my bed, polished my shoes, ironed my outfit for the day, packed my books and pencils….Hassan stayed at home and helped Ali with the day’s chores: hand-washing dirty clothes …sweeping floors…”
After school Hassan and Amir would meet up and go to the pomegranate tree near the entrance to the cemetery. Here they were on an equal footing. “One summer day, I used one of Ali’s kitchen knives to carve our names on it: “Amir and hassan, the sultans of Kabul.” Those words made it formal: the tree was ours. After school, Hassan and I climbed its branches and snatched its bloodred pomegranates. After we’d eaten the fruit and wiped our hands on the grass, I would read to Hassan.”
Amir read Hassan stories that he couldn’t read for himself because Hassan was illiterate. Amir did not question why Hassan grew up illiterate, it was just the way it was in Kabul. “…after all, what use did a servant have for the written word?”
But Hassan was innately [born that way]smart, insightful and intelligent. “…despite his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words. I read him poems and stories, sometimes riddles-…”
Amir can’t get over his jealousy of Hassan. “…I stopped reading those when I saw he was far better at solving them than I was. So I read him unchallenging things, like the misadventures of the bumbling Mullah… and his donkey.”
Amir shows off his education to Hassan and then ends up feeling bad about it afterwards – so buys his conscience off by offering Hassan some of his toys. “My favourite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a big word that he didn’t know. I’d tease him, expose his ignorance….’But it’s such a common word!’ ‘Still, I don’t know it.’ If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face didn’t show it.’ ‘Well everyone in my school knows what it means…Let’s see. ‘Imbecile.’ It means smart, intelligent…I would always feel guilty about it later.”
So Amir has this jealousy that ruins his support of Hassan’s learning. He shows off to himself by trying to make Hassan feel the way his father makes him feel – put down. But Hassan passes it off.
Hassan’s favourite story was one about two rivals in battle. Finally one kills the other and then finds out that he kills his son. Rostam hears his son’s dying words: ‘If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained they sword in the life-blood of they son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy.”[ killed his son by being stubborn] Is this a bit like Amir’s treatment of Hassan?
Amir can’t see tragedy in Rostan’s fate. “Personally, I couldn’t see the tragedy in Rostam’s fate. After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbour a desire to kill their sons?” Poor sad Amir. Fancy feeling so guilty about killing his mother during child birth, that he feels his father would be thinking about killing him!
Amir discovers a new talent – in the middle of trying to play a trick on Hassan by pretending : Writing. His father is disinterested. Rahim Khan encourages him. He tells a story to Hassan who asks him to carry on reading. “That’s fascinating,” I muttered. I meant it too….”Fascinating.” I repeated, a little breathless, feeling like a man who discovers a buried treasure in his own backyard. Walking down the hill, thoughts were exploding in my head like the fireworks at Chaman. Best story you’ve read me in a long time…I had read him a lot of stories.”
“I climbed the stairs and walked into Baba’s smoking room, in my hands the two sheets of paper on which I had scribbled the story. ‘What is it, Amir?’ Baba said…His glare made my throat feel dry. I cleared it and told him I’d written a story…I probably stood their for a minute, but, to this day it was one of the longest minutes of my life. …I was breathing bricks. Baba went on staring me down, and didn’t offer to read…”
Rahim Khan rescues Amir from Baba. “He held out his hand and favoured me with a smile that had nothing feigned [pretend] about it. ‘May I have it Amir jan? I would very much like to read it.’ Baba hardly ever used the term of endearment jan when he addressed me.” Rahim later said “Bravo!” to Amir.
Amir is very hurt by Baba’s disinterest. “Most days I worshipped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.” …”When I left, I sat on my bed an wished Rahim Khan had been my father.”
Then Amir’s feelings of guilt kick in again. He is physically ill. “Then I thought of Baba and his great big chest and how good it felt when he held me against it…I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink.”
Later Amir reads Hassan another story and Hassan questions the plot. Amir’s feelings of jealousy and insecurity caused by his bad relationship with his father, leads him to think “How dear he thoughts”. “… Hassan, of all people. Hassan who couldn’t read and had never written a single word in his entire life. A voice, cold and dark, suddenly whispered in my ear, What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? He’ll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticise you?”