The Kite Runner

Question 1

How is Amir’s present life described in the opening?

Answer 1

1. It wasn’t just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins.
2. Early afternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed propelled by a crisp breeze

Question 2

How is Amir and Hassan’s childhood described?

Answer 2

1. sit across from each on a pair of high branches, our naked feet dangling
2. Hassan and I had fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard.
3. My entire childhood seems like one long lazy summer day with Hassan
4. Amir and Hassan the sultans of Kabul. Those words made it formal the tree was ours.
5. two boys under a sour cherry tree, suddenly looking really looking at each other.
6. blue skies stood tall and far the sun like a branding iron searing the back of your neck. Creeks where Hassan and I skipped stones all spring turned dry.
7. I gave him a friendly shove. smiled. You’re a prince Hassan. You’re a prince and I love you.

Question 3

How does Amir describe Hassan?

Answer 3

1. sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost perfectly round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood
2. slanting narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked depending on the light gold, green even sapphire.
3. The chinese doll makers instrument may have slipped or perhaps he had simply grown tired and careless.
4. because even in birth Hassan was true to his nature: he was incapable of hurting anyone. A few grunts, a couple of pushes and out came Hassan. Out he came smiling.
5. That was the thing with Hassan. He was so goddamn pure, you always felt like a phony around him.

Question 4

How is the encounter with the soldiers described?

Answer 4

1. squatty man with a shaved head and black stubble on his face. The way he grinned at us, leered, scared me.
2. a soldier barked and one of them made a squealing sound.
3. I told Hassan to keep walking, keep walking.
4. I heard Hassan next to me croaking, tears were sliding down his cheeks

Question 5

How are Hazara’s evidently discriminated against?

Answer 5

1. Stunned to find an entire chapter on Hazara history. An entire chapter dedicated to Hassan’s people.
2. he wrinkled his nose when he said the word Shi’a like it was some kind of disease.
3. He is? Lucky Hazara having such a concerned master. His father should get on his knees, sweep the dust at your feet with his eyelashes.

Question 6

How are Amir and Hassan’s living conditions described?

Answer 6

1. prettiest house in all of Kabul.
2. sprawling house of marble floors and wide windows. Intricate mosaic tiles handpicked by Baba.
3. The smoking room which perpetually smelt of tobacco and cinnamon.
4. modest little mud hut and walls stood bare save for a single tapestry

Question 7

How is the inequality shown between Amir and Hassan?

Answer 7

1. If I asked, really asked he wouldn’t deny me. Hassan has never denied me anything.
2. He never told on me. Never told that the mirror like shooting walnuts at the neighbour’s dog was always my idea.
3. 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.

Question 8

Amir vs Hassan’s education

Answer 8

1. My favourite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a word he didn’t know. Id tease him, expose his ignorance … Let’s see. Imbecile. It means smart, intelligent. I’ll use it in a sentence for you. When it comes to words Hassan is an imbecile.
2. To him the words on the page were a scramble of codes, indecipherable, mysterious. Words were secret doorways and I held all the keys.
3. 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?
4. What use did a servant have for the written word? But despite his illiteracy, or maybe because of it Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words seduced by a secret world forbidden to him.

Question 9

How does Amir appear to question his relationship with Hassan?

Answer 9

1. I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile.
2. 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.
3. But he’s not my friend. I almost blurted. He’s my servant. Had I really thought that? Of course I hadn’t, I hadn’t.

Question 10

How is Afghanistan described through the novel?

Answer 10

1. The words economic development and reform danced on a lot of lips in Kabul.
2. He said my teacher was one of those jealous Afghans, jealous because Iran was a rising power in Asia and most people around the world couldn’t even find Afghanistan on a world map.
3. The grass was still green, peppered with tangles of wildflowers. Below us, Wazi Akbar Khan’s white washed, flat topped houses gleamed in the sunshine, the laundry was hanging on clotheslines in their yards stirred by the breeze to dance like butterflies.

Question 11

How is Baba described?

Answer 11

1. Baba is holding me looking tired and grim
2. Lore has it my father once wrestled a black bear
3. My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen with a thick beard, a wayward crop of curly brown hair as unruly as the main himself and a black glare
4. attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.
5. when Baba ended his speech people stood up and cheered … I was so proud of Baba, of us
6. Despite Baba’s successes people were always doubting him
7. With me as the glaring exception Baba moulded the world around him to his liking. The problem of course was that Baba saw the world in black and white and he got to decide what was black and what was white.
8. I have heard many men foolishly labelled as great. But your father has the distinction of belonging to the minority who truly deserves the label.

Question 12

How does Amir describe his relationship with Baba?

Answer 12

1. I already hated all the kids he was building the orphanage for. Sometimes I wished they’d all died along with their parents.
2. I always felt like Baba hated me a little and why not? After all I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess hadn’t I?
3. I cried all the way back home. I remember how Baba’s hands clenched around the steering wheel. Clenched and unclenched. Mostly I will never forget Baba’s valiant effort to conceal the disgusted look on his face as he drove in silence.
4. 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.
5. I sat on my bed and wished Rahim Khan had been my father. Then I thought of Baba and his great big chest and how good it felt when he held me against it, how he smelled of Brut in the morning and how his beard tickled my face.
6. I wished I too had some kind of scar to beget Baba’s sympathy. It wasn’t fair. Hassan hasn’t done anything to earn Baba’s affections he had just been born with that stupid harelip.

Question 13

How does Baba describe Amir in the beginning?

Answer 13

1. I wasn’t like that Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry
2. Children aren’t colouring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favourite colours.
3. A boy who won’t stand up for himself, becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything

Question 14

How is Baba shown as rebellious?

Answer 14

1. You’ll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots
2. Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys
3. Do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book
4. drawing furtive, disapproving glances

Question 15

How is Hassan’s mother, Sanaubar, described?

Answer 15

1. beautiful, but notoriously unscrupulous woman who lived up to her dishonourable reputation.
2. brilliant green eyes and impish face, had rumour has it, tempted countless men into sin.
3. Suggestive strides and oscillating hips sent men into revelries of infidelity.
4. Made no secret in her disdain for his appearance. This is a husband she would sneer. I have seen old donkeys better suited to be a husband.

Question 16

How is Ali described?

Answer 16

1. perpetually grim faced
2. stone faced Ali happy or sad because only his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or welled with sorrow. People say the eyes are windows to the soul.
3. Ali turned around caught me aping him. He didn’t say anything. Not then, not ever. He just kept walking.
4. Ali pulled him close, clutched him with tenderness. Later I would tell myself I hadn’t felt envious of Hassan not at all.

Question 17

How is Sofia Akrami described?

Answer 17

1. My mother, a smiling young princess in white
2. A highly educated woman universally regarded as one of Kabul’s most respected, beautiful, and virtuous ladies.
3. Because I am so profoundly happy Dr Rasul … happiness like this is frightening. They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.

Question 18

How is Assef first described?

Answer 18

1. famous stainless steel brass knuckles
2. Blond, blue-eyed Assef towered over the other kids, his well-earned reputation for savagery preceded him on the streets.
3. Assef’s blue eyes glinted with a light not entirely sane and how he grinned, how he grinned, as he pummelled the poor kid unconscious.
4. Assef crossed his thick arms on his chest, a savage sort of grin on his lips.
5. “So does my father” Assef mimicked in a whining voice. Kamal and Wali cackled in unison.
6. I looked in his crazy eyes and I saw that he meant it. He really meant to hurt me.

Question 19

How is the altercation between Assef and Hassan described?

Answer 19

1. He’d referred to Assef as “agha” and I wondered briefly what it must be like to live with such an ingrained sense of one’s place in the hierarchy.
2. I saw that he was scared. He was scared plenty.
3. Wali and Kamal watched the exchange with something akin to fascination. Someone had challenged their god, humiliated him. And worst of all that someone was a skinny Hazara.

Question 20

How is Assef’s discriminatory attitudes displayed?

Answer 20

1. Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans not this flat-nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood. He made a sweeping, grandiose gesture with his hands.
2. How can you talk to him, play with him, let him touch you? he said his voice dripping with disgust. Wali and Kamal nodded and grunted in agreement. How can you call him your friend?

Question 21

How is Assef described at Amir’s party?

Answer 21

1. He led them towards us, like he had brought them here.
2. But to me his eyes betrayed him. When I looked into them, the facade faltered revealed a glimpse of the madness hiding behind them

Question 22

How is kite flying described?

Answer 22

1. I loved wintertime in Kabul, but mostly because as the trees froze and ice sheathed the roads, the chill between Baba and me thawed a little. And the reason for that was the kites.
2. I felt like a soldier trying to sleep in the trenches the night before a major battle. And that wasn’t so far off. In Kabul fighting kites was a little like going to war.
3. I remember how my classmates and I used to huddle, compare our battle scars
4. The hindi kid would seen learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the 1980s: that Afghans were an independent people. Afghans cherish customs, but abhor rules and so it was with kite fighting.

Question 23

How does Hosseini create anticipation in Amir to make Baba proud?

Answer 23

1. Maybe my life as a ghost in this house would finally be over.
2. And maybe, just maybe I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother.
3. I hardly heard a word he said. I had a mission now. And I wasn’t going to fail Baba, not this time.

Question 24

How does chapter 7 lead up to Hassan’s assault?

Answer 24

1. They look like small ants, but we can hear them clapping. They see now. There is no monster, just water.
2. The streets glistened with fresh snow and the sky was a blameless blue.
3. Baba was on the roof watching me. I felt his glare on me like the heat of a blistering sun.
4. Two dozen kites already hung in the sky, like paper sharks roaming for prey.
5. But with each defeated kite hope in my heart grew, like snow collecting on a wall one flake at a time.
6. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof proud of me at last.
7. Then the old warrior would walk to the young one, embrace him acknowledge his worthiness. Vindication. Salvation. Redemption. And then? Well … happily ever after of course. What else?

Question 25

How is Hassan’s rape described leading up to chapter 7?

Answer 25

1. on a frigid overcast day
2. crouching behind a crumbling mud wall peeking into the alley near the frozen creek
3. the past claws its way out
4. I’ve been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty six years.
5. Suddenly Hassan’s voice whispered in my head: for you a thousand times over
6. By the following winter it was only a faint scar. Which was ironic. Because that was the winter that Hassan stopped smiling.

Question 26

How is Hassan’s assault described?

Answer 26

1. Hassan was standing at the blind end of the alley in a defiant stance: fists curled, legs slightly apart. Behind him sitting on piles of scrap and rubble was the blue kite. My key to Baba’s heart.
2. Loyal Hazara. Loyal as a dog. Assef said. Kamal’s laugh was a shrill nervous sound.
3. Why he only plays with you when no-one else is around. I’ll tell you why Hazara, because to him your nothing but an ugly pet.
4. Assef unbuttoned his winter coat, took it off, folded it slowly and deliberately.
5. There’s nothing sinful about teaching a lesson to a disrespectful donkey.
6. I could hear Assef’s quick, rhythmic grunts.
7. Hassan didn’t struggle. Didn’t even whimper. He moved his head slightly and I caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb.

Question 27

How does Amir react to witnessing the assault?

Answer 27

1. I realised I still hadn’t breathed out. I exhaled, slowly quietly. I felt paralysed.
2. I opened my mouth. Almost said something. Almost.
3. I realised something else. I was weeping.
4. In the end I ran. I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. Was afraid of getting hurt … the real reason I was running was that Assef was right: nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it. He was just a Hazara wasn’t he?
5. He had the blue kite in his hands: that was the first thing I saw. And I can’t lie now and say my eyes didn’t scan it for any rips.
6. In his arms I forgot what I had done and that was good.

Question 28

What memories does Amir use to interrupt Hassan’s assault with?

Answer 28

1. His sightless eyes are like molten silver embedded in deep twin craters.
2. The calloused pads of his fingers brush against Hassan’s eyes. The hand stops there. Lingers. A shadow passes across the old man’s face.
3. get on with it under his breath. He sounds annoyed with all the endless praying, the ritual of making the meat halal. Baba mocks the story behind this Eid, like he mocks everything religious.
4. Every year baba gives it all to the poor. The rich are fat enough already he says.
5. I see the sheep’s eyes. It is a look that will haunt my dreams for weeks.

Question 29

How does Amir cope/not cope with witnessing Hassan’s rape?

Answer 29

1. Little shapes formed behind my eyelids, like hands playing shadows on the wall. They twisted, merged, formed a single image: Hassan’s brown corduroy pants discarded on a pile of old bricks.
2. I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.
3. There was a monster in the lake. It had grabbed Hassan by the ankles, dragged him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.
4. Because when he was around, oxygen seeped out of the room. My chest tightened and I couldn’t draw enough air.
5. Everywhere I turned I saw signs of his loyalty. His goddamn unwavering loyalty.
6. I hurled the pomegranate at him. It struck him in the chest, exploded in a spray of red pulp. Hassan’s cry was pregnant with surprise and pain.
7. I fell to my knees tired, spent, frustrated.

Question 30

How is Hassan described after chapter 7?

Answer 30

1. He had lost weight and gray circles had formed under his puffed up eyes.
2. Hassan’s smile wilted. He looked older than I remembered. No not older, old.
3. They stood before Baba hand in hand, and I wondered how and when I had become capable of causing this kind of pain.
4. I flinched like I had been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood: this was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me.

Question 31

How is Amir and Baba’s relationship described after chapter 7?

Answer 31

1. He had lots of years left to live so why did he have to wear those stupid glasses?
2. I couldn’t help hating the way his brow furrowed with worry.
3. After the kite tournament, Baba and I immersed ourselves in a sweet illusion.
4. Forty goddamn years and you think I’m just going to throw him out. He turned to me now, his face as red as a tulip.
5. Then I saw Baba do something I had never seen him do before. He cried. It scared me a little seeing a grown man sob. Fathers weren’t supposed to cry.

Question 32

How is the Afghan invasion described?

Answer 32

1. A white light flashed, lit the sky in silver. It flashed again and was followed by a rapid staccato of gunfire.
2. Somewhere glass shattered and someone shouted. I heard people on the street jolted from sleep and probably still in their pyjamas with ruffled hair and puffy eyes.
3. They were foreign sounds to us then, the generation of children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born.
4. A way of life had ended. Our way of life. If not quite yet, then at least it was the beginning of the end.
5. Do you want to go climb out tree?

Question 33

How is Amir’s escape from Afghanistan described?

Answer 33

1. The life I had known since I’d been born was over.
2. You couldn’t trust anyone in Kabul anymore for fee or under threat people told on each other ….
3. Someone laughed, a shrill cackling sound that made me jump. Baba’s hand clamped down on my thigh. The laughing man broke into song, a slurring off-key rendition of an old Afghan wedding song, delivered with a thick russian accent.
4. The air wasn’t right, it was too thick, almost solid. Air wasn’t supposed to be solid. I wanted to reach out with my hands, crush the air into little pieces, stuff them down my windpipe. And the stench of gasoline.
5. Someone was screaming. No not screaming, wailing.
6. I will never forget the echo of that blast. Or the flash of light and the spray of red.

Question 34

How does Baba react in the escape to America?

Answer 34

1. He saw my car sickness as yet another of my array of weaknesses: I saw it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched so badly I moaned.
2. When he stood, he eclipsed the moonlight.
3. He says this is war. There is no shame in war. Tell him he’s wrong. War doesn’t negate decency, it demands it even more than in times of peace.
4. I’ll take a thousand of his bullets before I let this indecency take place.
5. What’ll save us is eight cylinders and a good carburettor. That silenced the rest of them for good about the matter of God.
6. Karim slammed against the wall, his sandalled feet dangling two feet above the floor. Wrapped around his neck were Baba’s hands.
7. The only thing he loved as much as his late wife, was Afghanistan, his late country.

Question 35

How is living in America first described?

Answer 35

1. Baba loved the idea of America
2. There are only three real men in this world Amir he’d say. He’d count them off on his fingers. America the brash saviour, Britain and Israel.
3. Wah, Wah Baba exclaimed with disgust. Breshnev’s massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won’t come swim in your pool.
4. But the Bay Area’s smog stung his eyes, the traffic noise gave him headaches and the pollen made him cough. The fruit was never sweet enough, the water never clean enough. And where were all the trees and open fields?
5. My student hand clean and soft on his labourer’s hand grubby and calloused. I thought of all the trucks, train sets and bikes he’d bought me in Kabul. Now America. One last gift for Amir.
6. Fo me, America was a place to bury my memories. For Baba a place to mourn his.

Question 36

How is living in America described with Sohrab?

Answer 36

1. I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
2. It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
3. Catch a glimpse of books sitting unopened in the wicker basket, the growth chart unmarked, the jigsaw puzzle unassembled, each item a reminder of the life that could have been. A reminder of a dream that was wilting even as it was budding.
4. Soraya and I became involved in Afghan projects as much out of a sense of civil duty as the need for something anything to fill the silence upstairs, the silence that sucked everything in life like a black hole.
5. Unlike me, she had gradually abandoned her attempts at engaging him. The unanswered questions, the blank stares, the silence, it was all too painful.

Question 37

How is the altercation with the Ngyuens’ described?

Answer 37

1. Does he think I’m a thief? Baba said his voice rising. People had gathered outside. They were staring. What kind of a country is this? No one trusts anybody.
2. Her hands were shaking more than usual and that made me angry at Baba.
3. Baba was like the widower who remarries but can’t let go of his dead wife.

Question 38

How are memories of Hassan portrayed in America?

Answer 38

1. I wish Hassan had been with us today. A pair of steel hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan’s name.
2. Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts. America was different. America was a river roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into the river let my sins drown to the bottom let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories and no sins.
3. I remember wondering if Hassan too had married. And if so whose face he had seen in the mirror under the veil? Whose henna-painted hands had he held?

Question 39

How does Amir and Baba’s relationship develop in America?

Answer 39

1. He walked to me, curled his arm around my neck and gave my brow a single kiss. I am moftakir Amir he said. Proud.
2. My cheeks burned and guilt coursed through me, the guilt of indulging myself in expense of his ulcer, his black fingernails and aching wrists. But I would stand my ground I decided. I didn’t want to sacrifice for Baba anymore. The last time I had done that, I had damned myself.

Question 40

How is Soraya described?

Answer 40

1. slim-hipped beauty with velvety coal black hair
2. I blinked, my heart quickening. She had thick black eyebrows that touched in the middle, like the arched wings of a flying bird and the gracefully hooked nose of a princess.
3. her heels were white against the asphalt, silver bracelets jingling around her slender wrists.
4. the bracelet slipped down to her elbow, silver against olive.
5. Poison tongues would flap and she would bear that brunt of the poison not me. I was fully aware of the Afghan double standard that favoured my gender.
6. she gave me this big smile, crinkling her eyes and said she’d like that very much … she started calling me Moalem Soraya, teacher Soraya.
7. Soraya dedicated herself to taking care of my father.

Question 41

How is Soraya’s secret described?

Answer 41

1. I was eighteen at the time, rebellious, stupid and he was into drugs. We lived together for almost a month.
2. He made me come home. I was hysterical. Yelling, Screaming. Saying I hated him.
3. My pride, my iftakir wasn’t stung at all that she had been with a man, whereas I had never taken a woman to bed.
4. How could I of all people chastise someone for their past?
5. I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with … I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them.
6. But I think a big part of the reason I didn’t care about Soraya’s past is that I had one of my own. I knew all about regret.

Question 42

Attitudes to women:

Answer 42

1. Their sons go to nightclubs looking for a meat, get their girlfriends pregnant, have kids out of wedlock and no-one says a goddamn thing. Oh they’re just men having fun. I make one mistake and suddenly everyone is talking nang and namoos and I have to have my face rubbed in it for the rest of my life.
2. boast about his attorney daughter to his friends. another medal for the general.
3. At least I’m not like him sitting around while other people fight the Showari, waiting for when the dust settles so he can move in and reclaim his posh little government position.

Question 43

How is Soraya and Amir’s love portrayed?

Answer 43

1. Imagine what it would be like to feel her head on my chest, smell her hair. Kiss her, make love to her.
2. All my life I had been around men, that night I discovered the tenderness of a woman.
3. Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her.
4. I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya’s womb like it was a living breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage - that emptiness - into our laughs and our love-making.

Question 44

How is their wedding described?

Answer 44

1. Soraya and I dressed in green - the colour of Islam but also the colour of spring and new beginnings.
2. They gave us a mirror and threw a veil over our heads so we would be alone to gaze at each other’s reflection.

Question 45

How does Baba react to Amir and Soraya?

Answer 45

1. “I’d like you to ask General Taheri’s for his daughter’s hand”. Baba’s dry lips stretched into a smile. A spot of green on a wilted leaf.
2. “Up to this? It’s the happiest day of my life, Amir” he said smiling tiredly.
3. I could see his internal smile as wide as the skies of Kabul on nights when the poplars shivered and the sound of crickets swelled in the gardens.

Question 46

How is Baba’s decline shown?

Answer 46

1. His beard was graying, his hair thinning at the temples and hadn’t he been taller in Kabul?
2. I don’t know what or whom he was defying. Me? Dr Armani? Or maybe the God he had never believed in.
3. I remember that period as a time of many “firsts”: The first time I heard Baba moan in the bathroom, the first time I found blood on his pillow, in over three years of running the gas station Baba never called in sick, another first.
4. When the pounds kept shedding. And shedding. When his cheeks hollowed. And his temples melted. And his eyes receded in their sockets.
5. his shoulder blade felt like a bird’s wing under my fingers

Question 47

How is Baba’s funeral described?

Answer 47

1. Baba had wrestled bears his whole life. Losing his young wife, raising a son by himself, leaving his beloved homeland, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end a bear had come that he couldn’t best, but even then he had lost on his own terms.
2. My whole life I’d been “Baba’s son”. Now he was gone. Baba couldn’t show me the way anymore, I’d have to find it on my own. The thought of it terrified me.

Question 48

What happens on the phone call with Rahim Khan?

Answer 48

1. Come. There is a way to be good again Rahim Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up. He said it in passing, almost as an afterthought. A way to be good again.

Question 49

How is the idea of Hassan and childhood reintroduced through Amir?

Answer 49

1. When was the last time I had spoken his name? The thorny old barbs of guilt bore into me once more, as if speaking his name had broken a spell, set them free to torment me anew.
2. Hearing Rahim Khan speak Ali’s name was like finding an old dusty music box that hadn’t been opened in years: the melody began to play immediately. Who did you eat today old Babalu? I tried to conjure Ali’s frozen face, really see his tranquil eyes, but time can be a greedy thing, sometimes it steals all the details for itself.

Question 50

What happens when meeting Rahim Khan?

Answer 50

1. Then a thing made of skin and bones pretending to be Rahim Khan opened the door.
2. The conversation inevitably turned to the Taliban.
3. Nay its worse, much worse he said. They don’t let you be human.
4. The players weren’t allowed to wear shorts indecent exposure I guess, he gave a tired laugh.
5. Rahim Khan rubbed the scar with a gnarled finger. I was old enough to be his grandfather and I was sitting there blood gushing down my face apologising to that son of a dog.
6. You practically need a visa to go from one neighbourhood to the other.
7. People were so tired of the constant fighting, the gunfire, the explosions.
8. What it was like sifting through the rubble of that orphanage, there were body parts of children.

Question 51

How does Rahim Khan act as a foil to Amir?

Answer 51

1. Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?
2. I see America has infused you with the optimism that has made her so great. That’s very good. We’re a melancholic people, we Afghans aren’t we? Often we wallow too much in ghamkhori and self pity. We give in to loss, to suffering, accept it as a fact of life even see it as necessary.

Question 52

How is Rahim Khan’s experience described?

Answer 52

1. When news of your father’s death reached me … for the first time I felt a terrible loneliness in that house. An unbearable emptiness.
2. People pointed me to his village. I don’t even recall its name. Or whether it even had one.
3. Kabul in those days, Amir jan, was as close as you could get to that proverbial hell on earth.
4. The war is over Hassan I said. There will be peace and Inshallah and happiness and calm. No more rockets, no more killings, no more funerals. But he just turned off the radio.
5. A few weeks later the Taliban banned kite fighting. And two years after that, in 1998, they massacred the Hazaras in Mazar i Shariff.
6. Children are fragile, Amir jan. Kabul is already full of broken children and I don’t want Sohrab to become another one.

Question 53

What does Rahim Khan say in his letter and how does Amir react?

Answer 53

1. But I hope you will heed this. A man with no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer.
2. I saw how you suffered and yearned for his affections and my heart bled for you.
3. He loved you both. But he could not love Hassan the way he longed to openly and as a father. So he took it out on you instead Amir, the socially legitimate half, the half which represented the riches he had inherited and the sin with impunity privileges that came with them. When he saw you he saw himself. And his guilt.
4. And that I believe is what true redemption is Amir jan. When guilt leads to good.
5. Selling junk for petty cash, our menial jobs, our grimy apartment. The american version of a hut. Maybe in America, when Baba looked at me, he saw little bits of Hassan.

Question 54

How is Sanaubar described when she returns?

Answer 54

1. Toothless woman, with stringy graying hair and sores on her arms.
2. I have walked long and far to see if your as beautiful in my dreams as you are in the flesh. And you are. Even more.
3. She stood beaming under the dull gray sky, tears streaming down her cheeks, the needle-cold wind blowing her hair, clutching the baby in her arms like she never wanted to let go. Not this time.
4. he became the centre of her existence

Question 55

How is Hassan’s wife, Farzana, described?

Answer 55

1. She was a shy woman, so courteous she spoke in a voice barely higher than a whisper and she would not raise her pretty hazel eyes to meet my gaze.
2. Farzana stayed in the hut all day and wailed - it is a heartbreaking sound Amir jan - the wailing of a mother.

Question 56

How is Hassan as an adult and his death described?

Answer 56

1. The Bamiyan sun had toughened his skin and turned it several shades darker.
2. He had those same narrow green eyes, that scar on his upper lip, that round face, that affable smile. You would have recognised him Amir jan, I am sure of it.
3. Hassan had so many questions about you. Had you married? Did you have children? How tall were you? Did you still fly kites and go to the cinema? Were you happy?
4. Hassan would prop Sohrab on his shoulders and they would go trotting through the streets running kites, climbing trees where kites had dropped. … would hang the kites they had run all winter on the walls of the main hallway. They would put them up like paintings.
5. Hassan slumps to the asphalt. The life of unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase.

Question 57

What is said in Hassan’s letter?

Answer 57

1. Most beneficient, most merciful Amir agha with my deepest respects
2. They laugh at the stories of all the mischief you and I used to cause.
3. The Afghanistan of our youth is long dead. Kindness is gone from the land and you cannot escape the killings.
4. He was screaming at her and cursing and saying the Ministry of Vice and Virtue does not allow women to speak loudly.
5. The droughts have dried up the hill and the tree hasn’t borne fruits in years.
6. I dream someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.

Question 58

Revelation as Hassan and Amir as brothers:

Answer 58

1. I felt like a man sliding down a steep cliff clutching at shrubs and tangles of brambles and coming up empty handed.
2. You goddamn bastards I screamed. All of you you bunch of lying goddamn bastards.
3. How could you hide this from me? from him?
4. It was a shameful situation. People would talk. All that a man had back then was, was his honour, his name and if people talked
5. Rahim Khan had summoned me here to atone not just my sins but for Baba’s too

Question 59

How is Amir’s journey in Afghanistan described?

Answer 59

1. who specialised in weaving them, sometimes for western journalists who covered the war
2. I was afraid I’d deliberate, ruminate, agonise, rationalise and talk myself into not going. I was afraid the appeal of my life in America would draw me back, that I would wade back into that great big river.
3. I saw chains of villages sprouting here and there, like discarded toys among the rock, broken houses
4. I spotted a cluster of men sitting on their haunches, like a row of crows, on the carcass of an old burned out soviet tank.
5. I thought I had forgotten about this land. But I hadn’t. And under the bony glow of a half moon I sensed Afghanistan humming under my feet. Maybe Afghanistan hadn’t forgotten about me either.
6. He pointed to the crumbled charred remains of a tiny village. It was just a tuft of blackened roofless walls now.

Question 60

What is Farid’s role in the text?

Answer 60

1. He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. That’s the real Afghanistan Amir sahib. That’s the Afghanistan I know. You? You have always been a tourist her you just didn’t know it.
2. Sell this land, sell that house, collect the money and run away like a mouse. Go back to America, spend the money on a family vacation to Mexico.
3. I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humour never changed. Wars were waged, the internet was invented, a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

Question 61

How is the orphanage described?

Answer 61

1. I sensed him standing there, listening, hesitating, caught between suspicion and hope.
2. We followed him through dim grimy hallways where barefoot children dressed in frayed sweaters ambled around.
3. I have asked the Taliban for money to dig a new well more times than I remember and they just twirl their rosaries and tell me there is no money. No money.
4. I could have run like everyone else. But I didn’t. I stayed. I stayed because of them … so I let him take one and leave the judging to Allah. I swallow my pride and take his goddamn dirty filthy money.

Question 62

How is Kabul described?

Answer 62

1. Hardly any of them sat with an adult male, wars had made fathers a rare commodity in Afghanistan.
2. Jadeh Maywand had turned into a giant sand castle. Buildings that hadn’t entirely collapsed barely stood with caved in roofs and walls pierced with rocket shells.
3. A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old forgotten friend and seeing life hadn’t been good to him, that he’d become homeless and destitute.
4. Telling myself the sudden taste in my mouth wasn’t unadulterated, naked fear. Telling myself my flesh hadn’t suddenly shrunk against my bones and my heart wasn’t battering. Here they came. In all their glory.
5. They drive around looking. Looking and hoping someone will provoke them. Sooner or later someone always obliges. Then the dogs feast and the day’s boredom is broken at last.

Question 63

How is returning to childhood home described?

Answer 63

1. The house itself was far from the sprawling white mansion I remembered from my childhood. It looked smaller, the roof sagged and the plaster was cracked.
2. Like so much else in Kabul my father’s house was the picture of fallen splendour
3. we scampered about the hilltop chasing each other vs by the time I reached the top of the craggy hill each ragged breath felt like inhaling fire. Sweat trickled down my face.
4. The carving had dulled, almost faded altogether, but was still there.
5. I sat cross legged at the foot of the tree and looked south on the city of my childhood.
6. I don’t want to forget anymore

Question 64

What happens at Ghazi stadium?

Answer 64

1. It had the desired effect. People craned their necks, pointed, stood on tiptoes.
2. The soldiers pulled her up and she slumped again. When they tried to lift her again she screamed and kicked. I’ll never, as long as I draw breath, forget the sound of that scream. It was the cry of a wild animal trying to pry its mangled leg from the bear trap.
3. We listen to what God says and we obey because we are nothing but humble, powerless creatures before God’s greatness. And what does God say? I ask you.
4. The man in the hole was now a mangled mess of blood and shredded rags.

Question 65

How are the Taliban’s attitudes presented through Assef?

Answer 65

1. Public justice is the greatest kind of show my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.
2. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘liberating’ until you’ve done that. Stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse knowing your virtuous, good and decent. Knowing your doing God’s work. It’s breathtaking. He kissed his prayer beads.
3. Ill ask you something: what are you doing with that whore? Why aren’t you here with your Muslim brothers serving your country?
4. Like pride in your people, your customs, your language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered with garbage and someone has to take out the garbage.

Question 66

What happens in the confrontation between Amir and Assef?

Answer 66

1. Whatever happened to old Babalu anyway? The question hit me like a hammer between the eyes. I felt the colour drain from my face. My legs went cold. Numb.
2. He got mad and hit me harder. And the harder he kicked me the harder I laughed. They threw me back in the cell laughing. I kept laughing and laughing because suddenly I knew that had been a message from God: he was on my side. He wanted me to live for a reason.
3. And what mission is that? I heard myself say. Stoning adulterers? Raping children? Flogging women for wearing high heels? Massacring Hazaras? All in the name of Islam?

Question 67

How does Assef act with Sohrab?

Answer 67

1. How talented he is nay my Hazara boy
2. The man’s hand slid up and down the boy’s belly. Up and down slowly gently.
3. He plucked a red grape. Put it lovingly in Sohrab’s mouth.

Question 68

Amir and Assef’s fight:

Answer 68

1. The sound of my ribs snapping like the tree branches Hassan and I used to break to swordfight.
2. Music. Sohrab screaming. Fingers grasping my hair, pulling my head back. The twinkle of stainless steal. Here they come.
3. It hurt to laugh. Hurt my jaws, my ribs, my throat. But I was laughing and laughing. And the harder I laughed, the harder he kicked me, punched me, scratched me.
4. My body was broken - just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later - but I felt healed. Healed at last.
5. Assef straddling my chest, his face a mask of lunacy, framed by snarls of his hair swaying inches from my face.
6. No more. Twin trails of black mascara, mixed with tears, rolled down his cheeks smeared the rouge. His lower lip trembled. Mucus seeped from his nose.
7. Bia Sohrab said pulling my hand. Lets go. I stumbled down the hallway Sohrab’s little hand in mine.

Question 69

Amir’s thoughts after the confrontation with Assef:

Answer 69

1. The bear roars or maybe its Baba. Spittle and blood fly; claw and hand swipe. They fall to the ground with a loud thud and Baba is sitting on the bear’s chest his fingers digging into his snout. He looks up at me and I see. He’s me. I am wrestling the bear.
2. The impact had cut your upper lip in two he had said clean down the middle. Clean down the middle like a hairlip.
3. Daylight had dimmed a bit, the shadows had stretched and Sohrab was still sitting next to me. He was still looking down at his hands.

Question 70

How is Sohrab first described?

Answer 70

1. The resemblance was breathtaking. Disorienting. Rahim Khan’s polaroid hadn’t done justice to it. The boy had his father’s round moon face, his pointy stub of a chin, his twisted seashell ears and the same slight frame. It was the chinese doll face of my childhood.
2. I helped Sohrab to his feet swatted the bits of crushed grape that had stuck to his pants like barnacles to a pier.
3. Sohrab’s eyes flickered to me. They were slaughter sheep’s eyes.
4. I took Sohrab’s hand. It was small, the skin dry and calloused. His fingers moved, linked themselves with mine.

Question 71

Sohrab’s description of sin

Answer 71

1. Will God he began and choked a little. Will God put me in hell for what I did to that man? I reached for him and he flinched. I pulled back.
2. 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.
3. Sometimes I’m glad they’re not, they’re not here anymore because he said gasping and hitching between sobs because I don’t want them to see me Im so dirty. He sucked in his breath and let it out in a long wheezy cry. Im so dirty and full of sin.

Question 72

How is Sohrab described?

Answer 72

1. He waited for a reply, but Sohrab paid him no attention. Just rocked back and forth, his face lit by the silver glow of the images flickering across the screen.
2. I wondered what I’d do with the wounded little boy’
3. I imagined Sohrab lying in a ditch. Or in the trunk of some car bound and gagged. I didn’t want his blood on my hands. not his too.
4. The mosque sparkled like a diamond in the dark. Lit up the sky, Sohrab’s face.
5. I’m starting to forget their faces. Sohrab said Is that bad?
6. Sohrab blinked. Like he was looking at me, really looking at me, for the very first time.

Question 73

How does Amir react to Sohrab and other events?

Answer 73

1. There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.
2. I wanted to pull him close, hold him, tell him the world had been unkind to him not the other way around.
3. I won’t hurt you I whispered I promise. He resisted a little. Slackened. He let me draw him to me and rested his head on my chest. His little body convulsed in my arms with each sob.
4. I decided the moment was now, right here right now with the bright lights of the house of God shining on us.
5. My chest tightened with a sudden surge of unexpected anger at the way my countrymen were destroying their own land.

Question 74

How is the American embassy described?

Answer 74

1. The air conditioning hit my face like a splash of water
2. She was wearing a beige blouse and black slacks: the first woman Id seen in weeks dressed in something other than a burqua or shalwar-kameez.
3. Death certificate? This is Afghanistan we’re talking about. Most people there don’t have birth certificates.

Question 75

Life waiting for an adoption:

Answer 75

1. In Kabul hot running water had been like fathers a rare commodity. Now Sohrab spent almost an hour a night in the bath, soaking in the soapy water scrubbing …. Do you feel clean yet Sohrab?
2. Not impossible, but hardly likely. Gone was the affable smile. The playful look in his eyes.
3. Sohrab shrugged and smiled wider this time. I don’t mind. I can wait. It’s like the sour apples.
4. no, please no he croaked. Im scared of that place. They’ll hurt me. I don’t want to go.
5. His frantic pleas dwindled to indecipherable mumbles
6. We won’t have to put you in the orphanage Sohrab. We’re going to America you and I. Did you hear me? We’re going to America.

Question 76

How is Sohrab described after his attempted suicide?

Answer 76

1. He winced when he spoke again in that husky voice barely above a whisper: Tired of everything
2. I want my old life back he breathed
3. A light of hope had begun to enter Sohrab’s eyes like a timid guest. Now the light was gone, the guest had fled and I wondered when it would dare to return. I wondered how long before Sohrab smiled again. How long before he trusted me. If ever.
4. Perspective was a luxury when your head was constantly buzzinf with a swarm of demons.
5. What choice did he have? Where could he go? So what I took as a yes from him was in actuality more of a quiet surrender, not so much an acceptance as an act of relinquishment by one too weary to decide and far too tired to believe.

Question 77

Description of Amir after Sohrab’s attempted suicide

Answer 77

1. I want to tear myself from this place from the reality rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into the humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far over the hills.
2. I see now that Baba was wrong, there is a God, always had been. I see him here in the eyes of the people in this corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find him.
3. I feel the eyes of everyone on this corridor on me and still I bow to the west. I pray. I pray that my sins haven’t caught up with me the way I always feared they would.
4. And his eyes still half open but lightless. That more than anything. I want to forget his eyes.
5. Had I really gone to sleep after giving Sohrab the news he feared most?
6. Can you do that? Can you forgive me? Can you believe me? I dropped my voice. Will you come with me?
7. My old life too. I played in the same yard, Sohrab. I lived in the same house. But the grass is dead and a stranger’s jeep is parked in the driveway of our house pissing oil all over the asphalt. Our old life is gone, Sohrab. Everyone in it is either dead or dying. It’s just you and me now. Just you and me.

Question 78

Memories of Baba at the end

Answer 78

1. In one way or another he had touched all of their lives. The men said I was lucky to have had such a great man for a father.
2. buzzing here, buzzing there harried and rushed. In this country even flies are pressed for time he’d groan. How I had laughed.

Question 79

The small miracle

Answer 79

1. I heard raindrops pelting the window. Afghan luck I thought. Snickered.
2. I glanced over at him. The glassy vacant look in his eyes was gone. His gaze flitted between our kite and the green one. His face was a little flushed his eyes suddenly alert. Awake. Alive. I wondered when Id forgotten that despite everything he was still just a child.
3. I looked down at Sohrab. One corner of his mouth had curled up just so. A smile. Lopsided. Hardly there. But there.
4. It was only a smile nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods shaking in the wake of a startled birds flight. But id take it. With open arms.
5. I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face and a smile as wide as the valley of Panshjer on my lips. I ran.