For you, a thousand times over!
The above is the resounding line of this international bestseller of Khaled Hosseini.
If there would be anything good typhoon Frank had caused, it was that
it made me stay home that rainy, floody Sunday and have me the grand
time finishing ‘The Kite Runner’.
Kite
Runner is a riveting, moving account of an Afghan life from its
pre-Soviet splendor, to Russian domination, until the present Taliban
rule. It puts face of the lives affected, I mean ravaged, by the always
ill-causing war. It was like getting into the world and the lives of
the war-torn Afghanis I only sigh whenever they take a slot of CNN or
BBC news. While the novel is fictitious, it can never be far from being
real. Amir and Hassan can just be anyone among the best of friends who
tire themselves of playing, who love climbing trees, and enjoy kite
tournaments. It would be easy for me to believe it’s a memoir of Amir,
or any Afghan for that matter, who might be somewhere out there,
exuding the prize of atonement after years of evading responsibility he
should have carried long before. Some scenes were like my experiences
when I was young (and probably yours too). Only that Afghanistan can
never be anything like any other place on earth.
The
message is universal, the effect is personal. I do have halts along my
way to the last leaf of the book, that for me to give way for air to
pass through my lungs and to hide those drops, they call it tears,
which threatened to fall from my eyes at any time. I did not wonder why
Tita Phoebe kept recommending for me to read it, more than watching its
movie version (which she has watched too). She’s right, it was not like
any of my reading experience.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:00 am
go watch innocent voices. …el salvador war and the little children… oh, i’m sure you’ll appreciate it.