Why did "The Kite Chaser" impress 30 million readers?
Text | Qingyan
Edit | Wang Zhuojiao
For many Chinese, Afghanistan is nothing more than a geographical concept, representing dry and barren land, harsh and extreme religion, bearded men with long headscarves, and women in burqas so that they are not even allowed to show their eyes.
It once had close ties with the former Soviet Union, and later the United States became involved, the Taliban that rose to become known as al-Qaida, the bin Laden who caused the United States to suffer the "9/11 incident", and the destruction of the "Mibayan Buddha", a heritage of world civilization.
Now, the United States has withdrawn its troops, the Taliban have become the de facto rulers of Afghanistan, and international public opinion is in an uproar.
As much as these days are full of News reports from Afghanistan, and despite all the online views against the Taliban, they haven't done a better job of helping me get into Afghanistan and understand It. What we know is still limited to a few words. As for what kind of people are in that land, and how they live, we don't know much.
After reading so much relevant information, I finally can't help but sigh:
These divergent remarks are far less real and shocking than the feeling of reading "The Kite Chaser" for the first time.
While it tells the story of the friendship between the little master Amir and the little servant Hassan, it shows us the many changes in Afghanistan from before the Soviet invasion to the present day – and it is in this process that we truly understand the suffering and fate of the Afghans.
Compared to news reports and online gossip, "The Kite Chaser" is more immersive.
Bounded by fleeing to Peshawar and eventually settling in the United States, The Kite Chaser is divided into two parts.
The first half is based on the friendship and interaction between the little master Amir and the little servant Hassan; the second half is based on the adult Amir becoming a writer in the United States, returning to Afghanistan to redeem his soul, and saving Hassan's 11-year-old son Sohrab as the main line - it is under this theme of self-redemption as the core that the author Khaled Husseini reveals many truths of human nature, such as selfishness and cowardice, kindness and bravery, betrayal and redemption, faith and sacrifice, and so on.
Amir was born in the wealthy district of Kabul, Afghanistan, and the servant's son Hassan was his best playmate, and the two were almost inseparable: Hassan was extremely loyal to Amir, and Amir enjoyed Hassan's blind worship.
Stills from the movie version of "The Kite Chaser"
The two of them often float together, watch movies, and participate in kite competitions every winter.
Kite competition is a tradition in Afghanistan, not only to compete whose kites fly higher and farther, but also to attack each other, to cut the other party's kite line, after the broken line of the kite fell, it belonged to the person who chased it, symbolizing honor.
Amir is good at cutting lines, and Hassan always knows where kites fall.
Whenever there is a win, this scene occurs – Amir asks Hassan with a little hesitation: "Will you chase the kite for me?" Hassan ran and jumped happily and replied, "For you, a thousand times!" ”
But during a kite chase, ethnically extremist youths led by Assef surrounded Hassan, who was protecting the kite from being snatched, and sodomized him — the most extreme insult to men in Islamic culture.
Amir secretly witnessed all this from the side, but did not dare to make a sound. He even lied because he could not face Hassan, saying that Hassan stole his watch, and eventually forced the Hassan father and son away.
Soon after, in 1973, with the support of the former Soviet Union, Daoud staged a coup d'état, which led Afghanistan to a phase of Soviet shrouding, and the rise of the Taliban, Afghanistan began to be at war, infighting, and the people were not happy.
It was at this time that Amir fled to the United States with his father and grew up to become an American writer who could not let go of the past.
As an adult, Hassan returned to Amir's home in Afghanistan to help him take care of his house, and was eventually killed by the Taliban for protecting the house left by his master, leaving his 11-year-old son Sohrab to become a child prostitute of the Taliban, and the Taliban who raised him was the extreme young Assef who had bullied Hassan.
It was also at this time that Amir learned that Hassan had been the illegitimate son of his father, and that Sohrab, who had been raised into a child by the Taliban, was his nephew.
The reason why the first half of the content is recounted relatively clearly, and the second half is roughly taken, because in terms of purely in terms of novel skills, the second half of "The Kite Chaser" is far less than its artistic value, real strength and sensuality--it is full of too many coincidences, and there are too many deliberate coincidences and echoes that deliberately fit the first half, like a very sophisticated and contrived Hollywood blockbuster, which reads more than enough sensationalism and lack of strength.
But even so, "The Kite Chaser" is still an outstanding novel.
The first is the section on self-redemption, which the author places between the nobility and the untouchables, friends and brothers, history and reality, not only giving the reader the opportunity to appreciate afghanistan's deep-rooted ethnic, religious, cultural and historical problems, but also making it easier for the reader to see the complexity, transmutation and cruelty of human nature in such a grand context.
This is why Amir obviously found out that Hassan was bullied by Assef to protect him, and even if he did not help, he had to design and lie to drive Hassan away - in addition to his inability to face his cowardice and incompetence, the bigger reason may be the difficulty of identity:
Amir is a Pashtun who believes in Sunni Islam, while Hassan is a Hazara who believes in Shia Islam.
Isn't the biggest reason Assef bullied Hassan is because Hassan is a Hazara?
Assef raised Hassan's 11-year-old son, Sohrab, as a child prostitute, not only because the Taliban were almost all Pashtuns, and all they had to do was a religious purge: to purge the Hazaras and make them disappear into Afghanistan.
The hatred between these two races is not far away, but began at the end of the 19th century: nearly half of the Hazaras were killed and their property was taken away by the Pashtuns because of religious differences.
That's why the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddha: the Bamiyan Buddha was built by the ancestors of the Halazas — in the novel, hassan leaves Amir's house and goes to the Hazara's ghetto of Hazarajat, whose center is Bamiyan.
In fact, Hassan had no need to go to Kabul to guard the Amir family's house, because in 1996, the Taliban, which had been rising for less than two years, occupied Kabul, became the new owner of Afghanistan, and began to carry out genocide against the Khalazas.
It was at this time that Hassan, who refused to cede Amir's house to the Taliban, was executed by the Taliban.
It is also on the branches and leaves of this main line that "The Kite Chaser" focuses on the suffering of Afghans.
This is the second reason why it is a masterpiece: the author Khaled Al-Husseini did not avoid the disasters, injustices and obsolescence that were taking place in his homeland because he was Afghan, he avoided the backwardness and obsolescence that had accumulated in his own history and culture for a long time, and likewise he did not stay out of the field and look at it coldly or deliberately ridicule it.
In his humanistic tradition and with broad compassion, Khaled Al-Husseini looks at Afghanistan and the joys, sorrows, blessings and misfortunes of those who live there.
Khaled Al-Husseini does not deny his protagonist Amir, but restores and understands as much as possible that in that environment, his fears and choices, and his ultimate courage and courage.
That's why, when he learned that Hassan's 11-year-old son, Sohrab, was still alive, Amir decided to go to Afghanistan: He couldn't forgive his betrayal of Hassan— the happier his life was, the more he remembered Hassan.
With guilt, remorse, and longing for Hassan, the atonement helped him overcome years of cowardice and evasion, and courageously went to negotiate with Assef, who had become the leader of the Taliban.
Although Assef broke his ribs one by one, Amir smiled quite calmly because he knew he was atonement.
The body is painful, but the heart is calm.
Since then, Amir has reconciled with his unbearable past, and there are no more lies, betrayals and secrets in his life, but he can live his life calmly and frankly, full of love and peace.
After The Kite Chaser, Khaled Al-Husseini was associated with Afghanistan.
People are fascinated by his stories: love and sacrifice for salvation, humanity that remains good in the midst of war and poverty, and human encounters and parting. He describes Afghanistan with an almost paranoid zeal, in his words:
"[I] am determined to brush away the dust that has clouded the faces of ordinary Afghans and show the throbbing of the soul behind me to the world."
That's why, after "The Kite Chaser," Khaled Al-Husseini wrote "Brilliant Thousand Suns" and "Echo of the Mountains" — if "The Kite Chaser" tells the story of two Afghan men, then "Brilliant Thousand Suns" is the story of two Afghan women saving each other.
If you can't understand how terrifying the afghan women's experience is, then "Brilliant Suns" is definitely worth watching.
If you can, watch it with the animated movie "The Breadwinner", you will definitely have a deeper understanding of this problem.
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