![]() ![]() To sum up: Soraya brings some measure of peace to Amir's life, but she also reminds Amir of his not-so-good past. So, we guess that's another similarity with Amir: they both have domineering fathers. Saying I hated him." (12.207-12.208) The General goes crazy when he finds Soraya living with her boyfriend. He showed up at the door and.made me come home. I was eighteen at the, and.he was into drugs.We lived together for almost a month. Unlike Amir, though, Soraya actually fesses up to her checkered past (OK, Amir eventually does, but it's very late in the book): "When we lived in Virginia, I ran away with an Afghan man. Amir finds this out pretty early on in their courtship and, perhaps, finds it attractive. She resembles Amir because she also has a checkered past. She's like Hassan, because of the harelip and the being nice stuff. Soraya almost seems like a combination of both Hassan and Amir. But we think that third option is unlikely. Or, on the other hand, it could just be a birthmark without any special significance. So, like Ali and Hassan, Soraya's birthmark signifies an essential goodness (see Ali's "Character Analysis" for more on this). (Did we say she's incredibly kind? That's another way she's like Hassan.) But it's also possible Soraya simply fits into Hosseini's larger narrative pattern. It's possible that Soraya's physical similarity to Hassan attracts Amir to her. Why? Because it identifies her with Amir's childhood friend who had a harelip. With that in mind, we think it's important to note that Soraya has a birthmark just above her jaw. Even though Soraya can't have children, it seems like the best of marriages – almost like a close friendship. What more could anyone want in a spouse? She and Amir build a quiet, enviable life in California. She's beautiful, kind, and has a complicated past. In the course of a few chapters, she and Amir get hitched. Amir's first word is "Baba." Hassan's is "Amir.Amir meets Soraya at the flea market – isn't that romantic? We think it kind of is.Ali tells the boys there is "a brotherhood between people who had fed from the same breast, a kinship that not even time could break" (2.34). Amir tells us he and Hassan had the same wet nurse (because Sanaubar left Ali and Amir's mother passed away in childbirth).Little story from the midwife as told to the neighbor's servant: when Hassan was born (with a cleft lip), Sanaubar said to Ali: "Now you have your own idiot child to do all your smiling for you!" (2.30).An adult Amir opens the novel in the present-day United States with a vague reference to one of these events, and then the novel flashes back to Amirs childhood in Afghanistan. He loves Hassan so much it doesn't bother him. The Kite Runner is the story of Amir, a Sunni Muslim, who struggles to find his place in the world because of the aftereffects and fallout from a series of traumatic childhood events. But Ali doesn't feel the need to fight back against his assailants. We learn Sanaubar taunted Ali along with the neighborhood kids.Looking through his mother's old history books, Amir discovers the inequality between the two ethnicities. Ali, Sanaubar, and Hassan are Hazaras, while Amir and Baba are Pashtuns. We hear more about an emerging tension: ethnicity.The neighborhood kids chase Ali around and call him Babalu or "Boogeyman." Grow up, kids. Now, Amir tells us about Hassan's father: the lower muscles on Ali's face were paralyzed by polio.More description of Hassan's mother: Sanaubar, it seems, was really gorgeous and "notoriously unscrupulous.".But the soldiers are really crude, and Amir tries to comfort Hassan. Apparently, his mum was quite beautiful and a little free with her favors. One day, as Amir and Hassan are walking past the military barracks, some soldiers heckle Hassan.Amir tells us his mother died giving birth to him and Hassan's mother – her name was Sanaubar – left soon after Hassan was born.It's nowhere near as opulent as Baba's house. Amir takes us inside the little shack where Ali and Hassan, their servants, live.Finally, there's one of little Amir in his father's arms Rahim Khan stands off to the side. Some of Baba's cabinets have a few pictures: Amir's grandfather and King Nadir Shah and one of Amir's father and mother on their wedding night.Baba, Amir's father, has a smoking room in the house but he doesn't let Amir hang out there.It has rosebushes, marble floors, mosaic tiles, and gold-stitched tapestries. Amir describes his childhood home, built by his father.Hassan often takes the blame if the two troublemakers get caught. ![]() Amir and Hassan get into harmless mischief together as kids.This chapter is a slideshow of Amir's early childhood.
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