Similarities Between Hassan And Amir In The Kite Runner

How long does it take for something to become unrecognizable? Amir’s return to Afghanistan after having lived in the United States for twenty-five years has been quite an emotional trip. Amir found out that Hassan’s son, named Sohrab, is still alive and living in an orphanage in Kabul. Amir and a man named Farid head to a soccer game in Kabul to find the man who bought him from the orphanage. There, they witness the Taliban murder two people. Amir meets the man and finds out that he is Assef and fights him in front of Sohrab, who stops the fight by firing at Assef with his slingshot. Amir and Sohrab escape, but Amir is left in horrific shape and is admitted to a hospital, where Farid gives him a letter left to him by Rahim Khan, and where

to get all of Rahim Khan’s inheritance for him. Farid gets Amir to leave the hospital as soon as he can to avoid Assef finding him. Amir and Sohrab get a hotel room, but Farid cannot stay. Amir tells Sohrab everything, including that he is his uncle, and asks if he would like to go live with him and Soraya, an offer which Sohrab eventually accepts. However, due to adoption policies, it seems as though Amir will not be able to bring Sohrab back to California. Amir’s trip to Afghanistan as an adult has shown him a new side of his home country that he has never seen before.
Amir had already known that Kabul had significantly changed since his childhood. When Amir and Farid arrive in Kabul, Amir stops at Baba’s house. He walks up right in front of it and notices even the slightest changes. Amir stays there until Farid honks and tells him that the best thing to do is forget about it. However, Amir “[does not] want to forget anymore” (Hosseini 263). Amir’s entire adulthood has been plagued by guilt which he tried to forget, and he is tired of forgetting. His trip to Afghanistan has forced him to remember everything and every attempt to forget at this point would be futile. The events of the past thirty years have led Amir to Kabul trying to atone for and remember his past that he has covered up with a blissful life in the United States. Although Hassan is dead, Amir has one last chance to remember: a boy named Sohrab.
The differences and similarities between Amir’s childhood in Afghanistan and Afghanistan at the time are made apparent by the conversations between Amir and Farid in their hotel room.

Farid goes to buy food for the two of them, and after eating, Amir notices that “there [is] one thing that [hasn’t] changed in Kabul after all: The kabob [is] as succulent and delicious as [he] remembered” (Hosseini 265). Baba, Amir and Hassan used to get kabob when Amir was a child. This is one thing he remembers that has not changed, one thing that he can hang on to. Later that night, Amir and Farid exchange old Afghan jokes that, according to Amir, there was not a single “Afghan in the world who didn’t know at least a few jokes about the bumbling mullah” (Hosseini 266). This is another similarity between Amir’s childhood in Afghanistan and Afghanistan in the present. Even Farid, who is from a different region knows these jokes, as he is the one who sparks up the conversation by telling one. Although the physical and political structures of Afghanistan are crumbling, its culture remains

bright.
After witnessing the execution of two people in public, Amir and Farid find the man in the dark sunglasses who killed the two because he is the man who bought Sohrab.

Amir goes into the man’s house by himself and talks with him for a while before Sohrab comes in. Once he arrives, the man takes off the sunglasses to reveal bright blue eyes that Amir instantly recognizes as Assef’s. This realization sparks Amir having to finally face his past, there is no hiding it anymore. Assef tells Amir that they “have some unfinished business” (Hosseini 286), and he is referring to the time in the alley when Amir and Hassan were children and Hassan threatened to shoot Assef with his slingshot if he did not leave them alone. Assef ends up leaving Amir with extreme injuries and would have killed him if Sohrab had not interfered. Sohrab begs Assef to stop, and Assef threatens to kill him if he does not put down what is in his hand. “His hand was cocked above his shoulder, holding the cup of the slingshot at the end of the elastic band which was pulled all the way back” (Hosseini 291). Sohrab is mimicking the stand his father took to Assef so many years before, the reason he and Amir are fighting in the first place. Sohrab lets go of the slingshot and the brass ball inside the cup hits Assef in the left eye, tearing the eyeball out of the socket and becoming lodged inside. Thanks to Sohrab’s act almost identical to that of Hassan’s, he and Amir are able to

escape.
Amir’s visit to Afghanistan after twenty-five years away opens up a reality about which he had only read about in the newspaper. Amir had tried fleeing his past so he could forget about it, but “the past always claws its way out”. Amir’s trip led him to meeting a last chance for redemption with Rahim Khan and Sohrab, and forced him to realize that some things in Afghanistan are unrecognizable from his childhood there.