Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 12/10/07 Section: Mixed Plate

Riverhead Trade
Paperback, 400 pages
Also a major motion picture in theaters this month

Long before 2001, when American troops entered Afghanistan to wage the war on terror, there was already a war raging within the country - a war of hate, prejudice, ignorance and intolerance.

For 40 years the monarchy of Afghanistan ruled the country in peace until 1973, when the struggle for personal and political power, which continues to present day, began exhausting the finances of the culturally rich country.

Khaled Hosseini, an Afghani who moved to the U.S. later in his life and an avid supporter of Afghani freedom, finished "The Kite Runner" in 2003. The novel tells a universal story that is right here, with you and me, not isolated to a small country in a faraway place.

His use of interjection in Farsi, an official language of Afghanistan, keeps the story's place and pulse alive.

The story of humankind's plight is told through the life and childhood of Amir, an Afghani man. Through blood and spirit, the novel travels through generations, creating a relationship with the reader that could strangle breath, while the boy grows up, relives his childhood fears and finds peace as a man.

Hosseini spares no emotions. Hope is torn away on every page, and the reader is left at the end in total exhaustion.

Amir, a Sunni Muslim, led an elite life that many children in the Middle-Eastern world would never know. The majority of the population in the country is Sunni, as the much smaller group of Shiites consists of the native Hazara people (thought of as descendants of Genghis Khan's conquest in the region) and makes up the lower labor class.

In Amir's backyard, his servant, Ali, and Ali's son, Hassan, live in a shack, waking every morning to attend to his breakfast and laundry for the day. Hassan lives for the hour that Amir returns from school and their real life begins, in a world with no boundaries.

Hassan and Amir spend their best years together exploring a world only they can see, climbing trees, competing at kite-flying and reading under a pomegranate tree. The two are destined souls; although their bodies drift through place and time inevitably to part, they never really leave each other.

When the Russians invade, Amir takes asylum in America. The move is too far away from home for his father, who yearns for Afghanistan; but for Amir, it was a long-awaited new beginning. It was a blank page where he began to write his life.

The comparisons between a land of abounding history and culture and one of new spacious horizons are woven into a tale of acceptance and rebirth. The novel is set in times of national and internal war, realities of being that all readers can share.

During this time of cultural and religious confusion caused by political wars, "The Kite Runner" is flying high in the clouds.

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