Summary: Chapter 14
The period is June 2001, and Amir has just received a call from Rahim Khan,
who wants Amir to see him in Pakistan. Amir tells Soraya he has to go. Rahim Khan,
the first grownup Amir ever thought of as a friend, is very ill. Amir takes a walk
to Golden Gate Park, and as he sits watching a man play catch with his son and
looking at the kites flying, he thinks of something Rahim Khan said to him on the
phone. He told Amir there is a way for him to be good again. That night, while Amir
and Soraya are in bed, Amir thinks of their relationship. They still make love, but
both of them feel a kind of futility in the act. They used to lie together and talk
about having a child, but now their conversations are about work or other things.
Amir drifts off to sleep and dreams of Hassan running through the snow. A week
later, Amir leaves for Pakistan.
Summary: Chapter 15
Amir lands in Peshawar, where Rahim Khan is. The driver of the cab he takes
talks incessantly, telling Amir that what has happened to Afghanistan is awful. They
reach the neighborhood known as “Afghan Town,” and Amir sees dirty children selling
cigarettes, carpet shops, and kabob vendors. Amir remembers the last time he saw
Rahim Khan, twenty years earlier in 1981. It was the night he and Baba left Kabul.
They had gone to see Rahim Khan, and Baba had cried. Baba and Rahim Khan had kept in
touch, but Amir had not spoken with Rahim Khan since just after Baba’s
death.
Amir arrives at Rahim Khan’s apartment, and Rahim Khan answers the door. He
looks thin and sickly. Inside they have tea and talk. Amir tells him he is married
now to Soraya Taheri, General Taheri’s daughter, and he talks about Baba and his
career as a novelist. Rahim Khan says he never doubted Amir would become a writer.
The conversation turns to what Afghanistan has become since the Taliban took over.
Rahim Khan tells Amir the story of how he got the scar over his eye. A man next to
him at a soccer game cheered loudly. The guard on patrol heard the noise, walked
over, and smashed Rahim Khan with the butt of his rifle. Amir learns that Rahim Khan
had been living in Baba’s house in Kabul since 1981, when Amir and Baba fled. He
took care of the place, as Baba expected to eventually return. Meanwhile, Kabul
became dangerous as the fighting between Afghan factions vying for control of the
city grew worse. Rockets fell randomly, destroying homes and killing civilians.
Rahim Khan says he cheered at first when the Taliban took over and ended the
fighting.
Rahim Khan coughs blood into a napkin while they’re speaking, and Amir asks
how well he is. Rahim Khan replies that he is dying and does not expect to live
through the summer. He asked Amir there because he wanted to see him, but also
because he wanted something else. In the years he lived in Baba’s house, he was not
alone. Hassan was with him. Before he asks Amir for the favor, he must tell him
about Hassan.
Analysis
The call Amir receives from Rahim Khan at the beginning of the section is the
same one he refers to in the book’s first chapter. The narrative has almost come
back to the present, though some important events need to occur before that happens
completely. Amir has not spoken to Rahim Khan for twenty years, and hearing from him
visibly shakes Amir. He is upset to hear that Rahim Khan is ill, but the call upsets
him for another reason, which becomes clear when he takes his walk to Golden Gate
Park and watches the kites flying. He realizes that Rahim Khan knows about
everything that happened with Hassan, evident in Rahim Khan’s comment to Amir that
he knows of a way for Amir to be good again. Amir is again reminded of his treatment
of Hassan, and despite the life Amir has made for himself in California, he will not
be free of this guilt until he finds a way to make up for letting Hassan be raped
and then falsely accusing Hassan of stealing from him.
Though Amir does not yet know how to atone for his sins against Hassan, two
hints about how he will do it occur in the section. The only things keeping Amir
from being completely happy are his guilt and the fact that he and Soraya are unable
to have a child. For Amir, these have become linked into one feeling of emptiness.
To underscore the way Amir links the two, as he lies in bed with Soraya he thinks
first of their inability to have a baby, then dreams of Hassan running in the snow.
Amir’s narration implies that he goes to see Rahim Khan in Pakistan not only because
Rahim Khan is sick but also because, as Rahim Khan says, he knows a way for Amir to
be good again. Amir hopes there will finally be some way for him to correct the
wrong that lingers in his thoughts.
Once he arrives in Pakistan, Amir begins to realize the extent of what has
happened to the people of Afghanistan and the events that have destroyed Kabul in
the time he has been away. When the cab driver takes him through “Afghan Town,” for
instance, Amir sees children covered in dirt and selling cigarettes along the road,
indicating that they are poor. Although they were forced to leave everything behind,
Amir and Baba were lucky in the sense that they were able to make it to the United
States and to some degree rebuild their lives. Many of the Afghans who had to flee
had little to begin with, and wound up with even less as refugees. Amir sees sights
familiar from Afghanistan, like the carpet shops and kabob vendors, mixed with the
degradation the Afghans now endure. The smells he describes as he passes through
Afghan Town, which include the familiar aroma of a food called pakora mixed with
poverty-signifying stench of “rot, garbage, and feces” (p. 196), represent this
combination.
Based on Rahim Khan’s description, it’s evident that the fighting destroyed
everything, from the buildings Amir knew to the way of life he remembers in Kabul.
Rahim Khan says the Alliance did more to ruin the city than the Shorawi did. The
Alliance he refers to is the Northern Alliance, a militia made up of different
non-Pashtun ethnic groups. The Northern Alliance was one of the militias that helped
to push the Soviets, or Shorawi, out of Kabul and ultimately out of Afghanistan. But
once the Soviets were gone, these militias began fighting each other for control of
Kabul and the country, resulting in a great deal of damage and numerous civilian
deaths. Rahim Khan mentions Gulbuddin, or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who led one of the
factions that caused the most destruction in Kabul. It was the Taliban that
ultimately emerged in control. Initially they quelled the fighting, so Afghans like
Rahim Khan rejoiced. But they quickly implemented a rigid code of Islamic law and
maintained order through brute force. Rather than end the nightmare the Afghans had
lived with, the Taliban prolonged it.
