The Kite Runner Chapter 20 Quotes
The Kite Runner Chapter 20 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote 1
The trek between Kabul and Jalalabad, a bone-jarring ride down a teetering pass snaking through the rocks, had become a relic now, a relic of two wars. Twenty years earlier, I had seen some of the first war with my own eyes. Grim reminders of it were strewn along the road: burned carcasses of old Soviet tanks, overturned military trucks gone to rust, a crushed Russian jeep that had plunged over the mountainside. The second war, I had watched on my TV screen. And now I was seeing it through Farid's eyes. (20.2)
We have to admit it: this is a cool passage. The trek between Kabul and Jalalabad becomes both an actual, war-torn landscape and a mental landscape. Let us explain. Amir sees "relics" of the first war with the Soviets, which is a war encased in his memory. He also sees remnants of the second war (during the 1990s), which he experienced through TV. Now, listening to Farid, his driver, he experiences the landscape through another person's eyes. Hosseini allows Amir's noggin to experience the landscape in layers: through memory (his past), representation (TV), and imagination (as if he's Farid).
Quote 2
Rubble and beggars. Everywhere I looked, that was what I saw. I remembered beggars in the old days too – Baba always carried an extra handful of Afghani bills in his pocket just for them; I'd never seen him deny a peddler. Now, though, they squatted at every street corner, dressed in shredded burlap rags, mud-caked hands held out for a coin. And the beggars were mostly children now, thin and grim-faced, some no older than five or six. They sat in the laps of their burqa-clad mothers alongside gutters at busy street corners and chanted "Bakhshesh, bakhshesh!" And something else, something I hadn't noticed right away: Hardly any of them sat with an adult male – the wars had made fathers a rare commodity in Afghanistan. (20.11)
The picture of war here just gets worse and worse. Amir is with Farid, driving through Kabul, his childhood city, and things get grim really quick. Not only have the beggars increased in number since Amir's childhood, now they're mostly children. Young children, too. Amir also notices that very few of the children are sitting with an adult male, which means all the older brothers and fathers have died. Hosseini, on one level, is giving us a picture of Afghanistan; on another, he's commenting on the situation of his characters. Don't forget that Amir's own father has recently died. And Hassan, Amir's half-brother and Sohrab's father, died during Taliban rule. Rahim Khan, a father-figure to Amir, is dying as Amir drives around Kabul. This book is about the effects of war on Afghani people; but it's also about the very personal losses – a father and a brother and almost a nephew – experienced by Amir.
Quote 3
Jadeh Maywand had turned into a giant sand castle. The buildings that hadn't entirely collapsed barely stood, with caved in roofs and walls pierced with rockets shells. Entire blocks had been obliterated to rubble. I saw a bullet-pocked sign half buried at an angle in a heap of debris. It read DRINK COCA CO––. I saw children playing in the ruins of a windowless building amid jagged stumps of brick and stone. Bicycle riders and mule-drawn carts swerved around kids, stray dogs, and piles of debris. A haze of dust hovered over the city and, across the river, a single plume of smoke rose to the sky. (20.15)
Jadeh Maywand is a big avenue in Kabul where kite shops used to sell their wares. Now, after years of fighting, it's been turned into rubble. Really, into dust ("a giant sand castle"). But something else here caught our attention. Yep, the bullet-pocked sign. Earlier in the book, Amir mentions all kinds of American influences in Kabul: movies, cars, bikes, jeans, and cowboy hats. Now, when he returns, he finds – SYMBOL ALERT! – a half-legible Coca Cola sign. American influence is in the process of disappearing.