The patriarch of an Islamic family within Afghanistan determines the laws by which the entire family must abide (Shroder par. F1).  Under the patriarch’s leadership, family bonds are kept very tight, and these kinship groups comprise much of Afghan society.  The majority of Muslim males in Afghanistan, specifically Pashtuns, live by an ancient code of conduct, one which emphasizes personal and family honor, pride, and respect toward other family members.   Realizing the importance of the patriarch’s role and the embedded male feelings of pride are two venues which deepen the reader’s understanding of the father-son relationships introduced in Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner.  Furthermore, relationships between fathers and sons are always subject to the personalities of the two men involved, but how much of those two personalities have developed as a result of the relationship itself?  The father-son relationship between Amir and his ‘Baba’ is key to the development of Amir as the story’s protagonist. Exploring the influences upon both Amir and Baba and seeing how those influences impact their relationship and view of each other provides an epiphany about life and family relationships.

            Baba’s life and his role as a father to Amir took on a meaning far beyond what he might have anticipated when his wife died.  This prideful, ambitious businessman, while stricken with grief, became all things to his newly born son.  Amir remembers “I am a baby in that photograph and Baba is holding me, looking tired and grim” (Hosseini 5).  Being a single father, Baba began his parenthood with exhausted emotion and likely based his style on faint memories of his own father, “who was a highly regarded judge and a man of impeccable reputation” (24).

            Baba’s father was a compassionate and just Pashtun man.  Amir explains that his grandfather adopted an orphaned Hazara child and sentenced the boys who caused his alienation (24-25).  Later, this patriarch was murdered when Baba was only six years old (18).  The impact most likely made a heavy impression upon Baba, as would the countless stories told to him about his father’s character, honor, and pride.

            By his adulthood, Baba grew to great fame within Kabul.  He was a wealthy, successful merchant, despite the dismay of his peers.  Many doubted his potential in business and family affairs, basing their assumptions on his bloodline ancestry.  To the Afghan public, men are born into their life style, and should do what their father did, who did what their fathers did, and so on.  Baba overcame all these presumed limitations, became highly successful, and earned a high level of esteem from all those around him, including his son.  Baba’s elevated position and extremely powerful presence grew out of a result of his self-determination and self-pride.  Yet, sadly, this forcible personality cost Baba a great price in his relationship with Amir:

With me as the glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking.  The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white.  And he got to decide what was black and what was white.  You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too.  Maybe even hating him a little. (15)

            Amir and Baba were two distinctly different personality types, which consistently fueled their lackadaisical relationship.  Amir was not the type of child whom Baba expected to raise.  Baba enjoyed the national sport of Buzkashi, where a horseman fights violently to win an animal carcass for a score.  Amir, horrified by such bloody events, would rather be alone reading a book.  In a private confession to his best friend, Rahim, Baba admits sadly that he is happy but envious about the tenderness between Amir and Rahim.  He says:

He needs someone who…understands him, because God knows I don’t.  But something about Amir troubles me in a way that I can’t express. It’s like…If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son. (23)

            Amir’s earliest impressions of his father were of unparalleled power, strength, and control.  “No one ever doubted the veracity of any story about Baba,” he says (12).  The story was told of Baba winning a wrestling match with a black bear.  Amir often imagined this story in his dreams and could not distinguish between Baba and the bear.  Rahim coined Baba’s nickname, “Mr. Hurricane.”  Amir saw this as a fair depiction, seeing clearly his father as “a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen” with “hands the looked capable of uprooting a willow tree” (12).  The many vivid images Hosseini used suggest a deeply rooted fear in Amir.

            As Amir grew up, perhaps the fear he had of Baba had less to do with fearing punishment for some violation of rules, but more to do with fearing Baba’s rejection.  Amir’s pride and sense of self-worth clung to the hope of gaining Baba’s affection and approval.  He lied to win recreational time alone with Baba, leaving behind his servant-friend, Hassan, despite Baba’s invitation to include him.  He blurted out statements like “I think I have cancer” to try to get Baba’s attention, unsuccessfully (14).  Later, he relished a moment alone on Baba’s lap, talking man-to-man, and chastised himself inwardly for wasting part of that precious time with giggles.  During that talk, Baba explained to Amir that there was only one sin – theft.  The explanation and examples left Amir feeling guilty and unloved.

I always felt like Baba hated me a little.  And why not?  After all, I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I?  The least I could have done was to have had the decency to have turned out a little more like him.  But I hadn’t turned out like him.  Not at all. (19)

Compared to the challenging relationship between Amir and Baba, Ali and Hassan’s kinship harbored the closeness and respect which Amir and Baba’s relationship lacked.  Ali, the boy adopted by Baba’s father and later Baba’s servant, was the acknowledged father of Hassan.  Ali had a much different perspective on his child’s birth than Baba had.  Ali had spent most of his life as a Hazara servant, disfigured by and often tormented because of both polio and a congenital paralysis of his lower facial muscles.  When Hassan was born, he “found his joy, his antidote” to the lifelong struggles that he faced (10).  His parenting style was more empathetic and affectionate than Baba’s style had been.  For example, when Hassan was crying and afraid during a night’s bombings on Kabul, Ali responded by clutching him tenderly and pulling him close (35).  But when Amir cried from horror and shock at the barbarous Buzkashi, Baba’s response lacked any understanding.

I cried all the way back home.  I remember how Baba’s hands clenched the steering wheel.  Clenched and unclenched.  Mostly, I will never forget Baba’s valiant efforts to conceal the disgusted look on his face as he drove in silence. (21)

Hassan was much more like Baba in his deep sense of respect and honor.  This is evidenced by the way he respected Amir and also defended him against childhood bullies.  Baba was also a defender in that he built an orphanage with his own money (22, 13-14).  Baba recognized the difference in the way the two boys faced challenges, and this fueled Baba’s misunderstanding of his son (22). 

Throughout the story, Amir felt jealous of how Baba treated Hassan.  He could not determine within himself whether Hassan was a friend, or simply a Hazara servant (25, 41, 77).  He witnessed how Baba cared for Hassan and his father, Ali, but Baba never actually called Ali friend (25).  Amir saw hypocrisy in Baba’s behavior.  He did not comprehend why he continually had to share Baba’s affection with Hassan.  As a birthday gift once, Baba hired a doctor to give Hassan cosmetic surgery to correct his harelip, to which Amir responded, “I wished I too had some kind of scar that would beget Baba’s sympathy.  It wasn’t fair.  Hassan hadn’t done anything to earn Baba’s affections; he’d just been born with that stupid hairlip” (46).  Amir’s jealousy appeared again when shopping for a kite; Amir knew Baba would buy for him any kind he wanted, but would also buy the same for Hassan.  Because of this, Amir felt slighted again; all of this pain was the result of Baba’s great lie (51).

            The stress of this relationship eventually caused Amir to make a decision that would affect his life forever.  After winning a kite-flying contest, Hassan ran after the prized last kite.  Amir chased after him and lagged far behind.  When Amir found Hassan with the kite, he then witnessed Hassan being raped.  Rather than trying to find or give him to Hassan, Amir viewed this tragedy as a horrible but necessary sacrifice, one that would win for him Baba’s prideful approval once and for all.  His desire to give the kite to Baba meant more to him than the degradation and abuse of Hassan.  Amir innately knew that if Baba had known the cost Hassan paid for the kite, he would not have condoned it.  Much rather, he would have condemned it and him.  Amir really did not know his father at all, but was so hungry and desperate for his affection in a way that he could understand it, that he was willing to betray the best friend he ever had.  For this betrayal, Amir did not forgive himself for many, many years to come and his life would never be the same.

            Hassan remained true and loyal unto Amir even after the betrayal.  Amir could not stand to face Hassan; he conspired a plan to force Baba to dismiss Hassan and Ali but the plan failed when Baba forgave the offense.  Ali chose to leave, and Baba, broken-hearted, responded in a way Amir had never seen before.

He cried.  It scared me a little, seeing a grown man sob.  Fathers weren’t supposed to cry “Please,” Baba was saying…I’ll never forget the way Baba said that, the pain in his plea, the fear. (107)

Soon after their departure, Hosseini expertly transitioned the setting from Afghanistan to America as Amir and Baba sought political refuge.  The challenge of their relationship moved with them and over time began to heal.  Baba loved Amir in his own way, and showered his pride over him at his high school graduation and his marriage.  Amir matured and cared for Baba through a losing battle with cancer.  Their opposing personalities clearly affected the slow growth of their relationship, and much of the character development was impacted by those two different personas.

Only much later in life, after Baba’s death, did Amir learn that Hassan was actually his half-brother, his father’s illegitimate child.  With this knowledge, Amir looked back over his life and sympathized with Baba’s longing to be a father to Hassan.  He recognized the social impossibility of the situation and the way his father’s pride forced him to make regrettable choices.

Amir learned that Hassan and his wife had been murdered, leaving behind a son, Sohrab.  He returned to Afghanistan in an effort to rescue the boy.  He had to face the past and choose to stand up for what was right.  He suffered a terrible beating from the same man who was the adolescent bully who had once raped Hassan.  With Sohrab’s help, Amir was able to free him from the now Taliban pedophile.  Amir returned to his home in America with Sohrab and began another challenging father-son type relationship, this time as uncle and adopted father.

Through Amir’s growing understanding of the various father-son relationships that surrounded his life, he came to a realization that loving and forgiving oneself and others does not make bad decisions suddenly all right.  Amir had to learn to be good again.  His life and his new family would operate with unconditional love and forgiveness – the first steps to healing and redemption.

Shroder, John F. "Afghanistan."  MSN Encarta. 2007. Microsoft Corporation. 30 March 2008 <http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761569370&pn=9>.

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead Books. 2003.