The Kite Runner Chapter 3 Quotes
The Kite Runner Chapter 3 Quotes
How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote 4
Of course, marrying a poet was one thing, but fathering a son who preferred burying his face in poetry books to hunting...well, that wasn't how Baba had envisioned it, I suppose. Real men didn't read poetry – and God forbid they should ever write it! Real men – real boys – played soccer just as Baba had when he had been young. [...]. He signed me up for soccer teams to stir the same passion in me. But I was pathetic, a blundering liability to my own team, always in the way of an opportune pass or unwittingly blocking an open lane. I shambled about the field on scraggly legs, squalled for passes that never came my way. And the harder I tried, waving my arms over my head frantically and screeching, "I'm open! I'm open!" the more I went ignored. (3.40)
Amir isn't the masculine Pashtun Baba wanted. He isn't a sports-playing, bear-hunting man of a boy. (Really, Baba wants someone like himself.) Said another way, Baba's dislikes Amir as a son. We might question Baba's definition of manhood (what if you don't like sports?) but, as a boy, Amir doesn't have that privilege. Baba is everything to him. Thus, Amir needs to acquire some manliness if he's going to gain Baba's respect. This, of course, leads to disastrous consequences.
Quote 5
But at the moment, I watched with horror as one of the chapandaz fell off his saddle and was trampled under a score of hooves. His body was tossed and hurled in the stampede like a rag doll, finally rolling to a stop when the melee moved on. He twitched once and lay motionless, his legs bent at unnatural angles, a pool of his blood soaking through the sand.
I began to cry.
I cried all the way back home. I remember how Baba's hands clenched around 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. (3.45-47)
Baba takes Amir to a Buzkashi tournament. In this sport, a skilled horseman (chapandaz) picks up a goat carcass and tries to drop it into a special circle. The horseman does all this while being harassed by other chapandaz. Sounds pretty gory, right? The chapandaz at this particular tournament is trampled. And Amir cries on the way home, probably shocked by the violence of the sport. This disgusts Baba. (Though, in an odd act of kindness, Baba tries to hide his disgust.) Amir learns his lesson, right? Which is: If you want to be a man, don't cry and don't react to violence. This "lesson" brings up an important question: How does Baba's practice of masculinity actually prevent Amir from confessing his betrayal of Hassan?
When I was in fifth grade, we had a mullah who taught us about Islam. His name was Mullah Fatiullah Khan, a short, stubby man with a face full of acne scars and a gruff voice. He lectured us about the virtues of zakat and the duty of hadj; he taught us the intricacies of performing the five daily namaz prayers, and made us memorize verses from the Koran – and though he never translated the words for us, he did stress, sometimes with the help of a stripped willow branch, that we had to pronounce the Arabic words correctly so God would hear us better. He told us one day that Islam considered drinking a terrible sin; those who drank would answer for their sin on the day of Qiyamat, Judgment Day. [...]
"I see you've confused what you're learning in school with actual education," he [Baba] said in his thick voice.
[Amir:] "But if what he said is true then does it make you a sinner, Baba?"
"Hmm." Baba crushed an ice cube between his teeth. "Do you want to know what your father thinks about sin?"
[Amir:] "Yes."
"Then I'll tell you," Baba said, "but first understand this and understand it now, Amir: You'll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots."
[Amir:] "You mean Mullah Fatiullah Khan?" [...]
"They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written in a tongue they don't even understand." He [Baba] took a sip. "God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands." (3.13-25)
Hosseini depicts a liberal, Westernized Afghanistan through the character of Baba. Most of us probably think of Afghanistan as a traditional Islamic country – and some of that's true. But that thinking ignores the people like Baba, of an earlier era, who lived in larger cities like Kabul. Baba also has Westernized tastes: action movies, American cars, scotch. We can place Baba against the more extreme Taliban-ruled era – he's a throwback to the urban, secular Afghanistan of Amir's childhood.