How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
By then – that would have been 1995 – the Shorawi were defeated and long gone and Kabul belonged to Massoud, Rabbani, and the Mujahedin. The infighting between the factions was fierce and no one knew if they would live to see the end of the day. Our ears became accustomed to the whistle of falling shells, to the rumble of gunfire, our eyes familiar with the sight of men digging bodies out of piles of rubble. Kabul in those days, Amir jan, was as close as you could get to that proverbial hell on earth. Allah was kind to us, though. The Wazir Akbar Khan area was not attacked as much, so we did not have it as bad as some of the other neighborhoods. (16.41)
We just want to point out how the city, in a time of war (or after), can become a necropolis. (Basically, a city of the dead.) Not only does Hosseini say that Kabul became a "proverbial hell on earth," he also describes men digging up bodies out of the piles of rubble. Hell, whether you're in the Greek or Christian tradition, is a pretty darn good example of a city of the dead. And, if you add, just for kicks, like Hosseini does, the image of men digging up bodies, you've definitely transformed an active, lively city into a graveyard.
Quote #5
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 #6
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.