Having enjoyed reading a few of their titles, I decided I would read all of the Bloomsbury Modern Classic collection, and thus came upon The Kite Runner. It is a book I had avoided; for once I hear anything described as “harrowing,” my stomach turns and will avert my eyes to protect my sensitivity. Yet, it is no wonder why the novel is well-loved and highly acclaimed. It is breath-taking – in its beauty of Afghan landscapes, of its daily life engulfed in spices, and in its absolute raw truth.
There is a lot about sex. Of how the vulnerable are exploited. How it is mode of payment. How it is a stonable offence. How it is a twisted expression of hate. An expression of loneliness. How it feels futile for the infertile.
It is all the more unbearable to read if you know at its core, it is, and should always be, a shared expression of tenderness.
I loved the honestly of the protagonist – of his inability to do otherwise in the face of terror and his accepting the price of a secret. His sympathy in cowardice. Then his arc. Faced with the same choice of his youth, how he decided, it would be different.
I was rather squeamish about writing this entry and had thought of keeping it to myself – my own cowardice of not saying enough, not doing enough. I came across Nicholas Kristof’s piece on Pornhub – of minors being exploited sexually online. He has been a voice of the voiceless, the vulnerable, for decades. Unwavering. Unflinching. And his piece did something – it sparked action.
Perhaps we don’t need the right words. We need words of grit. I feel we are these flimsy kites, taken up in the sky, blowing haphazardly according to the wind, hailed for cutting others down, and tethered only by a thin line covered in broken glass – our conscience. Is that not all we own.
‘Here it comes,’ said Hassan, pointing to the sky. He rose to his feet and walked a few paces to his left. I looked up, saw the kite plummeting toward us. I heard footfalls, shouts, an approaching melee of kite runners. But they were wasting their time. Because Hassan stood with his arms wide open, smiling, waiting for the kite. And may God – if He exits, that is – strike me blind if the kite didn’t just drop into his outstretched arms.
…I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
JohannaAirth 