March 2002

March 2002 arrives four days before the novel's closing scene, on a cool rainy Sunday. Amir, Soraya, Jamila Taheri, and Sohrab attend a gathering of Afghans at Lake Elizabeth Park in Fremont to celebrate Sawl-e-Nau, the Afghan New Year. The previous Thursday, the first day of spring, had been the holiday, and the Bay Area's Afghan community had planned celebrations throughout the East Bay and the peninsula. Amir and Soraya have an additional reason for joy: their small hospital project in Rawalpindi had opened the week before—not the surgical unit, just the pediatric clinic, but a good start. The morning had been sunny for days, but Sunday, as Amir swung his legs out of bed, he heard raindrops pelting the window. He prayed morning namaz while Soraya slept; the verses now came naturally, effortlessly, without the prayer pamphlet he had once needed.

The Gathering and the Kite

They arrived around noon and found a handful of people taking cover under a large rectangular plastic sheet mounted on six poles spiked to the ground. Someone was already frying bolani; steam rose from teacups and a pot of cauliflower aush. A scratchy old Ahmad Zahir song blared from a cassette player. Amir smiled as the four of them rushed across the soggy grass field, Soraya and him in the lead, Jamila in the middle, Sohrab behind them, the hood of his yellow raincoat bouncing on his back. "You can take Afghans out of Paghman, but you can't take Paghman out of Afghans," Amir said. They stooped under the makeshift tent. Soraya and Jamila drifted toward an overweight woman frying spinach bolani. Sohrab stayed under the canopy for a moment, then stepped back out into the rain, hands stuffed in the pockets of his raincoat, his hair—now brown and straight like Hassan's—plastered against his scalp. He stopped near a coffee-colored puddle and stared at it. No one seemed to notice. No one called him back in. By then, the queries about their adopted and decidedly eccentric little boy had mercifully ceased; people stopped asking why he never spoke, why he didn't play with the other kids, and best of all, they stopped suffocating them with exaggerated empathy, their slow head shaking, their tsk tsks, their "Oh, gung bichara"—poor little mute one. The novelty had worn off. Like dull wallpaper, Sohrab had blended into the background.

Amir shook hands with Kabir, a small, silver-haired man who introduced him to a dozen men—a retired teacher, an engineer, a former architect, a surgeon who was now running a hot dog stand in Hayward. They all said they had known Baba in Kabul, and they spoke about him respectfully. In one way or another, he had touched all their lives. The men said Amir was lucky to have had such a great man for a father. They chatted about the difficult and maybe thankless job Hamid Karzai had in front of him, about the upcoming Loya jirga, and the king's imminent return to his homeland after twenty-eight years of exile. Amir remembered the night in 1973, the night Zahir Shah's cousin overthrew him; he remembered gunfire and the sky lighting up silver—Ali had taken him and Hassan in his arms, told them not to be afraid, that they were just shooting ducks. Then someone told a Mullah Nasruddin joke and they were all laughing. Kabir said, "You know, your father was a funny man too." Amir smiled, remembering how, soon after they arrived in the U.S., Baba started grumbling about American flies. He'd sit at the kitchen table with his flyswatter, watch the flies darting from wall to wall, buzzing here, buzzing there, harried and rushed. "In this country, even flies are pressed for time," he'd groan. How Amir had laughed.

By three o'clock, the rain had stopped and the sky was a curdled gray burdened with lumps of clouds. A cool breeze blew through the park. More families turned up. Afghans greeted each other, hugged, kissed, exchanged food. Someone lighted coal in a barbecue and soon the smell of garlic and morgh kabob flooded the senses. There was music, some new singer Amir didn't know, and the giggling of children. Amir saw Sohrab, still in his yellow raincoat, leaning against a garbage pail, staring across the park at the empty batting cage.

The Flight of the Kite

A little while later, as Amir was chatting with the former surgeon who told him he and Baba had been classmates in eighth grade, Soraya pulled on his sleeve. "Amir, look!" She was pointing to the sky. A half-dozen kites were flying high, speckles of bright yellow, red, and green against the gray sky. "Check it out," Soraya said, and this time she was pointing to a guy selling kites from a stand nearby. "Hold this," Amir said. He gave his cup of tea to Soraya, excused himself, and walked over to the kite stand, his shoes squishing on the wet grass. He pointed to a yellow seh-parcha. "Sawl-e-nau mubarak," the kite seller said, taking the twenty and handing Amir the kite and a wooden spool of glass tar. Amir thanked him and wished him a Happy New Year too. He tested the string the way Hassan and he used to, by holding it between his thumb and forefinger and pulling it. It reddened with blood and the kite seller smiled. Amir smiled back.

He took the kite to where Sohrab was standing, still leaning against the garbage pail, arms crossed on his chest, looking up at the sky. "Do you like the seh-parcha?" Amir said, holding up the kite by the ends of the cross bars. Sohrab's eyes shifted from the sky to Amir, to the kite, then back. A few rivulets of rain trickled from his hair, down his face. Amir told him about how in Malaysia they use kites to catch fish, and how in ancient China generals used to fly kites over battlefields to send messages to their men. He showed him his bloody thumb. "Nothing wrong with the tar either." Out of the corner of his eye, Amir saw Soraya watching from the tent, hands tensely dug in her armpits. Unlike him, she had gradually abandoned her attempts at engaging Sohrab; the unanswered questions, the blank stares, the silence, it was all too painful. She had shifted to "Holding Pattern," waiting for a green light from Sohrab. Waiting.

Amir wet his index finger and held it up. "I remember the way your father checked the wind was to kick up dust with his sandal, see which way the wind blew it. He knew a lot of little tricks like that." He lowered his finger. "West, I think." Sohrab wiped a raindrop from his earlobe and shifted on his feet. Said nothing. Amir thought of Soraya asking him a few months ago what Sohrab's voice sounded like. He had told her he didn't remember anymore. "Did I ever tell you your father was the best kite runner in Wazir Akbar Khan? Maybe all of Kabul?" Amir said, knotting the loose end of the spool tar to the string loop tied to the center spar. "How jealous he made the neighborhood kids. He'd run kites and never look up at the sky, and people used to say he was chasing the kite's shadow. But they didn't know him like I did. Your father wasn't chasing any shadows. He just... knew."

Another half-dozen kites had taken flight. People had started to gather in clumps, teacups in hand, eyes glued to the sky. "Do you want to help me fly this?" Amir said. Sohrab's gaze bounced from the kite to Amir, back to the sky. "Okay," Amir shrugged. "Looks like I'll have to fly it tanhaii." Solo. He balanced the spool in his left hand and fed about three feet of tar. The yellow kite dangled at the end of it, just above the wet grass. "Last chance," he said. But Sohrab was looking at a pair of kites tangling high above the trees. "All right. Here I go." Amir took off running, his sneakers splashing rainwater from puddles, the hand clutching the kite end of the string held high above his head. It had been so long, so many years since he had done this, and he wondered if he would make a spectacle of himself. He let the spool roll in his left hand as he ran, felt the string cut his right hand again as it fed through. The kite was lifting behind his shoulder now, lifting, wheeling, and he ran harder. The spool spun faster and the glass string tore another gash in his right palm. He stopped and turned. Looked up. Smiled. High above, his kite was tilting side to side like a pendulum, making that old paper-bird-flapping-its-wings sound he always associated with winter mornings in Kabul. He had not flown a kite in a quarter of a century, but suddenly he was twelve again and all the old instincts came rushing back.

The Smile

Amir felt a presence next to him and looked down. It was Sohrab. Hands dug deep in the pockets of his raincoat. He had followed him. "Do you want to try?" Amir asked. Sohrab said nothing. But when Amir held the string out for him, his hand lifted from his pocket. Hesitated. Took the string. Amir's heart quickened as he spun the spool to gather the loose string. They stood quietly side by side. Necks bent up. Around them, kids chased each other, slid on the grass. Someone was playing an old Hindi movie soundtrack now. A line of elderly men were praying afternoon namaz on a plastic sheet spread on the ground. The air smelled of wet grass, smoke, and grilled meat. Amir wished time would stand still.

Then he saw they had company. A green kite was closing in. He traced the string to a kid standing about thirty yards from them. The kid had a crew cut and a T-shirt that read THE ROCK RULES in bold block letters. He saw Amir looking at him and smiled. Waved. Amir waved back. Sohrab was handing the string back to him. "Are you sure?" Amir said, taking it. Sohrab took the spool from him. "Okay," Amir said. "Let's give him a sabagh, teach him a lesson, nay?" He glanced over at Sohrab. The glassy, vacant look in his eyes was gone. His gaze flitted between their kite and the green one. His face was a little flushed, his eyes suddenly alert. Awake. Alive. Amir wondered when he had forgotten that, despite everything, Sohrab was still just a child.

The green kite was making its move. "Let's wait," Amir said. "We'll let him get a little closer." It dipped twice and crept toward them. "Come on. Come to me," he said. The green kite drew closer yet, now rising a little above them, unaware of the trap. "Watch, Sohrab. I'm going to show you one of your father's favorite tricks, the old lift-and-dive." Next to him, Sohrab was breathing rapidly through his nose. The spool rolled in his palms, the tendons in his scarred wrists like rubab strings. Then Amir blinked and, for just a moment, the hands holding the spool were the chipped-nailed, calloused hands of a harelipped boy. He heard a crow cawing somewhere and looked up. The park shimmered with snow so fresh, so dazzling white, it burned his eyes. It sprinkled soundlessly from the branches of white-clad trees. He smelled turnip qurma now. Dried mulberries. Sour oranges. Sawdust and walnuts. The muffled quiet, snow-quiet, was deafening. Then far away, across the stillness, a voice calling them home, the voice of a man who dragged his right leg.

The green kite hovered directly above them now. "He's going for it. Anytime now," Amir said, his eyes flicking from Sohrab to their kite. The green kite hesitated. Held position. Then shot down. "Here he comes!" Amir said. He did it perfectly. After all these years. The old lift-and-dive trap. He loosened his grip and tugged on the string, dipping and dodging the green kite. A series of quick sidearm jerks and their kite shot up counterclockwise, in a half circle. Suddenly he was on top. The green kite was scrambling now, panic-stricken. But it was too late. He had already slipped it Hassan's trick. He pulled hard and their kite plummeted. He could almost feel their string sawing the other's. Almost heard the snap. Then, just like that, the green kite was spinning and wheeling out of control. Behind them, people cheered. Whistles and applause broke out. Amir was panting. The last time he had felt a rush like this was that day in the winter of 1975, just after he had cut the last kite, when he spotted Baba on their rooftop, clapping, beaming.

He looked down at Sohrab. One corner of his mouth had curled up just so. A smile. Lopsided. Hardly there. But there. Behind them, kids were scampering, and a melee of screaming kite runners was chasing the loose kite drifting high above the trees. Amir blinked and the smile was gone. But it had been there. He had seen it. "Do you want me to run that kite for you?" Sohrab's Adam's apple rose and fell as he swallowed. The wind lifted his hair. Amir thought he saw him nod. "For you, a thousand times over," he heard himself say. Then he turned and ran.

Significance

It was only a smile, nothing more. It did not make everything all right. It did not make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight. But Amir takes it with open arms, because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and he has just witnessed the first flake melting. He runs, a grown man running with a swarm of screaming children, but he does not care. He runs with the wind blowing in his face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on his lips. The moment is the culmination of the novel's long arc of redemption: the kite, the central symbol of Amir's childhood betrayal and his subsequent guilt, is reclaimed not as a trophy but as an instrument of connection with Hassan's son. The smile, however fragile, signals the possibility of Sohrab's healing and the beginning of a new, shared life. It is a quiet, earned grace after the devastation of Sohrab's suicide attempt and his long silence, and it affirms that the way to be good again, however halting, is still open.