Rahim Khan
Rahim Khan is Baba's closest friend and business partner, Amir's lifelong mentor and surrogate father figure, and the keeper of the family's deepest secrets. As the only adult who consistently nurtures Amir's writing talent and emotional life, he becomes the catalyst for Amir's redemption by revealing that Hassan was Baba's son and by sending Amir to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, Sohrab.
Identity and Role in the Family
Rahim Khan is Baba's best friend and business partner, the co-founder of a wildly successful carpet-exporting business, two pharmacies, and a restaurant in Kabul. He is the only person who can speak frankly to Baba, once telling him, "You know, sometimes you are the most self-centered man I know." In the family photographs lining the living room wall, it is Rahim Khan's pinky that baby Amir's fingers curl around, not Baba's. He is the first to give Baba the nickname "Toophan agha," or "Mr. Hurricane," and he is the one who tells Amir the story of Baba wrestling a black bear in Baluchistan. Rahim Khan is also the one who reveals to Amir that Baba personally funded the construction of an orphanage, paying for engineers, electricians, plumbers, and laborers, as well as the city officials whose "mustaches needed oiling."
Mentor and Literary Champion
Rahim Khan is the first and most important literary mentor in Amir's life. When Amir nervously presents his first short story to Baba, who barely glances at it, Rahim Khan rescues the moment by asking to read it and later handing Amir a folded note that says simply, "Bravo." In the note, he praises the story's irony—"something that some writers reach for their entire careers and never attain"—and tells Amir, "My door is and always will be open to you, Amir jan. I shall hear any story you have to tell." On Amir's thirteenth birthday, Rahim Khan gives him a leather-bound notebook for his stories, a gift that Amir treasures above all others, keeping it even as he discards the rest of his presents. Years later, when Soraya discovers the notebook, she tells Amir, "I can't believe you can write like this." Rahim Khan's early encouragement is the foundation of Amir's eventual career as a published novelist.
The Keeper of Secrets and the Call to Redemption
Rahim Khan is the only person who knows the full truth about Hassan's parentage. He knows that Ali was sterile and that Hassan is actually Baba's son. He also knows that Amir witnessed Hassan's rape in the alley and did nothing. For decades, he keeps these secrets, but when he is dying of lung cancer in Peshawar, he calls Amir and says, almost as an afterthought, "There is a way to be good again." When Amir arrives, Rahim Khan reveals the truth about Hassan's parentage, tells him that Hassan and his wife Farzana have been murdered by the Taliban, and that their son Sohrab is in an orphanage in Kabul. He asks Amir to go to Kabul and bring Sohrab back. When Amir protests, Rahim Khan challenges him with Baba's own words: "A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything." He then delivers the final blow: "Ali was sterile." Amir storms out, but Rahim Khan's revelation forces him to confront his entire life as a cycle of lies, betrayals, and secrets.
Final Letter and Legacy
After Amir leaves for Kabul, Rahim Khan disappears. He leaves behind a letter and a key to a safe-deposit box containing money. In the letter, he writes that he knew about Amir's betrayal of Hassan all along, but that Amir was "a troubled little boy" and that "a man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer." He explains that Baba was "a man torn between two halves"—Amir and Hassan—and that Baba's hardness toward Amir was really hardness toward himself. He writes that "good, real good, was born out of your father's remorse" and that "true redemption is when guilt leads to good." He asks Amir to forgive himself. The letter ends with Rahim Khan saying he has little time left and wishes to spend it alone, asking Amir not to look for him. His final words are, "I leave you in the hands of God."
