The Kite Runner

When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

Because the past claws its way out.

Lines had etched into his tanned face and creases framed his eyes, his mouth. I might as well have taken a knife and carved those lines myself.

Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

And in the end the question that always came back to me was this: How could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past?

there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.

Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

For you a thousand times over,” Farid said.

For you a thousand times over, he

the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it

There is a way to be good again, he’d said.
A way to end the cycle.
With a little boy. An orphan. Hassan’s son. Somewhere in Kabul.

The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.’ Such grace, such dignity, such a tragedy.”

That was a little unsettling, but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.

Gold-stitched tapestries, which Baba had bought in Calcutta, lined the walls; a crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling.

Upstairs was my bedroom, Baba’s room, and his study, also known as “the smoking room,” which perpetually smelled of tobacco and cinnamon.

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

Perspective was a luxury when your head was constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons

The mullah finishes the prayer. Ameen. He picks up the kitchen knife with the long blade. The custom is to not let the sheep see the knife. Ali feeds the animal a cube of sugar—another custom, to make death sweeter. The sheep kicks, but not much. The mullah grabs it under its jaw and places the blade on its neck. Just a second before he slices the throat in one expert motion, I see the sheep’s eyes. It is a look that will haunt my dreams for weeks. I don’t know why I watch this yearly ritual in our backyard; my nightmares persist long after the bloodstains on the grass have faded. But I always watch. I watch because of that look of acceptance in the animal’s eyes. Absurdly, I imagine the animal understands. I imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher purpose. This is the look . . .

The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.