The Kite Runner Read Online Free PDF

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     on his face?’ And he says, ‘He fell down.’ I’m telling you, Rahim, there is something missing in that boy.”
    “You just need to let him find his way,” Rahim Khan said.
    “And where is he headed?” Baba said. “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”
    “As usual you’re oversimplifying.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You’re angry because you’re afraid he’ll never take over the business for you.”
    “Now who’s oversimplifying?” Baba said. “Look, I know there’s a fondness between you and him and I’m happy about that. Envious,
     but happy. I mean that. He needs someone who . . . understands him, because God knows I don’t. But something about Amir troubles
     me in a way that I can’t express. It’s like . . .” I could see him searching, reaching for the right words. He lowered his
     voice, but I heard him anyway. “If I hadn’t seen the doctor pull him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s
     my son.”
    THE NEXT MORNING, as he was preparing my breakfast, Hassan asked if something was bothering me. I snapped at him, told him
     to mind his own business.
    Rahim Khan had been wrong about the mean streak thing.

FOUR
    In 1933, the year Baba was born and the year Zahir Shah began his forty-year reign of Afghanistan, two brothers, young men
     from a wealthy and reputable family in Kabul, got behind the wheel of their father’s Ford roadster. High on hashish and mast on French wine, they struck and killed a Hazara husband and wife on the road to Paghman. The police brought the somewhat contrite
     young men and the dead couple’s five-year-old orphan boy before my grandfather, who was a highly regarded judge and a man
     of impeccable reputation. After hearing the brothers’ account and their father’s plea for mercy, my grandfather ordered the
     two young men to go to Kandahar at once and enlist in the army for one year—this despite the fact that their family had somehow
     managed to obtain them exemptions from the draft. Their father argued, but not too vehemently, and in the end, everyone agreed
     that the punishment had been perhaps harsh but fair. As for the orphan, my grandfather adopted him into his own household,
     and told the other servants to tutor him, but to be kind to him. That boy was Ali.
    Ali and Baba grew up together as childhood playmates—at least until polio crippled Ali’s leg—just like Hassan and I grew up
     a generation later. Baba was always telling us about the mischief he and Ali used to cause, and Ali would shake his head and
     say, “But, Agha sahib, tell them who was the architect of the mischief and who the poor laborer?” Baba would laugh and throw
     his arm around Ali.
    But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend.
    The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that
     we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a cardboard box.
     Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that
     of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped
     smile.
    Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and
     he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.
    But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that
     either. I spent most of the first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan. Sometimes, my entire childhood seems like one
     long lazy summer day with Hassan, chasing each other between tangles of trees in my father’s yard, playing hide-and-seek,
     cops and robbers, cowboys