Luck of the Wind.

Chapters 15-End
I suppose I could chalk it up to human nature...the memory. Without memory there would be no guilt, there would be no sadness, no sublte smiles of remembering happiness; there would be no past. Unfortunately for Amir, his journey back to Afghanistan is a flood of memories that he cannot control, and perhaps for the best that he deals with them- better late than never. Through the coming pages, I came to the conclusion that Hassan had allowed himself to move on from his scarring and wreckage of a childhood. Hassan had become the better man we all knew he would probably become because in nearly every aspect he was always the better one. While in a way, I feel as if he was just weak due to his status, but the emotional triggers of that kind of friendship and untainted love trump those feelings of weakness. Through Hassan's letters to Amir we are once again reminded of the person Amir is not, that his 'lesser', his brother, is/was. Hassan's letters were forgiving and saving, triumphant and strong, proud and proven, telling. Amir learns of Hassan's life, his wife and child...and eventually his death. The death that comes as an end, an unforgiven end.

I don't think Amir was prepared for the Afghanistan he returned to- then again, I don't really know if one could ever fully prepare themselves for their homeland being demolished and ruined. But I think it speaks to the aspect of comittment that Amir finally owned up to towards the end, in determined to find Sohrab, his nephew, his only blood left. The lengths he goes to and the people he tracks down and listens to (the guy about his mom...just to get the tiniest of information about her, still more than Baba ever told him), and resulting in the fight of life against Assef, the one that selective karma brought back to him, the fight he should have had when he was 12 against the same man who stripped Hassan of his dignity and boyhood. And yet, just like Hassan always came to the rescue of Amir, Sohrab comes to the rescue of Amir in the same way with the slingshot. Damaging Assefs eye, damaging his vision on the world, damaging the empire he thought he built for himself in perpetually harming other people.

While in the end Soraya and Amir do not get the son of their California dreams, I think what they end up with is much more than they expected. Sohrab's silence is not to hurt them, but instead how he heals and deals with all to simliar issues that Amir faced when he was the same age. In a way, I suppose history repeated itself yet in a far worse circumstance of growing up. At least Amir knew what Afghanistan was like when it was good. Sohrab never knew the good, never knew the fun, the childhood. Hassan tried to give him what he never had and ultimately, Amir is a changed man, a freed man from all his chains and retraints because he finally, finally, finally steps up, like Baba wanted all along, and takes responsiblity for what is his. He knows he can give Sohrab the life he deserves, a living second chance of the best friend and brother he betrayed.

If all of us could be so lucky.