A Deadly Cultural Divide

By Madeline Robertson

The novel The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, was written about and during an immense time of strife and distress throughout Afghanistan, the main setting in the book. The story centers around a young boy named Amir who often hangs around with his servant’s son, Hassan. Though these two boys seem inseparable, Amir will never refer to Hassan as a friend because he is Pashtun, while Hassan is Hazara. Still both Afghanistan natives, Hazara people are often thought of as the lowest class; as to this, the Hazaran people are Shi’a Muslim rather than the supposed upper class Sunni Muslims. Many of the drastic and heart-wrenching events that occur throughout the novel often link back to the cultural discrimination of the Hazara people, causing many problems in Amir and Hassan’s unusual relationship.

“The history of Hazara people was mostly written by their enemies. They tried to change or destroy the great cultural and historical background of Hazaras” (“Hazara History”). Much of the truth about the Hazaran people has been left of out text books, erased from history, or altered by differing cultures. The Hazarans have been known for centuries as lower class citizens; many of these people cannot read or write, leaving the majority to slave work and manual labor. In the book Hosseini writes, “They called him “flat-nosed” because of Ali and Hassan’s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras, that they were Mogul descendants, and that they looked a little like Chinese people” (Hossieni 25). In contrary to many Afghan beliefs, there are only Mongol influences in less than ten percent of the current Hazara population, while most Hazarans are Turkic people that descend from Kushans. The Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia, starting in 1219, was said to have caused much animosity toward the Mongol people, making the Pashtun feel much stronger hostility toward Hazaras. Though statistically not too many of the Hazara people come from Mongol decedents, they are the ones that gave the Pashtun people a stronger reason for hatred and discrimination (Hazara History).

A key event that reflects the prevalent Pashtun hate toward the Hazara is the brutal and disturbing rape of Hassan by the neighborhood bully Assef. When Assef and his gang first pull Hassan away, Assef begins to speak and states, “Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are true Afghans, the pure Afghan not this flat-nose here. His people pollute our homeland.” (Hossieni 44) Assef’s pure loathing for these low class citizens pushes him to sexually assault Hassan, but meanwhile Amir has been watching from afar, speechless and paralyzed with fear. Amir has always refused to refer to Hassan as a friend even though they play together, read together and are treated as family by their own two fathers, who were just like them as children. Because of the cultural divide between Hassan and Amir, it keeps Amir from stepping forward and stopping the assault himself; He does nothing but become a passive bystander. This lack of actions towards Hassan haunts Amir for the entirety of his life. He no longer can see Hassan for whom he is and begins distancing himself from his childhood best friend. As years pass, Amir moves to America, but his friend Hassan remains in his thoughts.

Throughout the entire novel, a very large secret is kept from Hassan and Amir; Baba, Amir’s father, is also Hassan’s father. Baba had told Ali to claim Hassan as his own because Baba knew he could not be caught having a child with a Hazaran woman; Ali accepted and raised Hassan as his own child. With “Hazaras constituting mainly the servant class” it seemed inevitable for Hassan, a half-Hazaran child, to never suspect a thing since Ali was Baba’s servant (Saikal, 81). All the way through Amir’s life he craved his father’s attention, but little did he know Baba always felt guilty that he could not treat his other son, Hassan, the same way he could treat Amir. If Baba had treated Hassan the way a father should treat a son, Baba would be looked down upon by many other Pashtuns.

When Amir learns of Rahim Khan’s, an old family friend, sickness, he travels back to Afghanistan. Khan tells Amir of how Hassan and his wife, Farzana, had been taking care of Baba’s house, but one day the Taliban showed up and shot them both for “lying” to the officers about why they were in the house. After the shooting, the Taliban captures Hassan and Farzana’s son, Sorhab.

The Taliban originally consisted of Afghani Sunni Pashtun religious students, who became trained and educated in Pakistan (“Taliban”). By 1996, the year Hassan was killed, the Taliban had control over most of Afghanistan, including Kabul. The Taliban became a strong fighting force in Afghanistan by wanting to cleanse the nation of the impure, the minority races. Because only nine percent of Afghanistan is Hazaran, the Taliban believed that Afghanistan was not meant for Hazaran’s, but instead the homeland of true Afghan people (“Hazaras”).

Even much earlier in history, the Pashtun people placed great prejudice on the minority Hazarans. During the rule of Amir Abdul Rahman, from 1880-1901, the Hazara endured mass amounts of political, social, and economic repression. Throughout Rahman’s reign, “Thousands of Hazara men were killed, their women and children taken as slaves, and their land occupied.” The racial conflicts in the Kite Runner are a large part of Afghanistan history, because of the decades of strife between the Pashtun and Hazaran races (“Hazaras”).

After Rahim Khan tells Amir Hassan is his half-brother, Amir sets on a mission to find and rescue Hassan and Farzana’s child, Sorhab. The mission to find Sorhab signifies Amir’s way of making up for the way he betrayed Hassan when they were children; but his mission also represents how he, as a Pashtun, wants to make up for what his people have done to the Hazarans. After some searching, Amir finds Sorhab enslaved by the Taliban. Amir sets up a meeting with a Taliban official to get Sorhab back, but ironically the official turns out to be Assef, the boy who sexually assaulted Hassan 26 years back. Assef explains how he plans to rid Afghanistan of all the garbage, the minorities, thus why he treated Hassan with such disrespect; now he continues his shameful legacy with Hassan’s only son. Assef and the Taliban want to prove their overall supremacy to all the minorities in Afghanistan. In the end, Amir rescues Sorhab, but he emerges from the Taliban’s grasp barely alive.

From beginning to end The Kite Runner exemplifies the strong divide between ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Pashtun people are raised to feel as if they are ethnically superior to the all other races. Because of this, Amir never tells a soul about Hassan’s rape due to the fact that Hassan is a Hazaran boy. Along with this, Baba keeps the secret that Hassan is his son because he is an Afghani minority. The traditions in Afghanistan force strong ethnic separations throughout society, ultimately leading to the overarching conflicts within the novel: Amir’s all-encompassing guilt and Hassan’s inopportune death.