Chapter 18



Some Important Quotes Chapter 16“The war is over, Hassan,” I said. “There’s going to be peace,?Inshallah, and happiness and calm. No more rockets, no more killing, no more funerals!” But he just turned off the radio and asked if he could get me anything before he went to bed.A few weeks later, the Taliban banned kite fighting. And two years later, in 1998, they massacred the Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif.Chapter 17“You know, Rahim Khan said, “one time, when you weren’t around, your father and I were talking… I remember he said to me, ‘Rahim, a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.’ I wonder, is that what you’ve become?”Chapter 18 As it turned out, Baba and I were more alike than I’d ever known. We had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for us. And with that came this realization: that Rahim Khan had summoned me here to atone not just for my sins but for Baba’s too.Chapter 19 He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap sack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. “That’s the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That’s the Afghanistan I know. You? You’ve?always?been a tourist here, you just didn’t know it.”Chapter 20 “She said, 'I'm so afraid.' And I said, 'why?,' and she said, 'Because I'm so profoundly happy, Dr. Rasul. Happiness like this is frightening.' I asked her why and she said, 'They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.”Old beggar who used to be literature professor Chapter 21 Quotes“How much more do you need to see? Let me save you the trouble: Nothing that you remember has survived. Best to forget.”“I don’t want to forget anymore,” I said.Amir & Farid‘How shall we punish those who dishonor the sanctity of marriage? How shall we deal with those who spit in the face of God? How shall we answer those who throw stones at the windows of God’s house? WE SHALL THROW STONES BACK!’ He shut off the microphone. A low-pitched murmur spread through the crowd. Next to me, Farid was shaking his head. ‘And they call themselves Muslims,’ he whispered… The Talib in the John Lennon sunglasses was looking down at another man squatting next to the hole, tossing a rock up and down in his hand (283-284)Chapter 22 QuotesWhat was the old saying about the bad penny? My past was like that, always turning up. His name rose from the deep and I didn’t want to say it, as if uttering it might conjure him. But he was already here, in the flesh, sitting less than ten feet from me, after all these years. His name escaped my lips: “Assef.”“ I remembered the day on the hill I had pelted Hassan with pomegranates and tried to provoke him. He’d just stood there, doing nothing, red juice soaking through his shirt like blood. Then he’d taken the pomegranate from my hand, and crushed it against his forehead . . .I hadn’t been happy, and I hadn’t felt better, not at all. But I did now. My body was broken – just how badly I wouldn’t find out until later – but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed. (303) “ But as I watched a pigeon peck at a bread crumb on the windowsill, I kept thinking of something else Armand/Dr. Faruqi had said: The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle, like a harelip. (312)Chapter 23 Quotes I loved him because he was my friend, but also because he was a good man, maybe even a great man. And this is what I want you to understand, that good,?real?good, was born out of your father’s remorse. Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.Your father, like you, was a tortured soul, Rahim Khan had written. Maybe so. We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse. What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all?Chapter 24 Quotes “‘I don’t take your money,’ he said, blowing by me. ‘I will drive you because I am a father like you’” (Hosseini 331). “‘The thing about you Afghanis is that…well, you people are a little reckless” (Hosseini 331). Speaker- Fayyaz “He brought the photo to within an inch of his face…He looked at it for a long time. I thought he might cry, but he didn’t. He just held in both hands, traced his thumb over its surface. I thought of a line I’d read somewhere, or maybe I’d heard someone say it: There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood. He stretched his hand to give it back to me” (Hosseini 333). ‘I’m so dirty and full of sin’ ‘You’re not dirty, Sohrab,’… His little body convulsed in my arms with each sob. A kinship exists between people who’ve fed from the same breast. No, as the boy’s pain soaked through my shirt, I saw that a kinship had taken root between us too. What had happened in that room with Assef had irrevocably bound us…I decided the moment was now, right here, right now, with the bright lights of the house of God shining on us. ‘Would you like to come live in America with me and my wife?’ (Hosseini 335-336)‘You know, I asked myself that same question the other day. And there’s an answer, but not a good one. Let’s just say they didn’t tell us because your father and I…we weren’t supposed to be brothers.’ ‘Because he was a Hazara?’… ‘Yes.’‘Did your father…did your father love you and my father equally?’… ‘I think he loved us equally but differently.’‘Was he ashamed of my father?’‘No…I think he was ashamed of himself’ (Hosseini 338). “ ‘They ought to put someone in your chair who knows what it’s like to want a child’… ‘Your boss could use some manners,’ I said. I expected her to roll her eyes, maybe nod in that ‘I know, everybody says that,’ kind of way. Instead, she lowered her voice. ‘Poor Ray. He hasn’t been the same since his daughter died.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Suicide,’ she whispered (Hosseini 349). ‘Even then, the INS thinks it’s good adoption practice to place the child with someone in his own country so his heritage can be preserved.’ ‘What heritage?’ I said. ‘The Taliban have destroyed what heritage Afghans had. You saw what they did to the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan’ (Hosseini 354). Chapter 25I will do all of this and I will think of Him every day from this day on if He only grants me this one wish: my hands are stained with Hassan’s blood; I pray God doesn’t let them get stained with the blood of his boy too. I hear a whimpering and realize it is mine, my lips are salty with the tears trickling down my face. I feel the eyes of everyone in the corridor on me and still I bow to the west. I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I’d always feared they would. (Hosseini 364)I looked at that photo. Your father was a man torn between two halves, Rahim Khan had said in his letter. I had been the entitled half, the society approved, legitimate half, the unwitting embodiment of Baba’s guilt. I looked at Hassan, showing those two missing teeth, sunlight slanting on his face. Baba’s other half. The unentitled, unprivileged half. The half who had inherited what had been pure and noble in Baba. The half that, maybe, in the most secret recesses of his heart, Baba had thought of as his true son… Then I realized something: That last thought had brought no sting with it… I 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. (Hosseini 378)‘So, Amir jan, you’re going to tell us why you have brought back this boy with you?’ ‘Iqbal jan! What sort of question is that?’ Khala Jamila said. ‘While you’re busy knitting sweaters my dear, I have to deal with the community’s perception of our family. People will ask. They will want to know why there is a Hazara boy living with our daughter. What do I tell them?’ …‘You see, General Sahib, my father slept with his servant’s wife. She bore him a son named Hassan. Hassan is dead now. That boy sleeping on the couch is Hassan’s son. He’s my nephew. That’s what you tell people when they ask…And one more thing, General sahib,’ I said. ‘You will never again refer to him as ‘Hazara boy’ in my presence. He has a name and it is Sohrab. (Hosseini 380). ‘Do you want me to run that kite for you?’ His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed. The wind lifted his hair. I thought I saw him nod. ‘For you, a thousand times over,’ I heard myself say. Then I turned and ran. It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn’t make everything all right. It didn’t make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird’s flight. But I’ll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting. I ran. A grown man running with a swarm of screaming children. But I didn’t care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran. (Hosseini 391) ................
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