While this book is marked on a million millennial hearts across India and world and while it may be a popular book, it is important to be aware of its potential to perpetuate stereotypesand hatred of Asian cultures. We must be mindful of the power of literature and its ability to shape public gaze and power oriental discourses that also tag Indians as slum dogs.
In the early 2000’s next to the IGNOU center in Lucknow’s Aliganj there used to be a book rental store. One day I picked a book from it, tucked it into my bicycle carrier and brought it home for a week at Rs. 10. Like this The Kite Runner became one of the books that I had no business reading as a 13 year old but which I nevertheless did. It gave me a glimpse into the lives of people from Afghanistan. While I enjoyed the story, I was also uncomfortable with the way Hosseni portrayed Afghanistan and its people. The characters were onedimensional and the country was portrayed as a war-torn, backwards place full of rapists.
The Kite Runner may be a good story, but it is important to be aware of the biases that the American native informer Khaled Hosseni brought to his portrayal of Afghanistan in the midst of an ongoing invasion of that region by the Americans.
The Kite Runner had been a raging success in India and it was translated into more than 35 languages and sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. It has been turned into a successful stage play and a critically acclaimed film. It should also be noted with certaintrepidation that the novels of Hosseini are prescribed in the American curriculum as the texts having historical realism, presenting the true picture of political truths, crises in the Middle East countries and worst of all for defining the complexity of human relationships.
Launched in 2003 The Kite Runner is the debut work of Khaled Hosseini. The story covers the life of a Pashtun boy Amir and Hassan a Hazara servant boy. Both share a wonderful friendship but Assef, a vicious boy, mocks their friendship. While Amir is from a very rich family, Hassan is a servant employed by his family. Assef attacks Hassan and rapes him. Amir lives with the feelings of guilt of cowardice forever. Amir starts to think that Hassan is the reminder of his mistake so he tries to get rid of Hassan from his life. After a few years, there was political unrest due to the Soviet invasion and Amir together with his Baba (father) left Kabul behind to settle in a peaceful California. Amir becomes a successful writer and meanwhile his father dies. From his father’s best friend Amir comes to know
that Hassan is actually his half- brother and his father’s son. He also requests Amir to rescue Hassan’s child Sohrab who lives in a foster home in Kabul following the death of his parents. The climax results in a lot of effort after which Amir manages to bring Sohrab to safety by rescuing him.
The historical relationship between Pashtuns and Hazaras is potted in the opening when it is said that Pashtuns had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. It is said that one of the reasons Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a. Yes, that's correct. Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American novelist and physician who was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. He is of Tajik ethnicity and belongs to the Hazara minority group of the illustrious Shia community.
It is Iranian literature specialist Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz (Washington University, St. Louis) who spotlessly classifies Hosseini’s book as one of the recent works that she argues constitute a New Orientalist narrative in her book Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran. This new orientalism is nothing but an extension of the dreaded oriental gaze of the west which has been destroying the east for over a century. TKR has been written by someone who spent twenty six years of his life in the US, since he fled his country when he was a child.
In his 1978 book, Orientalism, Edward Said argued that the West has often depicted the East as exotic, mysterious, and inferior, and that these representations have been used to justify Western intervention and invasion in the region. He argued that this Orientalism is a form of discourse that serves to perpetuate power imbalances between the West and the East, and that it has had a profound impact on how the West comprehends and
communicates with the East.
This adventurous and captivating story neatly functions as a metaphor of the colonial need of intervening in dark countries in order to save the sub- human others who would otherwise be lost in their ignorance and brutality. While Hosseini wants his readers to believe that there is a fabric of understanding between the readers and the Afghan civilization, they are being made to cleverly relate to stereotypes of strands between the
East and the West.
Edward Said discussed how the powerful NYT, professors like Bernard Lewis, etc. designed and finally introduced their suspected facts in representing Islam. Middle East women had the largest share in the New Oriental debates and they became the perfect scapegoat through which the anti-terrorism cults infused and invaded different Islamic countries. In 2007, Dick Cheney said that since the struggle of freedom and justice keeps renewing itself we'll keep relying on Bernard Lewis' stern approach of thinking on issues.
While seemingly just a captivating story of Amir and his redemption through the heroic rescue of his childhood friend Hassan’s son Sohrab, the entire plot is imbued with toxic orientalist stereotypes and the inevitable conflict between the West and the East. Despite its coming from a foreign, relatively unknown Afghan author the novel was received well by Western literary audiences and held a steady spot on the NYT best-seller list for over
two years.
The novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is an example of a bildungsroman. Through his journey, Amir learns to become a better person and develops a more mature understanding of the world. The novel also follows the development of Amir’s friend and rival, Assef. Assef is a character who is deeply rooted in traditional Afghan culture and is resistant to change. As the novel progresses, Assef’s character becomes increasingly
villainous and oppressive, representing the traditional values of the Orient.
In contrast, Amir’s character develops and progresses, becoming a more modern, liberal, Western character. This contrast between the two characters highlights the idea that the Orient is inferior to the West, and that the West is the superior civilization. Read in isolation, Kite Runner may indeed be inspiring and heart-warming, but the significance of its underlying message in the current geopolitical context cannot be ignored.
Soon after the events of 9/11 images of a violent, extremist Middle East in need of humanizing was projected. Media discourses in the United States deployed useful binaryparadigms for western relations with the Middle East. Hosseni’s novel only ends up reinforcing these binaries. In the book Assef the antagonist loves Hitler and the protagonist like Baba loves President Ronald Reagan, the same Reagan who bombed the dreams of a
self-sufficient Africa and Libya.
Khaled Hossieni novels stay focused on the public phobia of Islam, i.e blind faith and cruelty, political underdevelopment, and women's social and sexual repression. They provide a mix of fear and intrigue to provide a blank check for the use of force in the region
and Western righteousness.
In other Khaled Hosseini novels such as A thousand splendid suns the story revolves around the misery of Afghan women. Women who can never enjoy the same rights and privileges as their men do. They are forced to cover themselves. Men are allowed to have a number of wives as well as renounce them. Like this Hosseini takes us to a land in which murder, rape and violence are not crime. He shows a world of cruelty, barbarity and extremism. This he then juxtaposes with a Western world which is a reviver of humanvalues and sensitivity.
The most malignant element of TKR is also the same aspect that Indian readers consistently have identified as the most heart-warming and inspiring. This is the story of the redemption of Amir thorough his harrowing and heroic rescue of Sohrab. In short, Amir, the successful western expatriate writer must leave his safe, idyllic existence in the U.S.; return to an Afghanistan (heart of darkness) that has been ravaged by the Russians and the Taliban and rescue the innocent orphaned son of his childhood friend from the incarnation of evil itself, Assef.
In the TKR Hosseini shamelessly overlooks the historical and the direct or the indirect political role that the US played in the Afghan trauma. The US is depicted as the dream land and the open refuge for every oppressed human. Respectively, all criticism of America is presented as misinformed, ill-intentioned, misplaced, and exaggerated. In addition, as far as the Afghani conflict goes, Hosseini presents to the reader rather a simplistic, and one dimensional picture that associates the Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Arabs, with the birth of Taliban as he casually skips the mention of the CIA under President Carter, ‘whose stated
aim, was to sow shit in the Soviet backyard".
Hosseini alienates Amir from his cultural roots to make him friendlier for a western reckoning - “I throw my makeshift jai-namaz, my prayer rug, on the floor and I get on my knees, lower my forehead to the ground, my tears soaking through the sheet. I bow to the west. Then I remember I haven't prayed for over fifteen years. I have long forgotten the words. But it doesn't matter, I will utter those few words I still remember: La ilaha il Allah, Muhammadu rasulullah”. Similarly Hosseini paints a resilient Hazara people as submissive and flat characters that are not capable of change, while the Pashtuns are well rounded
characters capable of pro-activity.
Back in 2003 I had read the book in one sitting and then reread it. I was so absorbed in the story that I didn't notice it when it was late at night. I was so moved by the characters and the setting that I wanted to visit Afghanistan and see the places that the author described.
But at the time, I was unaware of the implications of reading a book that was written by an Afghan-American author, but in hindsight, I recognize I was taking part in a form of exoticism that perpetuated misrepresentations of Afghan culture. In addition, I was engaging in a form of cultural imperialism. In the years since, I have become more aware of the implications of new orientalism and the importance of respecting and understanding the cultures of others. As a screenwriter I now recognize that it is important to write about others in a way that is respectful and that does not perpetuate stereotypes. I am now more conscious of the power of storytelling and the importance of creating stories that are inclusive and that represent the diverse cultures of our world. Fast forward to 2020, I find
myself in a world of new orientalism. The same discomfort I felt reading the Kite Runner is now present in the way the world perceives and projects Asian culture.
The exoticization of the East, the fetishization of Muslim women and the commodification of Asian culture is everywhere. The new orientalism is perpetuated through the media, through Hollywood, through the fashion industry and tourism industry. Hosseini perhaps stands not too far away from Rafid Alwan, the native informer whose false report of WMDs was the basis of the invasion of Iraq. Khaled Hosseini is just another brick in the wall of the American military complex and we Indians should never allow an invasion of our hearts for the imperial project, never ever.
Ali Kirmani is the Chief Writer at Lonestar Films (U.S)
