Afghanistan, the Taliban, Islam, faith, friendship, loyalty, and redemption will all have new meaning when you close the last chapter of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Khaled writes his novel from experience, though it is not biographical. He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1965 and raised there until his family relocated to Paris in 1976, ultimately emigrating to the United States in 1980. He graduated from the University of California - San Diego’s School of Medicine in 1993, practicing as an internist from 1996 - 2004. He began writing The Kite Runner in 2001 and it was published in 2003.

From start to finish I didn’t want to put it down, and when I turned the last page I didn’t want it to end. What captivated me is what I believe will also captivate you.

First, what most Americans know of Afghanistan has been shaped by the evening news: seemingly dark, bleak, legalistic. The Kite Runner made the country, and especially Kabul, explode in color and wonder. Khaled Hosseini has succeeded in giving to outsiders a portrait of his homeland most of us have never seen: the political world of 1970s Afghanistan, from its peaceful days prior to the Russian invasion to the hope promised by the triumph of the Taliban, to hopes crushed under the tyrannical legalism ultimately imposed by those the Afghani people originally saw as liberators. As you follow his story it is impossible not to become an Afghani patriot, broken hearted as you remember what your country once was and what it now is.

Second, Kahled’s portrait of childhood friendship in 1970s Kabul was not unlike the childhood I experienced in suburban Detroit during the same time period, a vivid portrait of the universal nature of childhood innocence, with minds unencumbered by the pressing issues consuming the world around them. The protaganist Amir bonds with the son of his father’s servant, Hassan. Though separated by class their hearts are knit together, but betrayal occurs and loyalty is tested, and cowardice is exposed. Human depravity will separate them emotionally, and the Russian army will drive them apart physically. But nothing can ultimately break the bond of childhood friendship.

Third, all of the tragedy and triumph in the story is tied together and reconciled by religious faith. We live our lives selfishly (sinfully), reaching a point where looking back we see the tragedy and brokenness our selfishness (sinfulness) has left in its wake, and we want to make it right. Yet time and circumstances make it impossible to set right what we have made so wrong. But there is a way to be good again. While I’m not certain I agree with the author’s way of being good again, he is certainly right in holding out that hope.

Khaled comes close to presenting the only true way that man can be made right when he has gone so wrong. In one brutal scene with two poignant images - one taking place in real time and the other a flashback to a religious ceremony marking Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac - we come face to face with the unpopular truth that redemption is made possible, not by our own works of righteousness, but through the sacrificial substitution of the innocent; the just for the unjust. Human sin requires an innocent substitute.

But to be good again Amir ultimately turns to Islam as a young man, a faith he rejected in his childhood because his father saw its abuse by legalistic Mullahs. Khaled draws a stark distinction between Islam as it is practiced by ordinary Muslims and its radical form imposed by the Taliban: the faithful prayers of the common people contrasted with the legalistic interpretations of the Koran by which the Taliban justified its reign of terror.

I’m still rethinking what this portrait of Islam means for my own understanding of the Islamic faith, as I have always believed that there is one Islam: radical, not peaceful. Is Khaled playing on my emotions, causing me to let my guard down in order to deceive me into believing that Islam is, after all, a peaceful religion?

The peace loving Muslims introduced in The Kite Runner all have their hopes in a legalistic religion which ultimately cannot give them true and lasting peace. Upon closing the last chapter I was moved with real compassion for observant Muslims, my heart crying out that they might come to know the Prince of Peace who has delivered us from the requirements of legalistic faiths like Islam, having become the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. 

And finally, America is presented as a paradox and rightly so. The way in which Khaled presents America is not at all anti-American, but his portrait certainly causes us to celebrate the promise that is America while nearly in the same breath lamenting its excesses.

The movie opens in theatres everywhere on December 20. Having seen the trailer for the first time after finishing the book I have this gut-wrenching fear I’ll be disappointed by the movie. I’ll let you know.