How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
He [Assef] leaned toward me, like a man about to share a great secret. "You don't know the meaning of the word 'liberating' until you've done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you're doing God's work. It's breathtaking." He kissed the prayer beads, tilted his head. [...].
I had read about the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif in the papers. It had happened just after the Taliban took over Mazar, one of the last cities to fall. I remembered Soraya handing me the article over breakfast, her face bloodless.
[Assef:] "[...]. We left the bodies in the streets, and if their families tried to sneak out to drag them back into their homes, we'd shoot them too. We left them in the streets for days. We left them for the dogs. Dog meat for dogs." (22.24-26)
Since ethnicity and religion intertwine inextricably in the Afghanistan of The Kite Runner, Assef justifies ethnic cleansing through religion. This is problematic. Assef has ultimate justification – God's will – for what amounts to murder. (We can imagine the daily and more common persecutions this justification must bring about as well.) Although Hosseini paints Assef as an extreme character, in the end Hosseini sheds some light on the bizarre and false justifications of ethnic prejudices in Afghanistan.
Quote #8
Assef's brow twitched. "Like pride in your people, your customs, your language. Afghanistan is like a beautiful mansion littered with garbage, and someone has to take out the garbage."
[Amir:] "That's what you were doing in Mazar, going door-to-door? Taking out the garbage?"
[Assef:] "Precisely."
"In the west, they have an expression for that," I said. "They call it ethnic cleansing." (22.86-89)
This is what we in the literature business like to call a "BOOYA!" moment. Assef carelessly uses a metaphor – taking out the garbage – which suggests "cleaning" or "cleansing." Amir takes advantage of the implicit metaphor and tells it like it is: Assef committed the crime of genocide. Notice, too, how Amir participates in the clichés of action films. We can imagine Schwarzenegger letting fly a zinger like this one. Coincidence? Maybe not. The number of references to Hollywood films actually outnumbers the references to Afghani politicians.
Quote #9
Sohrab stopped chewing. Put the sandwich down. "Father never said he had a brother."
[Amir:] "That's because he didn't know."
[Sohrab:] "Why didn't he know?"
"No one told him," I said. "No one told me either. I just found out recently."
Sohrab blinked. Like he was looking at me, really looking at me, for the very first time. "But why did people hide it from Father and you?"
[Amir:] "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."
[Sohrab:] "Because he was a Hazara?"
I willed my eyes to stay on him. "Yes." (24.106-113).
Amir has recently rescued Sohrab from Assef and the Taliban. And Amir, eating lunch with Sohrab, suddenly blurts out that he and Hassan were half-brothers. As Amir says, "[...] [H]e had a right to know; I didn't want to hide anything anymore" (24.105). Amir does the right thing here – most readers probably let out a sigh of relief when Amir tells Sohrab the truth about Hassan. But we also find it a little sad that this twelve-year-old boy already knows enough about his homeland to guess Amir and Hassan shouldn't have been brothers because of ethnicity. It's a sort of barometer of ethnic relations in Afghanistan: even a young boy knows it's somehow improper for a Hazara and Pashtun to have the same father.