(2007; English and Dari) Director Marc Forster's condensed yet faithful adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's novel begins with a phone call from Pakistan and concludes in San Francisco in 2001 when Amir (Khalid Abdalla) returns to his wife Soraya (Atossa Leoni) with his nephew Sohrab.

A quarter of a century earlier in Kabul, Afghanistan, Amir (Zekiria Ebrahimi) and his father's servant's son, Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), chase after a kite that's been cut free in competition. Hassan has the uncanny ability to hunt down kites without watching them fall from the sky.

Baba (Homayoun Ershadi), a prosperous businessman, worries aloud to his friend Rahim Khan (Shaun Toub) that his son Amir will not be able to fend for himself in a country being splintered by the Communists on one hand and the religious fanatics on the other. Afraid of his father, Amir believes by being born he killed his mother. When Assef and two other older boys confront Hassan, a Hazara (an inferior tribe), and Amir, the servant's son holds them off with his slingshot.

Along with kite flying the boys enjoy going to the picture show - they like to repeat a line from The Magnificent Seven, "I like your idea of fair odds, mister" - and storytelling. Baba, who dismisses the mullahs as stupid, instructs Amir that there is but one sin - thievery.

For Hassan's birthday Baba, once a champion kite flyer who in his youth won a tournament by cutting a record 14 kites out of the sky, buys his loyal servant Ali's son the kite of his choice. Hassan and Amir as a team defeat all rivals, including the previous champion Omar, in the kite tournament, making Baba very proud of his son. But Hassan the kit runner in fetching Omar's downed kite gets cornered by Assef and his fellow Pashtun bullies who demand he turn over the prize; having promised Amir the trophy, Hassan adamantly refuses to relinquish it.

In secret Amir witnesses Assef rape Hassan, taunting the boy by saying, "Would he sacrifice for you similarly?," but tells no one what he has seen. Ashamed of his cowardliness, remind of it every time Hassan comes into view - when he orders Hassan to throw pomegranates at him after pummeling his friend with the fruit, Hassan mashes one into his own forehead - he asks Baba if a new servant can be found to replace Ali, which greatly angers his father. At Amir's birthday celebration, he sits away from the company, including the rapist Assef, and fireworks, where Rahim (an advocate of his fiction writing) finds him and tries to console the boy, though he knows not what has caused his distress.

After planting his new wristwatch under Hassan's pillow, Amir reports to his father that his watch is missing, expecting his father will not forgive someone for committing the one sin against his son. Though innocent, Hassan admits to stealing the watch; but Baba unexpectedly forgives him. Nevertheless, Ali says he must leave Baba's household for such a crime.

In December 1979 when the Soviets invade Afghanistan, Baba, who has a reputation for denouncing the Communists, turns over his property to Rahim and departs with Amir for Pakistan. At a check point on their arduous journey in the back of a truck with others who also are fleeing, Baba, willing to sacrifice his life rather than ignore an abominable iniquity, stands up to a Soviet soldier who demands to have his way with a young woman, the mother of an infant; fate intervenes, but Amir cannot forget how his father interceded in the course of evil.

Nine years later in Fremont, California, Amir graduates from community college with the goal of becoming a writer, though Baba, working at a gas station, wants his son to become a doctor. At a flea market Amir meets Soraya (Atossa Leoni), the daughter of General Taheri, an exiled former Pashtun military man; she appreciates his writing stories of their former homeland, confesses her transgression of having run off and lived with an Afghan man in Virginia for a year, and after he expresses no condemnation, marries Amir. Soon after Baba dies of heart failure.

Twelve years later in San Francisco with his first book in print, A Season for Ashes, Amir postpones a book tour to fly to Peshawar, Pakistan, where Rahim is dying. Soraya, with whom he has not had any children, remains behind. From Rahim he learns of Hassan's death in Kabul at the hands of the Taliban, who among other prohibitions have even banned kite flying. Rahim hands Amir a letter from Hassan with a photo of him and his son. Possessed of a new understanding of his relationship to Hassan, Amir, fitted with a fake beard, makes a treacherous trek into Afghanistan to retrieve a lost boy.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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