#Kite fighting tournament free#

The cuts stung and didn’t healįor a couple of weeks, but I didn’t mind. Our battle scars on the first day of school. I remember how my classmates and I used to huddle, compare By the time the snow melted and the rains ofīore telltale horizontal gashes on his fingers from a whole winter ofįighting kites. We’d then hang the lineīetween the trees, leave it to dry. String through a mixture of ground glass and glue. We’d go out in the yard and feed up to five hundred feet of The kite was the gun, then tar, the glass-coated cutting line, was the bullet And then, of course, we had to make our own string, or tar. Spars, cutting the thin tissue paper which made for easy dipping and We spent hours every day shaving bamboo for the center and cross We went to the bazaar and bought bamboo, glue, string, and Of winter began to blow and snow fell in chunks, we undid the snap under the

The money in a little porcelain horse Baba had brought one time from Herat. We saved our weekly allowances in the fall, dropped I felt likeĪ soldier trying to sleep in the trenches the night before a major battle.įighting kites was a little like going to war. I’d roll from side to side, make shadow animals on the wall,Įven sit on the balcony in the dark, a blanket wrapped around me. Undeniably the highlight of the cold season. And if you were a boy living in Kabul, the day of the tournament was Kites were the one paperthin slice of intersection And the reason for that was the kites.īaba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence. The trees froze and ice sheathed the roads, the chill between Baba and me The soft pattering of snow against my window at night, for the way fresh snowĬrunched under my black rubber boots, for the warmth of the cast-iron stoveĪs the wind screeched through the yards, the streets. Watched them until I drifted back to sleep. My chin and watched the snowcapped hills in the north through the window. Then I slipped back into bed in my flannel pajamas. I waited until they pulled away, turned the corner, Into the car, Ahmad in his wool vest and winter coat, his schoolbag filled I made a point of watching Ahmad and his father get Shoveled snow from the driveway, cleared the way for the black Opel. Watched from my bedroom window as their Hazara servant Ahmad hadĮpilepsy and always wore a wool vest and thick black-rimmed glasses-he was His father was some kind of doctor, I think. I remember one kid, Ahmad, who lived across Fortunatelyįor me, Baba was not one of them. These classes parents, of course, did the volunteering for them.

Kids, winter did not spell the end of the school year.

#Kite fighting tournament free#

The end of long division and naming the capital of Bulgaria ,Īnd the start of three months of playing cards by the stove with Hassan, free Russian movies on Tuesday mornings at Cinema Park, sweet turnip qurma over rice for lunch after a morning of building snowmen. Reason was simple: They shut down school for the icy season. I walk down the front steps, barefoot, and call for Hassan to come out and see,Īt least those whose fathers could afford to buy a good iron stove. I shovel a handful of the fresh snow into my mouth, listen to the muffled stillness broken only by theĬawing of crows. I find theĭriveway, my father’s car, the walls, the trees, the rooftops, and the hillsīuried under a foot of snow. Morning, still in my pajamas, hugging my arms against the chill. Of the protagonist, Amir, becomes consuming,Įspecially concerning his relationship with his childhood friend, Hassan, the kite runner.įirst day of snowfall every year: I step out of the house early in the Intense, as the losses in a war torn country increase. Political changes, and the turbulences of friendship and family Finely written, HosseiniĬreates vivid characters and reveals the transformations in their lives in Afghanistan and America during troubling Runner is a superb debut novel by Khaled Hosseini.