Like so many of the world’s distant and troubled regions, whose traumas and injustices are an almost incessantly gnawing background presence in the life of the mind, Afghanistan, though glimpsed on newsreel and subject to the simplifications and stereotyping of political and military spin merchants, exists more as an abstraction, upon which the grim unfolding of world affairs are partly contingent, than a place of people and sunsets, tea shops and small talk, where we could imagine our own selves exercising the daily round of animal needs and small pleasures.      

 

But it is in the delightful absorption of storytelling that these barriers can often be transcended and the mysteries of otherness unlocked. 

 

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The film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s hugely acclaimed novel The Kite Runner, is a case in point. Spanning nearly thirty years and straddling the cultural canyon between a comfortable life in the US and the torrid struggles of the world’s most problematic failed state, the drama revolves around the lives of two young boys from Kabul. It’s almost fable-like opening sequence depiction of pre-Soviet invasion, pre-Taliban and ruggedly photogenic Afghanistan consists of gudparan gazi (kite flying), bustling markets, excited children howling down the city’s alleyways and perfect blue skies.

 

The brutality and betrayal which intervenes to split them apart is compounded by war and enforced emigration. As the narrative moves to America and then back to to a Talibanised Afghanistan, the narrative twists gain pace, but the cinematic rendering of historical context and geographical location allows the harsh reality of life in this tragic region to resonate in ways that no amount of opinion pieces or hand-wringing politicians could ever muster.

 

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Kite flying in Afghanistan is an obsession, and has long been not just the national sport, but the most popular vehicle for male competitive behaviour. As a form of human enjoyment, and therefore banned by the Taliban during it’s period of control in the nineties, the subsequent interventions of NATO and Operation Enduring Freedom have rolled back the grip of fundamentalism enough for the practice to have returned with vigour. The time-honoured, home-made method of ground glass and adhesive to coat the kite twine for it’s crucial cutting edge has largely been superseded by manufactured razor wire from China and elsewhere, but on Fridays, the muslim day of prayer, the skies above Kabul are full of darting, fluttering multi-coloured fabric as the city’s male population do battle with each other.  

 

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Amir, the privileged side of the boyhood pair, whose father’s servant’s son his own cowardice betrays ends up as a successful writer in San Francisco, and the moral challenge he faces in making good his perfidious past, by returning into the viper’s nest of his homeland, parallels the larger spectre of destructive US intervention, and it’s subsequent efforts to bring peace and stability for it’s people. “Now there is a way to be good again” says Rahmin, a family friend, to Amir as his moral weakness and conscience grapple for ascendancy. And a letter from his childhood friend speaks with poignant nostalgia of the Kabul they both grew up in. “I dream that flowers will bloom in the streets of Kabul again, music will play in the sound of our houses and kites will fly in the skies”.

 

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But such uplifting sentiment is sadly at odds with what is happening. Post 9/11 saw the Americans lay waste to an already ravaged infrastructure and the bloody reach of Taliban activists has recently extended it’s way back to the streets of Kabul, cruelly subverting that city’s hitherto cautious sense of recovery. Amir excels himself to overcome personal fear and half a lifetime of emotional cowardice, but the rescue operation benefits only his own flesh and blood and while Sohrab may have his chance to grow up as a good person in the land of the free, the packed orphanages and horrific deprivations are all left behind. Amir may have done the best he could in redeeeming himself, but in the great scheme of things, it’s nowhere near enough.   

 

The choice of thematic backdrop for The Kite Runner is full of symbolism, for moving as the pivotal moments of the story are, it is difficult not to reflect on the wider issues against which this powerful tale of redemption unfolds. If the fortunes of such a broken society can be likened to one of it’s own iconic kites, then, for all that the military and propaganda machines of the west may insist on the progress being made, and as far as the current airworthiness of the Afghan kite is concerned, there is much craftsmanship still outstanding before it even flies, far less competes.