Friend. Everyone has their own definition for it. The Merriam Dictionary defines it as “A person who you like and enjoy being with or a person who helps or supports someone or something,”. Some may say words like, loyal and trustworthy, while others would say determined and kind. In the novel, The Kite Runners by Khaled Hosseini, two boys, Amir (The protagonists) and Hassan, born and raised to together in the countryside of Afghanistan, live the final peaceful days before war, and redefine the word, friend.
In the exposition of the novel, Amir and Hassan could be look upon as brothers. “We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name,” (11). However, in the mist of the setting, Amir and Hassan were not brothers. Hassan and his father, Ali, were the Hazara or servants of Amir and his father. Though Amir and Hassan shared that bond of friendship like their fathers, they never thought of each like friends. “Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a cardboard box. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites,” (25). However these things were not enough to overcome the path of history and religion. “I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara ,” (25). In the end, “We were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either,” (25).
Amir and Hassan bond and ‘Friendship’ is something that I believe that I could relate to. “When we were children, Hassan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the driveway of my father’s house and annoy our neighbors by reflecting sunlight into their homes with a shard mirror,” (3). When I was younger, my friend and I were always up to mischievous things. From going into our younger sisters rooms and poking their dolls eyes until it dangling from its head, to hiding evidence of our ‘crimes’ around our houses. One story though, I remember very clearly as if it had happened yesterday. On a sunny afternoon, in my friends driveway we were skateboarding, attempting to do tricks and stunts that we knew we couldn’t do. I had been begging for a new skateboard from my parents for over three months and then my friend and I came up with the perfect ‘accident’ that would break my skateboard. From there on forward, we continued our plan. We put my skateboard on a ledge and jump on it, which broke it into two halves. I then later told my parents that day that we were skateboarding and that all of a sudden my skateboard ‘Broke’ while I was attempting a trick. I felt that I had convinced them, however, my crime didn’t play out. After a bit of integration, my parents found out that I was not telling the truth, and in the end I never got a new skateboard. Thinking back, I should have just kept the old skateboard because I never got a new one after that.
Amir and Hassan childhood friendship was unbreakable, and nothing could have stopped then from being friends. The question still remains, what is your definition of a friend?
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