Inspiring story for Father’s Day

I have just read for the nth time “The Kite Runner” by the Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini. As a father who has raised a son, I see it as an inspiring tale about fathers and their relationships with their sons. Others may see it, however, as a story of young men and the growing up pains of being raised by a single parent.

It is interesting to note that there are no mothers in the story except as references to a wife passing away after giving birth to her son and another wife abandoning her husband and her newborn son. This is probably intentional so that the author can concentrate more on the relationship between the fathers and their sons as there are also no daughters in the story’s cast of characters.

In any case, I thought the story’s message on fatherhood and parenting is culture-free, timeless and appropriate for Father’s Day.

Baba is the main father persona in the story. He is father to Amir, the lead character and from whose point of view the story is told. Baba is a good person but a chilly, discouraging father at the beginning of the story. He is a single parent whose wife died while giving birth to Amir—a circumstance to which Amir attributes Baba’s seeming indifference toward him as he is responsible for his mother’s death. Baba raises Amir and, in Amir’s words, “molded me to his own liking, in the same way that he molded the world to his own liking seeing the world as black and white and deciding too what was white and what was black.” Baba wants his son to be like him whose passion is hunting and football, but Amir would rather recite poetry, read a book, or write essays. Baba’s cold and controlling attitude as a parent makes Amir unable to love his father and sort of “fears him too and hates him a little.” As a result, Amir quietly defies his father and decides he will not succumb to Baba’s “molding” ways.

The silent animosity between father and son ends when Amir joins and wins a kite-flying contest and ties his own father’s record in the number of kites cut down in a contest. Later, the bond between father and son further develops as they flee from war-torn Afghanistan. During their flight, Baba shows Amir his positive side when he risks his own life in order to save an unknown woman from a Russian soldier’s vile intentions. Later, as immigrants in the United States, Baba further proves to Amir that he can make personal sacrifices for his son’s sake. In the end, as an old man forced to live in a foreign country, Baba dies broken-hearted, but fulfilled for having finally won his son’s affection.

Rahim is Baba’s faithful and best friend. Rahim personifies the father figure that Amir has been longing for. Not having a family of his own, Rahim loves Amir like his own son and encourages him to do what he is best at—writing. He becomes Amir’s mentor, reading Amir’s writings and giving him the affirmations that Baba fails to give. And toward the end of the story, and with Baba already dead, he takes over, plays a father’s role to Amir and tells him: “There is a way to be good again.” This fatherly counsel paves the way for Amir’s complete change of heart and self-healing in the end.

Ali is father to Hassan (Amir’s friend). Not much is said of Ali in the book except that he has been raising Hassan by himself and loves him very much. He is also the devout and loyal servant of Baba until the end. Like Baba, Ali is a single parent. His wife abandoned him and Hassan barely a week after Hassan’s birth. He himself also grew up with Baba just as the boys Hassan and Amir grew up together.

Hassan is actually “the kite runner” in the book’s title. He is the servant’s son who does things “a thousand times over” for Amir, his friend and master with whom he grew up. He helps Amir win a kite-flying contest as Amir’s “kite runner,” but in the process he himself becomes a helpless victim of Amir’s enemies while Amir watches at a distance. Thus, Hassan proves his love and loyalty when he stands his ground and lays down his life and his future for his master, Amir.

Amir, our main protagonist and storyteller, is the rich but weakling son of Baba who cannot defend himself against his bully playmates and lets Hassan do the fighting for him. He also commits a grave sin against his best friend Hassan that haunts him all his growing-up years even as he becomes a successful immigrant in America. But, he makes up for it all toward the end of the story. He follows Rahim’s advice and finds “a way to be good again.” He goes back to Afghanistan, his old country. There, he finally stands his ground not only for himself but also for Hassan in the person of Hassan’s son, Sohrab, as a way to make amends and “be good again.”

On Father’s Day, we fathers may want to ask ourselves whether there is a Baba lurking within us, sometimes wanting our children, especially our sons, to be like us, to follow in our footsteps. We must realize that we should raise our children to become their own persons, that we cannot play God and mold our children into our own image and likeness.

In the end, we can perhaps be like Rahim and be more of an encouraging and affirming father. We can also take to heart Rahim’s memorable line to Baba: “Children aren’t like coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Danilo G. Mendiola, a retired HR and admin practitioner, does volunteer work in his Quezon City parish as a pastoral counselor. He has four children and four grandchildren.