Kite Runner & the History of Afghanistan

By 21saligoa39

  • Amir is born

    Hassan was stated to be born in the winter of 1964, and while we do not know when exactly Amir was born, we know Hassan was born "just one year after [Amir's] mom died giving birth to [him]" (6)

  • Kite Running Contest is won

    Amir wins the Kite flying contest, and Baba is "proud of [Amir] at last"(66)

  • Hassan Gets Raped

    Just after Amir wins the Kite tournament, Hassan is put into a bad situation, cornered by Assef seeking to teach a "lesson to a disrespectful donkey" (75) by raping Hassan

  • Hassan and Ali leave

    Hassan and Ali leave Amir and his father after Hassan finally can't handle being there after being raped, and all Amir could do was watch as "Baba's car pull[ed] away from the curb, taking with it the person whose first spoken word had been my name.
  • Period: to

    Kite Runner & the History of Afghanistan Timespan

  • Soviet Invasion

    The most major turning point of Afghanistan's recent history was the 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union, which started with "Soviet troops parachut[ing] into Kabul on Dec. 27, 1979" (NYT). This allows you to infer immediately how severe the invasion was that it started off with the capital.

  • Amir and Baba Leave Kabul

    Amir and Baba leave Kabul in an attempt to escape the Russian invasion, being driven by a man named Karim, "a people smuggler" (111) away from Kabul.

  • Amir and Baba arrive in San Francisco

    Baba takes Amir to America, leaving behind his wartorn country due to the fact that he "loved the idea of America" (125)

  • Amir graduates from high school

    Amir graduates in the summer of 1983, recieving a gift from Baba, though he was by far "the oldest senior tossing his mortarboard on the football field that day." (131)

  • Amir meets Soraya

    Amir meets Soraya, and is immediately smitten by her "eyes, walnut brown, and shaded by fanned lashes [meeting his own]" (140)

  • Amir Marries Soraya

    Amir marries Soraya, though through his own admittance remembers "only a handful of moments from it" (170)

  • Baba dies

    Baba succumbs to his ulcer, dying as he claims to feel no pain before sleeping, but then "never woke up" (173)

  • Soviet Troops Withdraw

    With intervention from the United Nations, the Soviet troops finally left Afghanistan in a unilateral withdrawal on February 1989, in tern leaving behind "a country that was not only devastated by the war, nut that had become a beacon to Islamic extremists from across the globe"(NYT).

  • Sohrab is born

    Sometime after the stillborn daughter of Hassan and Farzana, Farzana becomes pregnant once again (209). This time with a baby boy they would name Sohrab

  • Beginnings of a leader

    A single group began to grow in power at such a speed that by the end of 1994, the time of the competing warlords beginning in the summer, this group led by Mullah Omar nearly had 12,000 followers and was absorbing other groups to the north and east (NYT)

  • Divided Afghanistan

    In the summer of 1994, power in the devastated country got shifted and divided "among competing warlords and individual fiefdoms"(NYT) but leaving one group to eventually take control

  • The Taliban takes control

    With the aid of Pakistan, the Taliban, the group led by Mullah Omar, had taken full control of Afghanistan, it's first actions being to "[impose] strict enforcement of fundamentalist Islamic law"(NYT)

  • International Disapproval

    Al Queda persuaded Mullah Omar to authorize the destruction of "the 800-year-old Buddha statues at Bamiyan" (NYT). An act that was condemned all around the world, though the pariah status did not seem to affect the regime

  • Hassan and Farzana are killed

    In the early 2000, Hassan is killed for being in Rahim Khan's, formerly Baba's, house, causing Farzana to come out and attack them and for them to "sh[o]ot her too. Self-defense, they claimed later" (219)

  • Interim President

    After the Taliban was driven out of Afghan cities by the end of 2001, a man named Hamid Karzai, a relative of the former king of Afghanistan, was elected interim president in June 2002 (NYT).

  • The US joins

    Due to the attack on the World Trade Center, the U.S. demanded that Osama Bin Laden be handed to them. When they were refused, "the United States joined forces with rebel groups that had never accepted Taliban rule" (NYT).

  • Amir gets a phone call

    In June 2001, Amir recieves a phone call from Rahim Khan, learning of his illness and that Rahim "wants to see [Amir]" (191)

  • Amir and Sohrab return to America

    After many legal and personal problems, Amir and Sohrab return to America "on a warm day in August 2001" (357)

  • Amir and Sohrab fly a Kite

    Amir runs a kite for Sohrab, and in an echo of what Hassan said to him when he won the Kite contest , Amir told Sohrab "For you, a thousand times over." (371)

  • Obama vows to bring troops back

    In a speech on Dec. 1, 2009, Obama "announced his plan to deploy 30,000 additional troops," (NYT) vowing to start bringing American forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2011

  • Change in tone

    Despite the previous speech, the Obama administration "changed its tone to increasingly emphasize the idea that the United States will have forces until at least the end of 2014" (NYT), signifying an increase in the length of the war.