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In Baba's birth year, Ali is a "five year-old orphan boy," meaning that his birthday must have been around 1928 (Hosseini 24).
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In 1933, "the year Zahir Shah began his forty-year reign of Afghanistan," Amir's father is born (Hosseini 24).
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Because Amir recollects that Hassan's birth was "in the winter of 1964, just one year after my mother died giving birth to me," this means Amir was born in 1963 (Hosseini 6).
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Hassan is born "in [the servants' shack] . . . in the winter of 1964" to Baba and Sanaubar (Hosseini 6).
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While Zahir Shah is away, Daoud Khan's coup makes the monarchy "a thing of the past" (Hosseini 36).
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Baba hires a surgeon to fix Hassan's lip on his birthday, and in about a year, it only bears "a faint scar" (Hosseini 47).
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On a "frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975," Amir watches Hassan's rape and becomes traumatized (Hosseini 1).
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Just a few days after his thirteenth birthday, Amir tells "what I hoped would be the last in a long line of shameful lies" by framing Hassan for a theft and causing him to leave (Hosseini 104).
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The first Soviet soldiers "parachuted into Kabul on Dec. 27,1979," and the country "has known little peace" since then (NYT 2, 1).
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Since Amir states that "in 1980 . . . we were still in Kabul," that he was in America by "the spring of 1983," and that he spent a "few months" in Peshawar in 1981, it can be assumed that he and Baba moved to America sometime around the latter half of 1981 to 1982 (Hosseini 126, 127, 195).
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Amir and Baba are smuggled out of Kabul, hoping to end up in "the relative safety of Pakistan" (Hosseini 111).
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Amir graduates high school at 20 years old in the "summer of 1983" (Hosseini 131).
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In 1984, "the summer I turned 21," Amir meets General Taheri and his daughter Soraya (Hosseini 136).
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Four days after Baba is hospitalized "one cool Sunday after New Year's Day," Amir and Soraya are married (Hosseini 158).
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"A month after the wedding," after a dinner party, Baba dies of cancer (Hosseini 173).
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Amir enrolls "at San Jose State that summer [of 1986]" as an English major (Hosseini 181).
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Rahin Khan goes "to Hazarajat to find Hassan in 1986" and convinces him and his wife to move into Baba's old mansion with him (Hosseini 203).
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After peace talks, the last Soviet soldiers "left Afghanistan in February 1989, in what was in effect a unilateral withdrawal" (NYT 2).
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Amir's novel is released "in the summer of . . . 1989" (Hosseini 183).
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In 1990, "in the middle of the summer," Sanaubar comes to Baba's mansion with heavy wounds, and then moves in after she recovers (Hosseini 209).
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In "that winter of 1990," Sanaubar delivers Hassan's son Sohrab (Hosseini 211).
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Civil war begins in the middle of 1994, and power "was anarchically divided among competing warlords and individual fiefdoms" (NYT 2).
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By 1994's end, Omar "had nearly 12000 followers" and Pakistani officers "began funneling arms, money, and supplies" to his group (NYT 2, 3).
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Sanaubar "lived to see [Sohrab] turn four and then, one morning, she just did not wake up" (Hosseini 211).
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Omar's group has control over nearly all of the country, and is "imposing strict enforcement of fundamentalist Islamic law" (NYT 3).
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The extremist leader bin Laden "arrived by chartered jet at Jalalabad Airport" in May of 1996 (NYT 3).
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Rahim Khan tells Amir that "six months ago, a few days before I left for Peshawar," Hassan and his wife were killed by Taliban officials, meaning he died in late 2000 or early 2001 (Hosseini 218).
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Karzai is the new leader of "an interim government that replaced the defeated Taliban" (NYT 3).
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After the September 11 attacks, the United States become "militarily involved" in the wars against Osama bin Laden (NYT 1).
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In the summer of 2001, Amir receives a call from Rahim Khan and is told "there is a way to be good again," leading to his decision to visit him (Hosseini 2).
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After hearing Rahim Khan's request, Amir decides to look for Hassan's son to save the "little part of him [that] lived on" (Hosseini 227).
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Assef tries to take care of "'some unfinished business'" by beating Amir up when he tries to rescue Sohrab, but the latter two escape because Sohrab shoots Assef's eye out with his slingshot (Hosseini 286).
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After hearing "the news he feared most," that he may have to go back to an orphanage, Sohrab is so upset that he cuts himself with a razor; he survives, but becomes depressed and is mute for almost a year afterward (Hosseini 351).
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On "a warn day in August 2001," Amir comes home to America with a depressed and silent Sohrab (Hosseini 357).
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The group launches an aerial attack "on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001" (NYT 3).
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On "a cool rainy day in March 2002," Amir and Sohrab run a kite, and Sohrab smiles for the first time in a year (Hosseini 363).
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After a long period of disrest, Karzai is "elected to a five-year term as president" of the country (NYT 3).