Before reading "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, I had had a chance to watch the DVD of its film adoption at a friend's place at Mohegan Lake, NY. When I started to read the book five months later, images from the film came back to me as I progressed through the story. Among all the images I could recall, the face of the child actor portraying Hassan was the most vivid and recurring one. I later learned the reason why his face was so unique: Hassan was an ethnic Hazara with Asian features, narrow eyes, flat nose and broad cheeks that set him apart from others.
The tension between ethnic groups in Afghanistan was unknown to me until I read the book. Such tension made Hassan's enduring devotion toward Amir, who belonged to the dominating Pashtuns, even more beyond my belief. What had driven Hassan to treat Amir like a family member that could only be bound by blood? Even though they were indeed related, but Hassan had not been revealed to the long-hidden truth? Was it because Hassan and Amir were fed from the same breasts or because Hassan's first spoken word was "Amir"? Or perhaps that was simply because Hassan was part of the story?