# data[].attributes.body
"I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan—the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past—and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran".

# data[].attributes.body
"Never mind any of those things. Because history isn't easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing."

# data[].attributes.body
"I dream that someday you will return to Kabul and revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you."

# data[].attributes.body
"How could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past?"

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For you a thousand times over, he'd promised. Good old Hassan. Good old reliable Hassan. He'd kept his promise and run the last kite for me.

# data[].attributes.body
"Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words."

# data[].attributes.body
"Then I understood: This was Hassan's final sacrifice for me. If he'd said no, Baba would have believed him, then I'd be the accused"

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"My door is always open to you, Amir jan. I shall hear any story you have to tell."

# data[].attributes.body
"His saying that made me kind of sad. Sad for who Hassan was, where he lived. For how he'd accepted the fact that he'd grow old in that mud shack in the yard, the way his father had"

# data[].attributes.body
"In Afghanistan, owning anything American, especially if it wasn't second-hand, is a sign of wealth"

# data[].attributes.body
"But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, religion was going to change that either.... Sometimes, my entire childhood seems like one long lazy summer with Hassan."

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“But before you sacrifice yourself for him, think about this: Would he do the same for you? Have you ever wondered why he never includes you in games when he has guests? Why he only plays with you when no one else is around? I’ll tell you why, Hazara. Because to him, you’re nothing but an ugly pet…”

# data[].attributes.body
"Ali drew Hassan to him, curled his arm around his son's shoulder. It was a protective gesture and I knew whom Ali was protecting him from. Ali glanced my way and in his cold, unforgiving look, I saw that Hassan had told him. He had told him everything, about what Assef and his friends had done to him, about me."

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"'I don't know. Maybe we should go home.'" Then he stepped towards me and in a low voice, said something that scared me a little. 'Remember, Amir agha. There's no monster, just a beautiful day.'"

# data[].attributes.body
"On Eid, the three days of celebration after the holy month of Ramadan, Kabulis dressed in their best and newest clothes and visited their families. People hugged and kissed and greeted each other with "Eid Mubarak." Happy Eid."

# data[].attributes.body
"Because the truth of it was, I always felt like Baba hated me a little. And why not? After all, I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I? The least I could have done was to have had the decency to have turned out a little more like him. But I hadn’t turned out like him."

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"Would I ever lie to you, Amir agha?"
"I don't know would you?"
"I'd sooner eat dirt"

# data[].attributes.body
"But better to get hurt by the truth than confronted with a lie."

# data[].attributes.body
"Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?"

# data[].attributes.body
"Baba and I lived in the same house, but in different spheres of existence"

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All I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption.

# data[].attributes.body
"When they left, I sat on my bed and wished Rahim Khan had been my father. Then I thought Baba and his great big chest and how good it felt when he held me against it, how he smelled of Brut in the morning, and how his beard tickled my face. I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink."

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"Why Baba waited until I was ten to have me circumcised was beyond me and one of the things I will never forgive him for."

# data[].attributes.body
"The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either."

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But he’s not my friend! I almost blurted. He’s my servant! Had I really thought that? Of course I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I treated Hassan well, just like a friend, better even, more like a brother. But if so, then why, when Baba’s friends came to visit with their kids, didn’t I ever include Hassan in our games? Why did I play with Hassan only when no one else was around?

# data[].attributes.body
Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.

# data[].attributes.body
"I was the one who went to school... Haasan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling, but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed."

# data[].attributes.body
"Buzkashi was, and still is, Afghanistan's favourite passion. A Champandaz, a highly skilled horseman usually patronized by rich aficionados, has to snatch the goat or cattle carcass from the midst of a melee..."

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"In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to raise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had ‘quelled them with unspeakable violence.’"

# data[].attributes.body
"For how he'd accepted the fact that he's grow old in in that mud shack in the years, the way his father had."

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"On the south end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the servants' home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father."

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I had one last chance to make a decision. One final opportunity to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan—the way he’d stood up for me all those times in the past—and accept whatever would happen to me.

# data[].attributes.body
"After all I had killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn't I?"

# data[].attributes.body
I actually aspired to cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing is free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba.

# data[].attributes.body
"Tell him I'll take a thousand of his bullets before I let this indecency take place."

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"You know, sometimes you are the most self centered man I know".

# data[].attributes.body
"And maybe ,just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother"

# data[].attributes.body
"He wrinkled at the word Shi'a, like it was some kind of disease."

# data[].attributes.body
"Ali and Baba grew up together as childhood playmates- at least until polio crippled Ali's leg."

# data[].attributes.body
"The kite-fighting tournament was an old winter tradition in Afghanistan. It started early in the morning on the day of the contest and didn't end until only the winning kite flew in the sky."

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"Still I don't know it." If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face didn't show it. " Well everyone in my school knows what it means" I said. "Lets see 'imbecile'. It means smart, intelligent. Ill use it in a sentence for you. 'When it comes to words, Hassan is an imbecile." "Aahh" Hassan said, nodding. I would always feel guilty about it later

# data[].attributes.body
"When they left, I sat on my bed and wished Rahim Khan had been my father"

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"They say there is a brotherhood between people who've fed from the same breast" (Chapter 7, pg 69)

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"Baba came right out and asked. "Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir's watch, Hassan?" Hassan's reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice: "Yes." I flinched, like I'd been slapped... Except Baba stunned me by saying, "I forgive you.""

# data[].attributes.body
"I spent most of the first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan."

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"We are true Afgans, the pure Afgans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood"

# data[].attributes.body
"Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba" (Chapter 7, pg 73)

# data[].attributes.body
"I grew up with Ali," he said through clenched teeth. "My father took him in, he loved Ali like his own son. Forty years Ali's been with my family. Forty goddamned years. And you think I'm just going to throw him out?"

# data[].attributes.body
"But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society or religion was going to change that either."

# data[].attributes.body
"Hassan didn't struggle. Didn't even whimper"(Chapter 7, pg 71)

# data[].attributes.body
"My door is and always is open for you, Amir jan. I shall hear any story you have to tell. Bravo."

Your friend,
Rahim

# data[].attributes.body
"those words made it formal: the tree was ours. After school, Hassan and I climbed its branches and snatched its blood-red pomegranates. After we'd eaten the fruit and wiped our hands on the grass, I would read to Hassan."

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"I would always feel guilty about it later. So I'd try to my up for it by giving him one of my old shirts or a broken toy."

# data[].attributes.body
"Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words."

# data[].attributes.body
"'We'd had a fleeting good moment - it wasn't often Baba talked to me, let alone on his lap - and I'd been a fool to waste it."

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“The earth shook a little and we heard the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire [...] A white light flashed, lit the sky in silver. It flashed again and was followed by a rapid staccato of gunfire.”

# data[].attributes.body
Every morning, I watched from my bedroom window as their Hazara servant shoveled snow from the driveway

# data[].attributes.body
"You know what always happens when the neighbourhood boys tease him? Hassan steps in and fends them off."

# data[].attributes.body
"Really? You'd do that?" [...] "do what? [...] "Eat dirt if I told you to," [...] "if you asked I would,"

# data[].attributes.body
Hassan was screaming and his arm was wrapped around my neck. "Bravo! Bravo, Amir agha!"

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“The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets.”

# data[].attributes.body
"I could step into that alley, stand up for Hassan - the way he'd stood up for me all those times in the past - and accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run. In the end, I ran."

# data[].attributes.body
"But mostly because Ali was immune to the insults of his assailants; he had found his joy, his antidote, the moment Sanaubar had given birth to Hassan."

# data[].attributes.body
"I finally had what I'd wanted all those years. Except now that I had it, I felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into."

# data[].attributes.body
"You don't order someone to polish your shoes one day and call them 'sister' the next."

# data[].attributes.body
"He motioned to me to hold his hat for him and I was glad to, because then everyone would see that he was my father, my Baba"

# data[].attributes.body
"But there was something fascinating–albeit in a sick way–about teaing Hassan. Kind of like when we used to play insect torture. Except now, he was the ant and I was holding the magnifying glass"

# data[].attributes.body
"Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words."

# data[].attributes.body
"The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either."

# data[].attributes.body
"The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born."

# data[].attributes.body
"One day, we were walking from my father's house to Cinema Zainab for a new Iranian movie, taking the shortcut through the military barracks near
Istiqlal Middle School."

# data[].attributes.body
"There was so much goodness in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it."

# data[].attributes.body
"All I saw was the blue kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption."

# data[].attributes.body
"My favourite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a big word that he didn't know. I'd tease him, expose his ignorance"

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"Someday Inshallah, you will be a great writer " Hassan said " And people all over the world will read your stories."

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Hassan's reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice:"Yes".

# data[].attributes.body
But he’s not my friend! I almost blurted. He’s my servant! Had I really thought that? Of course I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I treated Hassan well, just like a friend, better even, more like a brother. But if so, then why, when Baba’s friends came to visit with their kids, didn’t I ever include Hassan in our games? Why did I play with Hassan only when no one else was around?

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I dream that someday you will return to Kabul and revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you.

# data[].attributes.body
"For you, a thousand times over."