The Kite Runner...

There are two things that come to mind as I close up this book. Let me see if I can express them in some comprehensible way. First, there are (thankfully, in my opinion) books written that explore some of the real horror and pain that can happen in the human condition; books like Les Miserables and books like The Tale of Two Cities. This is a book in that vein.
It is important that we have these books especially now when every James Bond film and so very many others glorify violence. What I mean by "glorify" is that we make a hero out of the person who gets the biggest body count. What we don’t see is the reality of violence. Les Miserables, while it is a work of fiction, still is a book of many truths one being that it gives us the reality of violence. We see the consequences of unkindness, of selfishness, of pride, and of ignorance. The Kite Runner shows the reality of violence especially that violence committed against children.
There are some people who can’t read these kinds of books. They are a downer. But, this is what I think. Once, in the mall, I saw a teenager whose face had been burned away in some horrible accident. The intuitive thing to do was look away. As I drove home, I thought I’d made a mistake. The kind thing to do would have been to look him right in the eye and to smile in order to say, "I have seen that this horrible thing has happened to you, but you are noticed, you are still a part, you are a person, I see you, I know that you have suffered and I respect that you have come through a survivor. You are valuable."
I was taught that I am everyone’s neighbor. I was taught that I must strengthen the weak, lift the arms that hang down, to morn with those that morn and comfort the comfortless. How can I do that if I cannot bear to even glance, not go through it, but even to glance at pain another person may have lived through.
I once visited Dachau; not an experience I wish to repeat, but I want my daughter to see it. I glimpsed the reality of violence. I glimpsed pure evil.
If I and we can’t even glance at it, how can we keep our society from repeating the mistakes and the sins that cause so much of the horror and the pain in the world.
The following versus are sacred scripture to me:
"Teach ye diligently.. Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms– that ye may be prepared in all things." Doctrine and Covenants 88:78-80
There probably is not a topic that I would rather look away from more than the one in this book, but I am glad that I read on. I hope that the world will read this book and others like it and that these books will convince the world that we do not value our children enough. We simply don’t. If we did, we would never allow these kinds of things to happen.
Allowing it to happen brings me to my last point. For me, this is why I believe our troops should be in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I know that our military is stretched too thin. I know that we can’t be everywhere there is suffering, but we are already in these two countries. Lets stay. Lets stay until there is some form of stable government that can make children a priority again.
I also loved this book for its humanity and for its depth of feeling in human terms. I can’t imagine that this book would not resonate with most everyone. Who has not needed to forgive or to be forgiven or to forgive themselves?
I liked this line so very much. "...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night."