The Kite Runner - Characters

Characters

• Amir is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He was born in 1963, and his mother died giving birth. He is a Pashtun. As a child, Amir delighted himself with storytelling and was encouraged by Rahim Khan to become an author. At age eighteen, he and his father fled to America following the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, where Amir pursues his dream of being a writer.
• Hassan is Amir's closest childhood friend. He is described as having a China doll face, green eyes, and a harelip. The reader eventually discovers that Hassan is actually the son of Baba and Sanaubar, although Hassan never knows this during his lifetime. Hassan was later shot by the Taliban led by Mohammed Omar for refusal to abandon Amir's property.
• Assef is the main antagonist of the novel. He is the son of an Afghan father and a German mother and ironically, given that he is of mixed origin, an advocate of Pashtun dominance over the Hazara. As a teenager, he is a neighborhood bully and is described as a "sociopath" by Amir. Many of his cruel actions as a child include raping Hassan as a means of revenge against Amir, and giving Amir a biography of Adolf Hitler as a birthday present. As an adult, he joins the Taliban and rapes and abuses Hassan's son Sohrab.
• Baba is Amir's father and a wealthy businessman who aids the community by creating businesses for others and building a new orphanage. He is also the biological father of Hassan, a secret he takes to the grave. Baba is born in 1933 (when the Afghan king begins his 40-year reign). According to legend, he won in a fight with a black bear in his younger years. Believing that sin could be explained as a form of stealing from one's fellow man, he does not endorse the religiosity demanded by the clerics in the religion classes attended by Amir in school. Baba is disappointed in his son Amir, whom he wishes to be as manly as he is, and appears to favor Hassan. In his later years after fleeing to America, he works at a gas station. He dies from cancer in 1987, shortly after Amir and Soraya's wedding.
• Ali is Baba's servant, a Hazara believed to be Hassan's father. In his youth, Baba's father adopted him after his parents were killed by a drunk driver. Before the events of the novel, Ali had been struck with polio, rendering his right leg useless. Because of this, Ali was constantly tormented by children in the town. He was killed by a land mine in Hazarajat.
• Rahim Khan is Baba's loyal friend and business partner, as well as a mentor to Amir. Rahim convinces Amir to come to Pakistan by saying "there is a way to be good again." He eventually tells Amir that Hassan is his half brother, and that he should save Sohrab. He dies peacefully knowing he has successfully made Amir the man Baba wanted him to be.
• Soraya is a young Afghan woman whom Amir meets in America. She lives with her parents, Afghan general Taheri and his wife. She meets Amir at a flea market and later marries him. Soraya wants to become an English teacher. Before meeting Amir, she ran away with an Afghan boyfriend in Virginia, which, according to Afghan tradition, made her unsuitable for marriage. Because Amir also had his own regrets, he loved and married her anyway. Soraya wants to have children but cannot because of "unexplained infertility".
• Sohrab is the son of Hassan. After his parents are killed and he is sent to an orphanage, Assef buys him and physically abuses the child. Amir saves him, and then is saved by Sohrab in a pivotal confrontation. He is later adopted by Amir and Soraya, where he (very slowly) adapts to his new life. Sohrab greatly resembles a young version of his father Hassan.
• Sanaubar is Ali's wife and the mother of Hassan. Shortly after Hassan's birth, she runs away from home and becomes a gypsy. She later returns to Hassan in his adulthood. To make up for her neglect she provided a grandmother figure for Sohrab, Hassan's son.
• Farid is a taxi driver who is initially abrasive toward Amir, but later befriends him. Two daughters of Farid's seven children were killed by a land mine, a disaster which mutilated three fingers on his left hand and also took some of his toes. After spending a night with Farid's brother's impoverished family, Amir hides a bundle of money under the mattress to help them: the secretive act once committed to hurt his friend Hassan, he now does to help someone he barely knows.
• General Taheri is the father of Soraya. General Taheri lives mainly off welfare, considering himself too good for ordinary work. He is always waiting for a call to be restored to his former position as a high-ranking general in Kabul, which he eventually receives at the end of the novel, after the fall of the Taliban.
• Khala/Khanum Jamila is Soraya's mother, who lovingly accepts Amir into her family. She sees Amir as someone who could "do no wrong in her eyes."
• Farzana is Hassan's wife and Sohrab's mother, a shy Hazara who is later shot to death by the Taliban.