The Kite Runner: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

The next night Amir and Baba go to the Taheris’ house for the lafz, the ceremony of “giving word.” Baba looks tired, but he says it is the happiest day of his life. The house is full of people, and Jamila is already crying with happiness when Amir enters. General Taheri is also pleased, and he says they are doing things the proper Afghan way now.

Usually there would be an engagement party, then an engagement of a few months, and then the wedding, but they decide to have the wedding quickly because of Baba’s illness. Baba spends almost all of his life savings on the wedding, renting an Afghan banquet hall and buying Amir’s tuxedo and rings.

The wedding is a happy blur for Amir – he and Soraya repeat their oaths and then walk through the hall as the Afghan wedding song plays. Then they sit together on a sofa, are covered with a veil, and look at each other’s reflections in a mirror. Amir whispers to Soraya for the first time that he loves her. After the ceremony there is joyful partying in the banquet hall, and then back at Baba’s apartment. Amir cannot help wondering if Hassan had also been married. Late that night Amir and Soraya make love for the first time.

Soraya wants to move in with Baba immediately because he is so sick. One day Amir comes home and sees Soraya slipping Amir’s old leather-bound notebook – the one Rahim Khan gave him – under Baba’s blanket. They admit they have both been reading his stories, and Amir has to leave the room to cry with joy. A month after the wedding the Taheris and some other friends come over for a big dinner. Amir can tell that Baba is happy watching him and Soraya together. Baba dies in his sleep that night.

The mosque is filled with Afghans for Baba’s funeral, and many of them tell stories about how Baba helped them when no one else would. Amir thinks of the old story of Baba wrestling the black bear, and he thinks of the many bears Baba had to wrestle in his lifetime – the last one was cancer, but even then Baba lost on his own terms.

Listening to everyone’s stories of Baba, Amir realizes how his father has defined who he is all his life. Now Baba is not around anymore, and Amir must find his own way. This thought frightens him. He finds Soraya and they walk together through the cemetery, and Amir cries for the first time since Baba’s death.

Because they had such a brief engagement, Amir is still learning about Soraya’s family after the wedding. General Taheri gets bad, week-long migraines once a month. He does not work, as laboring is beneath someone of his position, and he accepts welfare. Every day he dresses up in his suit and waits for Afghanistan to be freed, and for his services to be called upon again.

Jamila was once a great singer, but the General has not allowed her to sing in public since they were married. Jamila comes to adore Amir, as he listens to her complain about her health, and he has cured her of her greatest fear – that her daughter would never marry.

After Soraya overhears some other Afghans gossiping about her “lack of virtue” at a wedding, she becomes frustrated and enraged at the Afghan double standard for men and women’s promiscuity. She tells Amir more about what happened to her in Virginia – when General Taheri came to fetch her, he had a gun with him, and when she got home he made her cut off all of her hair.

Soraya is still relieved that Amir didn’t reject her when he learned about her past, and she says that he is very different from any other Afghan guy she has met. Amir thinks that maybe this is because Baba was such a liberal father, or because Amir was only around men his whole life, or because he knows all too well about having a guilty past.

After Baba’s death, Amir and Soraya get their own apartment in Fremont, close to the Taheris’ home. General Taheri gives Amir a typewriter as a housewarming gift. Amir sells Baba’s van and never returns to the flea market. Amir is accepted to San Jose State college and becomes an English major, and he takes on a security job on the side, using the long, quiet hours to start his first novel.

Soraya enrolls at the same school and starts studying to be a teacher. General Taheri thinks she is wasting her talents, which makes Soraya angry – she thinks her father is a coward for running from the Russians and then collecting welfare instead of working.

In the summer of 1988 Amir finishes his first novel, and eventually gets it published. All the Taheris celebrate his success, and Amir knows that Baba would have been proud of him.

The next year Amir’s novel is released and he becomes somewhat famous in the Afghan community. It is also the same year the Russians complete their exit from Afghanistan. Instead of being a time of victory in the country, the violence continues between rival Mujahedin groups and the Soviet puppet government. This is also the same year that Amir and Soraya start trying to have a baby.

After a long time without being able to conceive, Amir and Soraya start going to see different specialists, but none of them can explain why they cannot have a child. Amir and Soraya tentatively start discussing adoption, but General Taheri says he does not think it is right for Afghans, and Soraya feels slightly uncomfortable with the idea too.

Amir wonders if his inability to have a child is his punishment for the things he has done. Meanwhile, his writing career is going well, and they use the advance for his second novel to buy a house in San Francisco. Amir and Soraya lie next to each other and are happy, but the emptiness of their infertility lingers between them.