The Kite Runner: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

Farid and Amir drive through Kabul on the way to Amir’s old neighborhood. They pass a dead body hanging from a beam, and two beggars haggling over an artificial leg. They reach the Wazir Akbar Khan district and the houses there are in better shape. Farid says the Taliban live there now, as well as the “people behind the Taliban,” who are mostly foreigners.

Amir sees Baba’s old house, and then the narrative slips into Amir’s memory of him and Hassan finding a little turtle, painting its shell red, and pretending it is a monster they have tamed. The story returns to the present, as Amir stands outside the gates and looks in. There is an unfamiliar car in the driveway, and the house looks smaller than Amir remembered it. Amir finds his old bedroom window and remembers watching Ali and Hassan drive away.

Farid warns Amir that they shouldn’t linger, and he says that it is best to just forget the past, as nothing has survived. But Amir says he is tired of trying to forget. He climbs the hill to the old pomegranate tree, and finds his old carving in the trunk: “Amir and Hassan. The Sultans of Kabul.” Amir sits down and looks down over the city, remembering it as it once was. Then Farid honks and they have to leave.

They stay in a run-down, overpriced hotel that night, and Farid asks Amir about America. Amir talks about the overabundance of food and television, and then he and Farid tell old Afghan jokes. The next day they go to Ghazi Stadium for the soccer game. The field is just cratered dirt, the players have to wear long pants, and no one in the crowd dares cheer too loudly.

At halftime, two red pickup trucks full of Taliban drive into the stadium, and they unload a blindfolded man and woman, one from each truck. They bury them both up to their chest, the woman screaming wildly. Amir wants to leave, but he feels he must watch. An old cleric recites a prayer, and Amir suddenly remembers Baba mocking his old religious teacher, and saying “God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”

The cleric makes a speech, explaining that they are there to carry out God’s law and punish sinners. He says that adulterers throw stones at God’s house, and so they must throw stones back. Then another Taliban official steps out of the truck, and Amir and Farid recognize him as the man they are looking for – he is wearing “John Lennon” sunglasses and draws cheers from the crowd.

The official throws starts throwing stones at the male prisoner until his head is a mangled pulp, and then he moves on to the woman. The Taliban then throw the bodies into the back of a truck, and the soccer game resumes. Farid arranges a meeting with the official for three o’clock that same afternoon – all he has to do is tell one of the Talibs that they have business to discuss.