The Kite Runner: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

The story shifts to 1933, the year that Baba was born and Zahir Shah became king of Afghanistan. In that same year two young men went driving while drunk and high and killed a Hazara couple – Ali’s parents. The killers were brought before Amir’s grandfather, who was a respected judge, and he ordered them to enlist in the army. He then adopted the orphaned Ali into his own home. Ali grew up as a servant, but also as Baba’s playmate.

They are still close, but Baba never calls Ali his friend and Amir never thinks of Hassan as his friend – their ethnic and religious divides seem too great. Nevertheless, when Amir thinks of Afghanistan he imagines Hassan’s face, and he remembers their childhood as one long playtime together. He describes some of their adventures, including watching a John Wayne movie and comparing him to the other Americans they had seen – the long-haired hippies that hung around Kabul.

Despite their closeness, Hassan spends the day cleaning the house and preparing food while Amir goes to school in Baba’s fancy American car. Hassan is illiterate because of his servant class, but he is fascinated by stories. Amir often reads to him in an old cemetery atop a nearby hill, under the boys’ favorite pomegranate tree. In the trunk of the tree Amir had carved the words “Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul.” Amir enjoys teasing Hassan when Hassan doesn’t understand a big word that Amir reads, and sometimes Amir makes up a meaning for it.

The boys’ favorite story is “Rostam and Sohrab,” in which the warrior Rostam kills his enemy in battle and then discovers it is his long-lost son Sohrab. It is a tragic story, but Amir feels that all fathers have a secret desire to kill their sons.

One day under the pomegranate tree Amir begins to make up his own story while pretending he is still reading out loud. Hassan says it is one of the best stories Amir has ever read to him. Amir is elated by this and that night he writes his first story, about a man whose tears turn into pearls, and who makes himself miserable so he can keep crying and become richer. The story ends with him atop a mountain of pearls, crying over the wife he has murdered.

Amir tries to show the story to Baba (who is talking with Rahim Khan), but Baba is uninterested. Rahim Khan, however, takes the story and offers to read it. At that moment Amir wishes Rahim Khan was his father, but then he feels immediately guilty.

Later that night Rahim Khan leaves Amir a note that says he has a “special talent,” and that the story has an impressive use of irony. He encourages Amir to keep writing. Amir is exhilarated by the praise, and he wakes up Hassan, who is downstairs, and reads the story to him. Hassan says the story is wonderful and that Amir will be a great writer one day, but then Hassan wonders why the man in the story didn’t just make himself cry by chopping onions. Amir is annoyed that Hassan thought of this and he didn’t, and he thinks a cruel thought about Hassan as just an illiterate Hazara.