The Kite Runner

Posting again on the subject of gratitude, allow me to bring up another book I finished recently, The Kite Runner. Author Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan, and his novel is set there prior to the rise of communism. This incredible story traces a first person account of Amir’s wealthy childhood there and his transition to an immigrant life in the United States.

Beyond the view of another culture, the story is particularly noteworthy for how it captures the magic of moments that are of great importance to those partaking in them and to no one else. An engagement of a couple is a wonderful thing, but outside of friends and family, it doesn’t matter. It does not impact the world. It is not difficult to believe because it is equally simple to achieve. But to the man and the woman, it is everything, a moment of everyday wonder. Hosseini grabs every drop of enchantment in such flashes of life, and it reminds you that these are what make life worth living.

While the story is beautiful and riveting, I recommend the book partially because of the view it provides of how “the other half lives”. While that statement is typically used in America referring to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, we fail to understand that we are the rich and the glamorous. You, me, all of us. In further adjustment to the adage, “half” doesn’t cover it either. To understand who we are and how we live, realize that 90% of Americans are richer than 90% of the rest of the world. Basically, if you are above the poverty line here, you are wealthier than 90% of the planet. That’s rich.

Food is not an issue in the US. Granted, ethanol and oil have driven up prices, and there are some homeless who hunger, and a few others in horrific situations that do as well, but these are, in a world view, statistically insignificant. Poor Americans are even fatter than the upper and middle class. How many Ethiopians would love to have the “problem” of being overweight? Most of our poor here also have cable, and many have air conditioning. We do not understand poverty in this nation. As a concept it is something studied in history books in the chapters on the Great Depression and the Gilded Age. Or on commercials for foreign children that interrupt our programs, 30 seconds at a time. As a people, we have forgotten how it feels to hunger. Perhaps I’m wrong, as, fortunately, Americans are by far the most generous givers in the world, both in total dollars and as a percentage of our incomes. Maybe we do still remember, and we do appreciate what we have.

A particularly captivating scene occurs as Amir describes life in America to a friend from his childhood. He talks of grocery stores, where the shelves are always filled, and how there is every type of bread he could imagine, how the milk and eggs are always cold and never spoiled. He describes a TV in every home, with a minimum of dozens of channels, sometimes hundreds. Amir tells him that children don’t work here, but go to school. Every family has a car, and most have more than one. The juxtaposition of the life of an incredibly rich Afghan family and of a poor immigrant American one is as startling for the similarities in lifestyle as it is for the differences.

While the title character was not, Afghanis are poor. Poor back in the monarchy prior to communism, worse yet under Soviet control, and poorer still under the Taliban. The Kite Runner takes us to pieces of each of them; unforgettable moments, most of which contain suffering that is anything but everyday.

Well, not everyday for this rich American. This is another reason to be grateful. We all won the genetic lottery, where the ticket is being born and the prize is birthing in Canada, Oceania, Western Europe or America. We had better all hope that Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25 are all mistaken, and that it is in fact easier for a rich man to enter Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle. If not, we are all going to Hell.

You know, where the rest of the world has been all along.

Angela's Ashes

Since the greatest purpose of this blog is to catalog the things for which I am grateful (yes, I'm easily distracted) I think I'll hop back on track for a post. Of course, it's easy to be grateful for what I have after reading about life in Ireland during the Great Depression.

Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's memoir of his childhood. While very funny in parts, courtesy of McCourt's dry wit and terrific phrasing, this book is not a real fun read. Hearing how he lived in near-starving conditions, it was great when he described the Friday's when his dad would bring home a paycheck. He painted a picture of the family having eggs (no meat for Catholics on Friday), everything getting cleaned, and, basically, fundamental human needs were being met. I took no pleasure knowing that most Fridays his dad would take his paycheck and blow it all at the pub.

At the beginning of the book, McCourt says it is terrible to have a poor childhood, but infinitely worse to have a poor Irish childhood. Alcoholism is always a blight upon the families it infects, but its cultural epidemic upon the Irish working class was more of a holocaust.

In addition to the value of the book for purely literary purposes, it was a blinding reminder to be grateful for my childhood and, in particular, my father. Seeing the destruction alcoholism causes in the lives of Frankie and his family, I feel pretty blessed having a dad who was never drunk. Ever. Dad never stumbled home, angry or depressed. He came home and then took us to whichever sport team we were on -and he was coaching. I suppose instead of hitting his kids, he just us that he was proud of us and loved us. Instead of declaring the cruelties of life over a drink, he consistently referred to himself as the luckiest man in the world. Most of my weekend mornings were started hearing my dad singing at the top of his lungs: Al Jolsen, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby.

To be fair, I do remember the first time I saw my dad drunk. I was in college, and we were playing beer pong together at my fraternity's father-son tournament. Seriously. It was a great night. Much to my embarrassment at the time, I learned my dad is the EXACT same kind of drunk I am: cheerful, friendly, and overly affectionate in that mortifying "I-love-you-maaaan" kind of way. God. anyway, looking back, I don't have a lot to complain about. If my experiences read like a storybook, it's probably because that's where tales such as mine usually are found.

My dad isn't perfect but not a lot of people are. To be sure though, he has always loved and cared for his wife and children, and that is about the greatest measure of a man. To summarize this review and homage, I leave you with a piece from Angela's Ashes. Just try and view my life as one where nothing like this could ever happen, and you'll do a decent job of figuring me out.

At one point, little Frankie steals fish and chips, still in wrapper, that a drunken man has let fall to the floor in a pub. Realizing he’d go to Hell if he were to die that night, he finds a church to confess in while on the way home. Here is that conversation.


Frankie: “Bless me father for I have sinned, it’s a fortnight since my last confession.” I tell him the usual sins and then, “I stole fish from a drunken man.”

Father: “Why, my child?”

“I was hungry, Father.”

“Why were you hungry?”

“There was nothing in my belly, Father.” He says nothing, and even though it’s dark I know he’s shaking his head.

“My child, why can’t you go home and ask your mother for something?”

“Cause she sent me out looking for my father in the pubs, Father, and I couldn’t find him. And she hasn’t a scrap in the house cause he’s drinking the five pounds Grandpa sent from the North for the new baby, and she’s raging by the fire because I can’t find my father.”

I wonder if this priest is asleep. Cause he’s very quiet till he says, “My child, I sit here, I hear the sins of the poor, I assign the penance, I bestow absolution, I should be on my knees, washing their feet. Do you understand me, my child?”

I tell him I do, but I don’t.

“Go home child, pray for me.”

“No penance, Father?”

“No, my child.”

“I stole the fish and chips, I’m doomed!”

“You’re forgiven. Go. Pray for me.”

He blesses me in Latin, talks to himself in English. I wonder what I did to him.