The Fraudulence of Liberation

What if your homeland, a sanctuary that you once held dear to you, suddenly becomes consumed by an unnerving guilt, one that transforms it into a place of nightmare? In *Khaled Hosseini's debut novel, The Kite Runner, he conjures two places that is contrasted in order to reveal Amir's true emotions about a past that he tries desperately to escape from, but cannot succeed to do so. For once you face the truth, there is no going back.
Amir lives a grand life in the city of Kabul. His father is held in high regards, yielding the reward of a luxurious life for Amir. His wishes were granted at the snap of a finger, and he left as if he was superior to the rest of the world. To him, home was his own personal heaven. He never had to do chores and he got everything he ever wanted. However, a person simply cannot have all his wishes come true. There was one thing he sought for, but never could acchive. That was to gain his father's acceptance, for his father to be proud of the boy he was, and not the boy his father wanted him to be. His fairy tale life suddenly warps into an nightmare when he witnesses an unspeakable crime done to Hassan, his best friend and unknowingly, his brother. When Amir refuses to reveal the secret, his perfect life slowly unravels until he finds himself escaping from a civil war that thrusts him into a life of hardship. What was once so perfect comes crashing down at the blink of an eye; the soaring kite burns to the ground, for shrapnel bombs and grenades were the new stars that lit up the skies of Kabul.
Amir's father and himself relocate to California to liberate themselves from the civil war that was stirring back in their homeland, and in this new place that they were forced to call home, hardship defined every passing day. Their luxurious life ceased to exist, and Amir finally learns the meaning of hard work. Baba [his father] pains to have left his homeland, but ironically, Amir feels a sense of success from getting away from Kabul. Though he knows that he traded his grand life for a life of work, he somehow manages to convince himself that his guilt is finally going away. That running away from the scene of the crime could liberate him from being persecuted by his guilt. Also, California gave Amir the chance to finally earn his father's affection, so he felt no guilt of having to run away from Kabul. He was content with his new life.
The comparison between Kabul and California deals mainly with guilt and affection. By running away from Kabul, Amir thinks to himself that he's freed his guilt from his body, destroying it and never looking back. However, California was merely a guise, a camouflaged depiction of his guilt. When he is forced to return to Kabul, his mind comes full circle and he is forced to finally accept that he has made a mistake when he learns of Hassan's death, a death that could've been avoided if he put aside his pride and revealed who raped Hassan. But as he looks at his destroyed homeland, he feels as if he is destroyed as well, internally. Hosseini chooses to depict two entirely different places to represent Amir's selfishness and guilt. Kabul was his sanctuary that quickly turned into a raging hell, and held a secret that he'd rather forget than face. California held a life of work, but it didn't matter to Amir, as long as he got what he wanted: liberation from his guilt.
*Khaled Hosseini's final message is that no matter where Amir escaped to, there was no escaping from his past and fate will eventually force him to face what he'd been desperately running from, going back to the central theme of the novel: redemption. When he finally accepts his mistake, Amir finally learns the true meaning of sacrifice and penance as he puts his own life in danger to save Hassan's only son from a group of terrorists, and as he realizes that he's almost like a stranger in his own homeland. Though he tried to escape from his past, it caught up to him in the end, even if he did run so far away. Ultimately, no distance would save him from facing the truth.

***thanks kylie t. for the correction on his name