How It All Goes Down
December 2001
- Amir will narrate the whole book, except for Chapter 16, which is narrated by Rahim Khan. This first chapter is very cryptic if you haven't read the rest of the book, or at least read a summary of the plot. There, we've warned you.
- Amir tells us something happened in the winter of 1975 and this event made him what he is today. He gives us some scattered images: a crumbling mud wall, an alley, a frozen creek.
- Amir remembers a phone call last summer from his friend Rahim Khan. He feels like a past of "unatoned sins" is calling him up. So he takes a walk and looks at some kites, which remind him of someone named Hassan.
- During the walk, Amir sits on a park bench. He thinks of Baba and Ali, and Kabul, Afghanistan.
- The chapter ends where it began: "I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything. And made me what I am today" (1.3).