Kiter Runner Chapter 13

Much about this chapter affected me emotionally.

For starters, General Taheri's disappointment at Soraya's wanting to become a teacher is very palpable to me. Admit it, in the United States, white collar jobs have a hierarchy. On the top of the pyramid come the monied professionals, the doctors, lawyers, financiers, then come the successful managers, power salespeople and entrepreneurs, all followed by teachers, social workers, and others who join the service professions.

I once thought of going to law school, attracted by the status and money that would reward me at the the end of the academic journey, but I kept coming back to teaching which in some ways I feel has been wired into my DNA. I've never looked back and I feel glad that I followed by heart and not the cash and prestige. It is a rich man who is happy with what he does for a living!

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The older we get, the more we think of our mortality. I've read The Kite Runner before I had anyone close in my life pass away. Last February, my father-in-law, a man whom I had known, respected, and loved for twenty years, passed away. He had many friends in his life, but he had long outlived them all, so his funeral was sparsely attended.

Baba was a man who only a few years prior had been strong and vital, loved for his generosity and gregariousness. The beautiful words said by so many at his funeral serve as a perfect tribute to a good man who lived his life well.

Kite Runner - Chapter 5

Like Amir and Hassan, I once bore the brunt of a bully. My persecutor, Paul Monakey, terrified me back in the seventh grade. Two years older than I, he got his kicks escorting me from the bus stop to my house, applying a vice-like headlock the whole entire way. Desperation and anger guided my fist to smash into his face the next time he came for me. Of course he walloped me back, and I truely saw stars and did some bleeding. He never touched me again.

I appreciate how this chapter juxtaposes Assef, a psychotic bully famed for biting or ripping off another child's ear, to the plastic surgeon, hired by Baba to erase Hassan's hare-lip, a beautiful birthday present indeed. Here we see a flesh destroyer and a flesh healer.

Kite Runner Chapter 4

Chapter 4
As a teacher, this chapter particularly resonated with me. Fired up both by his obsessive passion for books and reading aloud to Hassan, his most ardent fan, Amir discovers that he has a knack for impromptu story-telling and creative writing. This epiphany is fanned by Rahim Kahn after Hassan once again smarts from the rejection of his he-man-sports-loving-bear-wrestling father. Rahim, after reading his first story about the pearl-crying man, tells the young writer “Bravo,” and gives him a kind note encouraging him to follow his talent, asserting that people who waste their God-given talents are “donkeys.”

Hassan’s inadvertent inspiration is life-changing for Amir, while Rahim Kahn’s encouragement is deliberate. Enabling children to realize their innate talents, and then encouraging them to become “their own best teachers” seems more precious than pearls or rubies.

The Kite Runner Project

If you're anything like me, you're something of a procrastinator, but that's OK. So long as you get the job done right and on time for the people who write your checks, write your observations, or give you the grades, then you'll be fine.

Did you know that creative people often wait long periods of time to think of something, then create what they need to do in one or two magnificent burst. If you haven't yet immersed yourself in your project, then use the weekend to make it happen.

Here are the parameters.

1. If it's appropriate, use big vibrant colors. Nothing wows 'em like color!
2. Avoid handwriting of any kind. If you need to hand write, please be neat.
3. Work on creating artifacts that I'll beg you to keep to beautify my room in the future. Make it something that I'll want to share with students in my other classes.
4. Proofread. Proofread. Proofread.
5. Be ready to proudly present your work on Monday.

The 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah

This is the third time that I've read Kite Runner and I encountered something on page 67 that intrigued me. I want to know more about Islam, a religion that dominates the news, a religion that burgeons with 1.8 billion people, and here I am, an educated fellow, and I know virtually nothing about it.

As the book gets started, a reference is made about the 10th day of Dhul-Hijjah. I investigated on-line and made a Text to Text connection that floored me: Muslims believe that the patriarch Abraham (Ibrahim) had only one son - Ishmael. Jews and Christians believe that he had two: Ishmael, the first-born by the maidservant Hagar, and Isaac, birthed by Sarah.

The Judeo-Christain tradition dictated that God directed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on top of a mountain. Moments before the old man was about to slit his son's troat, along came an unnamed angel who ordered him to call it off, as he just proved his faith.

On the nine days preceding the 10th of Dhul-Hijjah, an Islamic month, Muslim pilgrims intensively prepare for the Haj. On the 10th day they commemorate with a festival, observing the time that Ismael was nearly sacrificed by Ibrahim and saved in the nick of time by an angel named Gibril (English-Gabriel, Hebrew-Gavriel).

On the second day of Rosh Hashana, Jews read about the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac. Ten days later, Yom Kippur gets observed.

I wonder what other parallels exist between Judaism and Islam?