Kite Runner

I saw a remarkable film the other day: The Kite Runner (I have the book, but had not yet read it). Watching this film was one of those experiences that moved me in ways and for reasons that I almost can't discern or describe. Parts of it were extremely painful to watch, and yet it felt like a necessary pain, the kind of unavoidable pain that is part of being human.

The starkness of its depiction of life in modern Afghanistan unveiled something completely foreign to me as a Westerner, and yet the intimacy and immediacy with which it was revealed made it so human, so tender, the complete opposite of foreign.

It took me into a world, I realized as I watched, that I had not even really been able to imagine before, and yet through the artistry of the film-makers I knew it was showing me something totally real - a world that exists now, on the other side of the globe. Perhaps the fact that it has its echoes in a neighborhood not 30 miles from where I live now is part of what brought this story home to me on such a personal level, though I have never met any of the Afghani people who've made their homes here.

Whatever the reasons, The Kite Runner opened up the heart of Afghanistan for me like no news report has done... it left me standing aghast – looking directly into the pain of a collective wound that encompasses war and mass perpetrations of inhumanity, petite betrayals and personal inadequacies – and mesmerized by the uncrushable human spirit that seeks redemption, no matter how great the battle or what the odds are against us.