Time to Follow the Sun
Some of us are looking wistfully at the beautiful sunsets and realizing that the nights are closing in earlier thus signaling that Jack Frost will soon be knocking on the window. However, others amongst us are rubbing our hands in glee at the approach of winter and rushing around in a frenzy of excitedly gathering things up.
Yes, for many lucky retirees the cooler evenings and the darker mornings herald that switch-over point in their life; they are off to their other world with their other familiar friends as they leave for their annual winter escape.
Tags: beautiful sunsets, best of both worlds, grand kids, shovel snow, winter escapeThe Kite Runner – Social Impact on the Perception of Friendships
Friendships. The foundation of human interaction. The fusion of two individuals who share with each other secrets, desires, and passions. The term is loosely defined at best, and can never be given a particular set of attributes or requirements in order to qualify as a bona fide friendship. The variations are numerous, and can range from surface conversation to deep neuro-connections and, ultimately, love. In the case of Amir and Hassan in Khalid Hosseni’s novel The Kite Runner, the connection between a Pashtun and Hazara is described from both sides, and shows how the perception of a friendship varies from each pole. Hosseni hides and reveals information to the reader until the very end, when we learn that Amir and Hassan connect on a much deeper level than initially implied, as the two boys were born from the same father, and were half-brothers. Many conditions limited how far the socially legitimate half, as stated by Amir upon his realization of his connection to Hassan in reference to himself, could take this relationship, and the death grip of social division prevented Amir, a Pashtun, from even referring to Hassan, a Hazara, as a friend.
In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara. I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing. A fact stated by Amir at the start of the Novel. Despite the fact that Amir and Hassan played together, ate together, and even experienced family events, social prejudiced once again demonstrated that it had the power to influence even the most intimate decisions – even if the effected is a young Afghani child. However, Amir does demonstrate some courage in the face of intense racial diversity as he continued But we were kids, who had learned to crawl together. And no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either.. Amir knew that he was socially superior to his servant, but he also recognized his presence as a faithful companion – a release for interaction – normal that he could count on. However, racial separation is racial separation, Amir could never refer to a Hazara as a ‘friend’. He would always be a servant to his family – a social inferior. Association to a Hazara could be compared to the adversity a Hispanic would face interacting with an African American in the 1960s.
Tags: faithful companion, hazara, human interaction, kite runner, racial diversity