Chapter 12
• Baba falls ill with lung cancer and refuses treatment.
• Amir falls in love with Soraya and asks for his father’s help in asking for her hand in
marriage – such respect is very important to Afghan families.
• Soraya feels she cannot commit to Amir until she admits her “guilty secret” that she
ran off with another man when she was younger – “You need to know. I don’t want
us to start with secrets”. Amir accepts her regardless. What is the irony that is
occurring here?
• Soraya admits that she longs to be a teacher because she wants to do something
worthwhile. What is the irony here?
• “I thought of how I had used my literacy to ridicule Hassan. How I had teased him
about big words he didn’t know.”
Chapter 13
• They marry and Soraya helps to care for Baba. Amir is
touched to learn that she has been sharing his stories with Baba –
acceptance at last.
• Baba dies. “I realized how much of who I was, what I was, had been
defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people’s lives. My
whole life, I had been “Baba’s son”. Now he was gone. Baba couldn’t
show me the way anymore; I’d have to find it on my own. The
thought of it terrified me.”
• Amir has his first novel published.
• Soraya and Amir try for a family. “What sort of a father would I made,
I wondered. I wanted to be just like Baba and I wanted to be nothing
like him.” What does he mean by this?
• They find they are unable to have children.