Amir and Hassan grow up as inseparable friends on Baba's estate in Kabul despite their different social standings.

Assef confronts Amir and Hassan in the street; Hassan loads his slingshot and threatens to shoot out Assef's left eye.

Amir wins the neighborhood kite fighting tournament and Hassan runs to retrieve the final cut kite.

Amir discovers Hassan cornered in an alley by Assef and watches the rape without stepping forward to intervene.

Amir plants a birthday watch and money beneath Hassan's mattress and reports his watch stolen to Baba.

Hassan falsely confesses to stealing to protect Amir, and Ali announces the family will leave Baba's house.

Amir and Baba escape Soviet-occupied Afghanistan by hiding inside the suffocating tank of a fuel truck.

Baba puts himself in front of an armed Russian soldier demanding sexual access to a young refugee bride.

Baba collapses at the flea market and doctors discover his lung cancer has spread to his brain.

Amir asks the ailing Baba to formally approach General Taheri and request Soraya's hand in marriage.

Amir and Soraya are married in a traditional Afghan ceremony while the cancer-weakened Baba attends.

Baba dies at home and mourners from across the local Afghan community arrive in large numbers to pay their respects.

Rahim Khan reveals that Hassan and his wife Farzana were executed by the Taliban, leaving their son Sohrab orphaned.

Rahim Khan confesses that Hassan was Amir's half-brother, secretly fathered by Baba during an affair with Ali's wife.

Amir runs a kite for Sohrab at an Afghan community gathering in Fremont, and Sohrab briefly smiles.

Amir and Hassan grow up as inseparable childhood friends in Kabul, but Amir's desperate need for Baba's approval leads him to betray Hassan in the novel's most devastating act. After framing Hassan for theft and watching the family be driven away, Amir and Baba flee Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and eventually rebuild their lives in California. Baba's terminal cancer forces Amir to stand on his own, and his marriage to Soraya marks his first real step toward adulthood before Baba dies. A phone call from Rahim Khan shatters Amir's quiet American life with the news that Hassan is dead and his son Sohrab is orphaned in Taliban-controlled Kabul. Amir returns to face his past and his old nemesis Assef in a brutal confrontation that finally delivers the reckoning he has long believed he deserved. The novel closes with a small but hard-won gesture of hope as Amir runs a kite for Sohrab and sees the boy briefly smile.

Amir's betrayal of Hassan and his long road to redemption.

Baba funds the construction of a local orphanage in Kabul entirely out of his own pocket.

Amir writes his first short story and reads it aloud; Baba is dismissive but Rahim Khan leaves an encouraging letter praising its irony.

A bloodless coup unseats the Afghan monarchy on the same night Amir reads his first story to Hassan.

Baba arranges a surprise visit from a surgeon to repair Hassan's harelip as an unexpected birthday gift.

Amir asks Baba to replace Ali and Hassan with new servants; Baba erupts in fury and flatly refuses.

Amir hurls pomegranates at Hassan at the hilltop tree; Hassan smashes one against his own forehead instead of retaliating.

Assef arrives at Amir's 13th birthday party flanked by his parents and presents Amir with a biography of Hitler.

Baba breaks down weeping as he drives Ali and Hassan to the bus depot in an unusual summer rain.

Kamal dies from fuel fumes while the refugees escape Afghanistan, and his grief-stricken father immediately shoots himself.

Baba presents Amir with a navy-blue Ford Gran Torino as a graduation gift and says he wishes Hassan were there.

Soraya confesses her past affair to Amir before their marriage; Amir nearly admits his own secret but stays silent.

Amir and Soraya learn from a specialist that they are unable to conceive a child naturally.

Hassan's estranged mother Sanaubar returns to his household wounded and unrecognizable, and the family nurses her back to health.

Amir visits his ruined childhood home in Kabul and finds the pomegranate tree still carved with their two names.

Amir confronts General Taheri at a family dinner and insists he tell everyone the full truth about Baba, Hassan, and Sohrab.

Pool 2 traces the quieter but equally important events that give the main plot its texture and meaning, from Baba's public generosity in Kabul to the small private moments that expose the fault lines beneath a privileged childhood. Hassan's harelip surgery, Amir's first writing success, and a political coup form the backdrop to a friendship already straining under social inequality. The aftermath of the kite tournament is revealed through emotional ruptures — Baba's tears as he drives Ali and Hassan away, and the cascade of tragedies during the escape from Afghanistan. In California, Amir's courtship of Soraya and the couple's quiet grief over infertility show a man still haunted by sins he cannot name. Back in Afghanistan, the return of Hassan's estranged mother and Amir's discovery of his ruined childhood home deepen the novel's themes of loss and longing. The pool closes with Amir's fierce confrontation of General Taheri, a final act of honesty that undoes a lifetime of silence and shame.

The secondary moments and relationships that shape Amir's world from Kabul to California.

Amir overhears Baba tell Rahim Khan that a boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything.

Hassan identifies a plot hole in Amir's first story while listening by lamplight, impressing Amir with his sharp instincts.

Hassan describes a dream of swimming safely in a lake with no monster in it on the morning of the kite tournament.

Amir returns home clutching the blue kite after the tournament and breaks down weeping in Baba's arms.

Amir mutters aloud in a dark room in Jalalabad that he watched Hassan's rape, but no one hears the confession.

Rahim Khan draws Amir aside at his 13th birthday party, nearly coaxes out a confession, and presents him with a leather journal.

Baba tells Amir in California that he refused to return to Peshawar because America offers Amir a better future.

Amir receives Rahim Khan's phone call and realizes while walking through a park that Rahim Khan has known about Hassan's rape all along.

Rahim Khan describes how Hassan refused to move into Baba's main house and wore black in mourning for forty days.

Hassan and Farzana's first child is born stillborn and is buried near sweetbrier bushes in the backyard garden.

Orphanage director Zaman tells Amir and Farid that Sohrab was sold to a Taliban official one month before their arrival.

The Taliban official in John Lennon glasses removes his disguise and reveals himself to be Amir's childhood tormentor Assef.

Amir begins laughing uncontrollably during Assef's brutal beating, recognizing it as the punishment he has craved since Hassan's rape.

Sohrab slashes his wrists in a hotel bathtub after Amir tells him he may need to enter an orphanage.

Amir spreads a bedsheet in a hospital corridor and prays toward Mecca for the first time in many years.

Pool 3 traces the pivotal moments of awareness and decision that shape the novel's emotional core, beginning with Amir's childhood insecurities and building toward his hard-won spiritual awakening. From overhearing Baba's harsh judgment of him as a boy to the moment he laughs during Assef's beating and finally recognizes the punishment he always believed he deserved, these events chart the inner arc of a man consumed by guilt. The suppressed confession in Jalalabad, the near-admission at the birthday party, and Hassan's prophetic dream all show Amir circling the truth without ever daring to speak it. Rahim Khan's revelations in Pakistan force Amir to completely reframe his understanding of his own history and his half-brother. The pool closes in a Peshawar hospital corridor where Amir kneels and prays for the first time in years, the moment his spiritual awakening fully begins.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Amir's inner journey.