The Kite Runner | Chapter 18

Amir feels betrayed and angry and does a lot of soul searching in "a smoky little samovar house," as he "took a gulp of the blackest tea he'd had in years." He feels as disoriented as a man who awakens in his own home and suddenly finds all the furniture completely rearranged. He now understood why Baba was so deeply attached to Hassan and why he had arranged for plastic surgery to correct Hassan's harelip and why "he (Baba) had wept, wept, when Ali announced that he and Hassan were leaving [them]." He is now convinced that his father is a thief, "and a thief of the worst kind, because the things he'd stolen had been sacred: from me the right to know I had a brother, from Hassan his identity, and from Ali his honor." He feels guilty that he, like his father, betrayed the one person who would have done anything for him: "we had both betrayed the people who would have given their lives for us." He realises that if Ali and Hassan had both come to America, "where most people didn't even know what a Hazara was" things would have been different. Amir decides to go to Kabul to set right matters by bringing Sohrab to Peshawar and thus "atone not just for his sins but for Baba's too."