In these early chapters of The Kite Runner, we start to see the political instability and violence that mar Afghanistan in the 1970s. At the end of chapter 4, Amir says that "suddenly Afghanistan changed forever," and in the next chapter, he goes on to vividly describe the sounds of gunfire, which "roared like thunder" outside of Baba's house (35). The event that is occurring is part of the "bloodless coup" that deposes Zahir Shah. Amir tells us that this is the start of a violent period of Afghani history that continues into the present-day of the novel, when the Taliban rule Kabul. Amir laments, "The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs was not yet born" (36). Amir describes this time in the 1970s as the beginning of the end of "a way of life."

Later, in April of 1978, communists from Russia took over the government, and at the end of the next year, "Russian tanks would roll into the very same streets where Hassan and I played, bringing the death of the Afghanistan I knew and marking the start of a still ongoing era of bloodletting" (36). After 1973's first change in government (the bloodless coup), there was a temporary "sense of rejuvenation" in terms of the economy, government, technological developments, and women's rights. Unfortunately, this was short-lived, as in the later chapters, Amir and Baba flee to Pakistan and then to the United States due to the violence in Afghanistan. Later in the novel, we see how the Taliban takeover eventually led to even more violence. When Amir returns to Kabul, the city is completely different from that of his early childhood and his childhood friend Hassan has been killed by the Taliban due to their prejudice against Hassan's ethnic group, the Hazaras.

The first indication of real, permanent change in Afghanistan is signalled in Chapter 5, when one evening Hassan and Amir hear massive noises of gunfire and other weapons and bombs. Even though Ali, Hassan's father, tries to tell them that they are just "hunting ducks," it is clear that Amir fears what is going on and sees through this fabrication that is meant to calm them. Amir reflects, however, that these sounds of gunfire and explosions had frightened them so badly because they were sounds that had not been heard before, as this following quote reveals:

They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born. Huddled together in the dining room and waiting for the sun to rise, none of us had any notion that a way of life had ended. Our way of life.

This quote thus demonstrates conclusively that the overthrow of the monarchy in this coup is one act that effectively ends a whole way of life, as peace and prosperity are exchanged with violence upon violence, as then a Communist coup occurs followed by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. This is of course an incredibly dark period of Afghanistan's history that it is still struggling to extract itself from now in the present.