介绍:
The Kite Runner
基督教里用撒旦的七个恶魔的形象来代表七种罪恶
傲慢 (Pride)、嫉妒(Envy)、暴怒(Wrath)、懒惰(Sloth)、贪婪(Greed)、饕餮(Gluttony)、以及贪欲(Lust)。我们的确都生而有罪，人性本恶，因此需要教育来循循善诱、教化人心。
文中主和仆、贵族和贱民、朋友和兄弟，历史和现实，种种转变都被刻画得生动而细腻。放在历史的宏大背景下，更洞见人生和人性的复杂。我非常喜欢它的结尾，因为它没有被设计为一个大团圆。好像只要被救赎了，一切都变得美好而幸福。作者残忍地揭示了一个真相：救赎和幸福无关。
当我们接触到社会学、人类学和哲学史时，它们都会告诉你，人是一种生性懒惰的动物，躯体懒惰不在话下，而且心灵也是躯体的最好反映——我们永远都喜欢以最便捷、最简单、最省时省力、最不麻烦的方式去解决问题，以至我们遇到拦在路上的一尊巨石、甚至是一头猛虎，我们想到的是绕过它，而决不会去把它撵开。
懦弱是因为我们逃避，谎言是因为我们逃避、盗窃是因为我们逃避，逃避责任、逃避正义、逃避受苦、逃避肉体受到伤害，我们面对着巨石、猛虎的时候，总认为采取绕开它们这一办法，能让我们活得更容易。
可怕的是，这巨石不是实际意义上的巨石、猛虎不是具体意义上的猛虎，它们不过是大千世界各总劫难的代名词，亦如唐僧取经的路上的妖魔鬼怪，它们被赋予存在的目的有两个：一是阻挡你的前进，二是审判你的内心。倘若它们阻挡了你的前进，你大可绕过它们，但只要你还有多少良知和尊严，你无法阻止它们对你的审判，除非你撵开它们，甚至将其击垮。它们会在你绕过它们之后，如同幽灵一般偷偷爬到你的背上，沉沉地压着你。然后你在自己的生命道路上沉沉前进，让你走得越来越累，紧憋着气，总吐不出来。不知不觉中，我们便成了懦弱和谎言的傀儡，做出夺取他人成全自己的勾当。
Upstairs was my bedroom, Baba's room, and his study, also known as "the smoking room", which perpetually smelled of tobacco and cinnamon. Baba and his friends reclined on black leather chairs there after Ali had served dinner. They stuffed their pipes—except Baba always called it "fattening the pipe"—and discussed their favorite three topics: politics, Business, soccer. Sometimes I asked Baba if I could sit with them, but Baba would stand in the doorway. "Go on, now," he'd say. "This is grown-ups time. Why don't you go read one of those books of yours?" He'd close the door, leave me to wonder why it was always grown-ups? time with him. I'd sit by the door, knees drawn to my chest. Sometimes I sat there for an hour, sometimes two, listening to their laughter, their chatter.
The living room downstairs had a curved wall with custombuilt cabinets. Inside sat framed family pictures: an old, grainy photo of my grandfather and King Nadir Shah taken in 1931, two years before the king's assassination; they are standing over a dead deer, dressed in knee-high boots, rifles slung over their shoulders. There was a picture of my parents' wedding night, Baba dashing in his black suit and my mother a smiling young princess in white. Here was Baba and his best friend and Business partner, Rahim Khan, standing outside our house, neither one smiling—I am a baby in that photograph and Baba is holding me, looking tired and grim. I'm in his arms, but it's Rahim Khan's pinky my fingers are curled around.
The curved wall led into the dining room, at the center of which was a mahogany table that could easily sit thirty guests—and, given my father's taste for extravagant parties, it did just that almost every week. On the other end of the dining room was a tall marble fireplace, always lit by the orange glow of a fire in the wintertime.
A large sliding glass door opened into a semicircular terrace that overlooked two acres of backyard and rows of cherry trees. Baba and Ali had planted a small vegetable garden along the eastern wall: tomatoes, mint, peppers, and a row of corn that never really took. Hassan and I used to call it "the Wall of Ailing Corn".
On the south end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the servants' Home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father.
It was there, in that little shack, that Hassan was born in the winter of 1964, just one year after my mother died giving birth to me.
楼上是我的卧房，还有爸爸的书房，它也被称为“吸烟室”，总是弥漫着烟草和肉桂的气味。在阿里的服侍下用完晚膳之后，爸爸跟他的朋友躺在书房的黑色皮椅上。他们填满烟管——爸爸总说是“喂饱烟管”，高谈阔论，总不离三个话题：政治，生意，足球。有时我会求爸爸让我坐在他们身边，但爸爸会堵在门口。“走开，现在就走开，”他会说，“这是大人的时间。你为什么不回去看你自己的书本呢？”他会关上门，留下我独自纳闷：何以他总是只有大人的时间?我坐在门口，膝盖抵着胸膛。我坐上一个钟头，有时两个钟头，听着他们的笑声，他们的谈话声。
楼下的起居室有一面凹壁，摆着专门订做的橱柜。里面陈列着镶框的家庭照片：有张模糊的老照片，是我祖父和纳迪尔国王NadirShah（1883～1933，阿富汗国王，1929年登基，1933年11月8日被刺杀。）在1931年的合影，两年后国王遇刺，他们穿着及膝的长靴，肩膀上扛着来复枪，站在一头死鹿前。有张是在我父母新婚之夜拍的，爸爸穿着黑色的套装，朝气蓬勃，脸带微笑的妈妈穿着白色衣服，宛如公主。还有一张照片，爸爸和他最好的朋友和生意伙伴拉辛汗站在我们的房子外面，两人都没笑，我在照片中还是婴孩，爸爸抱着我，看上去疲倦而严厉。我在爸爸怀里，手里却抓着拉辛汗的小指头。
凹壁可通往餐厅，餐厅正中摆着红木餐桌，坐下三十人绰绰有余。由于爸爸热情好客，确实几乎每隔一周就有这么多人坐在这里用膳。餐厅的另一端有高大的大理石壁炉，每到冬天总有橙色的火焰在里面跳动。
拉开那扇玻璃大滑门，便可走上半圆形的露台；下面是占地两英亩的后院和成排的樱桃树。爸爸和阿里在东边的围墙下辟了个小菜园，种着西红柿、薄荷和胡椒，还有一排从未结实的玉米。哈桑和我总是叫它“病玉米之墙”。
花园的南边种着枇杷树，树阴之下便是仆人的住所了。那是一座简陋的泥屋，哈桑和他父亲住在里面。
在我母亲因为生我死于难产之后一年，也即1964年冬天，哈桑诞生在那个小小的窝棚里面。
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