Amir and Hassan,The Sultans of Kabul.

“Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul."

That line never left my head. It's from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Legendary book, really. I read it again recently, and it just felt so… different. Like, the kind of different that comes when you’ve grown older, gone through things, seen life for what it really is, and then come back to a book you once read in secondary school.

I read all of Hosseini’s books back then. A Thousand Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed… name them. I devoured them. But now? Re-reading them as an adult is like reading an entirely different story. And The Kite Runner? It hit differently. Especially now that war isn't just fiction anymore. I'm literally seeing it unfold daily on my screen,watching children lose their homes, their parents, their limbs, their lives. Watching Palestine burn in real time.

Sometimes I can’t even scroll past. I freeze. Because there's guilt. There's grief. And there’s this helplessness that eats you slowly from the inside. But somehow, reading books like this feels like a portal. Like I’m peeking into lives that mirror what’s happening right now. Lives that are aching in silence. And it hurts in ways I can’t explain.

May Allah come to their aid.

But the real thing I wanted to talk about isn’t war, at least not in the physical sense. It’s friendship.

The story of Amir and Hassan. God, it’s just somehow. Melancholic. Haunting. You name it. And that’s just how legendary Hosseini is. Every time I read his books, I don’t just read. I dissolve. My mind enters this galaxy of its own…quiet, cloudy, complicated.

Back to Amir and Hassan.

Their friendship was laced with love… and betrayal. Loyalty… and guilt. And honestly, I couldn’t help but see my own relationships in theirs. That scene,where Amir just stood there and watched Hassan get violated… I remember reading it for the first time and thinking, this boy is wicked. I was angry. So angry.

But then I grew up.

And I reread it.

And I realized…

In our own quiet, selfish ways, aren’t we all a little like Amir?

I think most times friendship isn’t pretty. Sometimes it’s not this perfect, reciprocal, storybook thing. Sometimes you’re the one who fails your friend. The one who walks away. The one who chooses self-preservation. And the hardest part? You don’t always regret it.

I’ve made selfish decisions in friendships before.

Some I wish I could take back.

Some… I don’t.

Sometimes I tell myself, maybe a little selfishness isn’t that bad.

But the truth is, it gums to you. Like a crack in the glass of the bond you once had.

And that’s why the story of Amir and Hassan will always haunt me. Because it holds up a mirror. And sometimes when I look into it, I don’t like what I see. It is Amir's face. But I’m learning to sit with that. To forgive my past selves. To hope that maybe I’ll do better next time snd perhaps stop failing so much at friendships? Even friendship with myself.

So yeah, this is me rambling at night, thinking about Kabul, Palestine, friendship, betrayal, and the things we do that we never talk about because I ate my friends portion of noodles and guilt made me remember all the other selfish things I've done.

‘

We are all a little Amir.

But maybe, just maybe, we can choose to be a little more like Hassan too.