Who Wrote The Kite Runner & How It's Made?

The author of 2004 best-selling book " Khalid Hosseini"

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat with the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother was a Dari and History teacher in one of the high schools in Kabul. In 1976, the Afghan Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini's family to Paris. After awhile the Hosseini's sought and were granted political asylum in the United States, and in September of 1980, Hosseini's family moved to San Jose, California.

Khalid Hosseini has graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University received his bachelor's degree in Biology in 1988 and then the following year, he joined in University of California-San Diego's School of Medicine in 1993. Khalid Hosseini began writing his first novel "The Kite Runner" in March of 2001 and has published it in 2003, which became an international bestseller book of 2004 and launched in 48 countries and translated in to many different languages. In 2006 he was named a goodwill envoy to UNHCR, "United Nations Humanitarian Commissions for Refugees" Agency. After his return from Afganistan, he started his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns and it was published in May of 2007 which currently "A Thousand Splendid Suns" is published in 25 countries.

The Kite Runner novel has adopted to a screen play and one of the Hollywood's biggest company has made it a movie on 2007. The casting process for the Kite Runner has started on June 2006 in Kabul by Kate Dowd the casting director and with assistance of me as a casting assistant. It was a good starting for us. After prepration and settling down, we started the first day of casting with the help of Foundation for Culture and Civil Society which I was working there on that time by auditioning for the two main characters " Amir and Hassan" started from Afghan Film Actor's Association, to open calls of Schools, Orphanages, and most training centers.

During the two and half months casting which took place in Kabul me and the casting director Kate Dowd which I loved working with her, have covered more than 10 main famous high schools including "Amani, Istiqlal, Habebia and other local elementaries to high schools, Orphanages such as Tahya-e-Maskan, Shashdarak, Alawudin, Asheyana the main center and districts centers that keeps and trains the street kids which receives fund from foreign donors. They are the biggest orphanages in Kabul and we covered almost 6,000 kids to find the two main heroes of the Kite Runner (Amir & Hassan), until we succeeded to our goal and found the happy and new faces "Zakeria Ebrahimi" 11 years old (As Young Amir) from Istiqlal high School which is one of famous high schools in Kabul and " 12 years old Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzadah" (As Young Hassan) from training center of Afghan Relief Organization in Kabul. Mostly we were covering the schools and orphanages in the mornings and in the afternoons I had to manage the open calls and auditions for the adult actors and actresses which was not easy to find the exact face or the character to match the book.

It was a long road to find our casts in Kabul, from a country which served three decades of war and combat which has lost it's heritage, culture and people and nothing left behind except destruction, but we continued to our aim of finding the stars from going to every private film companies, theater stages and preparing several open call audditions till we found most of the main characters from Kabul to preform in the movie in late septermber of 2006 in China.

After days and months of working hard and searching for the stars, finally we succeeded to find a few people for each character as a back up or to select one out of others in the final cast. We have completed the first process of finding the faces after several weeks of hard work but still we were not done and we had to choose one out of two/three actors in the second term of casting so I was printing a few pages of the script with each characters lines and distributing them to the selected actors to get ready for the final audition. Two days after in late July the hottest month of the summer in Kabul "Mark Forster" the Director and "E. Bennet Walsh" the UPM Producer arrived in to do the final cast and to do some scout for the movie around Kabul. Later of the current week I have called and schedualed all the pre casts, the ones who have been casted in the first process and had a few pages of the script to do the last and final audition for the director.

The cast were arriving on their schedualed times in the morning or in the afternoon and Mark Forster with Kate Dowd were auditioning one by one and recording on tape for final decesion and in mean while we were going for scout around the city when there was extra time between the auditioning scheduals or in the weekend. The process of scouting and auditioning took almost a week and half for the director till he has found his stars to preform in the movie. The final audition for the Kids Amir and Hassan and were not only reading the script infront of the camera, it was the practice of kite flying as well.

After two months of hard work, finally Mark and Kate the movie and casting directors have selected their cast for the movie out of hundreds of people that we have taped and auditioned and it was a relief for me after two months non stop work becuase the casting process is the main and important and as well as the first step of making a movie, and you have to work hard to find the talented actor for the exact character.

The actors that have been casted for the movie is starting with the main two young actors Zakeria Ebrahimi "Amir" Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzadah "Hassan" Ali Danesh Bakhtyari"As Sohrab son of Hassan" Massihullah Gharibzadah "Omer Kite Tournament Master" Nabi Tanha "Ali" Abdul Salam Yusoufzai " Older Assef" Abdul Qader Farookh "General Taheri" Amin Rahimi "Stadium Clerk" Mir Mahmood Shah Hashimi "Bussiness man in Baba Study" Mohamad Nabi Attai "Uncle Saifo Kite Seller" Mohamad Nadir Sarwari "Spice Merchant" Sayed Miran Farhad "Burly Man in Russian Truck" Khalil Ahmad Nooryan "Assef Guard #1" Hameeda Hamraz "Rahim Khan's Neighbor" Ahmad Yasar Zahir Shir Agha "Birthday Singer" Maimoona Ghizal "Jamila Taheri" and me Mustafa Haidari "As Party Worker". These are the 17 cast members who were cast in Afghanistan.

"Kite Flying" An Outdoor Sport

Why Kite Flying is an interesting outdoor hobby or sport in Afghaninstan?

Let's get to know that!

KITE

( Gudiparan or Patang )

People have been flying kites in Afghanistan for more than 100 years, kite flying is a common hobby of many Afghans throughout the country. It is a form of outdoor sport that many took into the status of art. From the designs and sizes of kites to the making of unbreakable tar (wire), for many this became a matter of honor to compete in who's who among the best kite fighters in their neighborhood. This addicting outdoor sport absorbed many young Afghans, even during the war.

Before the war kite flying was part of Afghans national games For those who missed out on this great Afghan past time, here is the nuts and bolts of Afghan kite and kite fighting in a nut shell. I have compiled this article to preserve this aspect of the Afghan culture. Unfortunately the kite flying was banned by the Taliban, it was against the law for several years but after the collapse of Taliban government it,s legal again and everyone loves to fly kites specially on the weekend (Friday). The type of kite which people fly is a fighter kite, it's because that when you compete with the other kites, you should cut the other kite and it's easy to move from one direction to the other. Kite cutting is when your kite's string severs the string of your competitor, launching the loser's aloft, on the battleground, there is a fate worse than losing. If your opponent should find your kite, well, the humiliation is doubled. But until then, a champion is like a rock star. Winter is one of the most great season for the kids to fly kites because the winds are strong and the schools are closed because of the cold weather but autumn is a good season for adult kite flyer's.As Kite flying is a favourite sport and everyone loves it and enjoy doing it.While it brings mostly smiles but kite flying sometimes can be dangerous, many people are injured when they fall from roofs chasing for free kites or when they lose concentration during a heated battle. Before the Taliban, people used to fly kites in a place called Chaman-e-Babrak [in northern Kabul], and the kite flying competitions were held there. Kids, teenagers, adults and older people from all over Afghanistan and Kabul City were get together for kite competition, they used to lay wagers on fighting kites. For the first-time visitor, the skies above Kabul appears to be filled with fluttering birds or pieces of paper caught in the wind. A closer look reveals hundreds of brightly colored kites soaring high into the air is really fun. When an opponent's kite is cut free, it flutters like a colorful, dying bird into the far reaches of the city. Such kites are said to be "azadi - rawest," or "free kite," and can be retrieved by neighborhood children to fly another day.
The 2004 NY times best-selling book "The Kite Runner" by Khalid Hosseini, which adopted into a screen play and DreamWorks Company made a movie out of it in 2007 describes more about the kite and it's popularity among Afghans. Here's how Khalid Hosseini describes the kite tournaments that were held before the war in Afghanistan and how kids were staying awake all night counting every minutes till morning of the tournament.

"Every winter, districts in Kabul held a kite-fighting tournament. If you were a boy living in Kabul, the day of the tournament was undeniably the highlight of the cold season. I never slept the night before the tournament. I'd roll from side to side, make shadow animals on the wall, even sit on the balcony in the dark, a blanket wrapped around me. I felt like a soldier trying to sleep in the trenches the night before a major battle. And that wasn't so far off. In Kabul, fighting kites was a little like going to war" (Hosseini, The Kite Runner, P.43)

As I said earlier the kites come in different sizes, the smallest is the size of magazine but there are also kites from 30 cm to 120cm and it depends the piece of paper they you use in the kite which is called (parcha) or piece like (3 parch, 4 parch, 5 parch and 7 parch) 3,4,5 and 7 piece, but the average size is 95cm. The kites are made out of bamboo sticks which are cut very thin to reduce the weight and fly easily even if there is no winds and the actual skin is made of thin paper like a colorful tissue paper. The Afghans got many ways to make it very flexible and strong by hand. The most important thing is the "Tar" which stands for string, it's made very strong and Sharpe with fine crushed coat of "Shisha" on it. "Shisha" is the combination of glass fragments or glass powder with homemade glow powder, a little bet ink, the white part of the egg and a few secret ingredients, then they put it on the string to make the string Sharpe to cut the other but this glass can make angry scars in their own hands.

As I remember my childhood flying kites, I have cut my fingers over hundred times when I was running for a free kite or free string or even flying a kite myself in a windy day, but I have always accepted all these troubles otherwise I wouldn't become a kite flier. When I was a kid I loved to run for the free kite and free string, it was really fun but in mean while it was dangerous too. First when I was running for the free kite I was usually looking to the sky to follow the direction of the kite that where it falls and the ground was mostly rocky because in three decades of war in Afghanistan all of the hills changed to grave yards and people fly kites on those grave yard hill due to luck of open space. Second when I was running for free string, it was possible that my fingers could be cut with the sharp string because when the kites get cut all the kids run for the free string and the kite and everyone tries to get the kite or more string and never cares about the person who has the next side of the string. When you fly a kite or run for the free string you usually get the sharp string with your pointing finger and as I said it's possible that your finger could be cut by the string but despite all that cutting fingers, falling off the roof...etc, still people loves it. "Gudiparan bazi" or Kite flying needs at least two people. One who holds the string holder "Charkha" which the other "drives" the fighter kite.
The kite fighters with the best teamwork, skills and materials will win the fight but winning and losing depends to the techniques of the kite flier, the string holder "Charkha Geer" and mainly on the wind and the fights can take seconds up to an hour depending on the wind direction and skills, basically the one who releases the line on the right moment will win the fight. The skilled Afghan kite maker Noor Agha son of Bejoo is the top kite maker in Kabul, his father was a famous kite master in his time but now this trade has continued by his son Noor Agha the top kite maker in old city of Kabul "Shur Bazar". After the Taliban he started his trade by selling kites to make a living. In fact, business is so good that he has taught his two wives, his son and trained his six year old daughter to do so as well. Noor Agha's traditional Afghan kites are so authentic and precise that they were selected for use in the filming of the movie "Kite Runner" Khaled Hosseini's best selling novel. As I was the props buyer and casting assistant for the Kite Runner I have purchased and shipped a large quantity to China where the movie was filmed in different sizes, shapes and colors. The kites were seen by millions of people around the world on the big screen.
Noor Agha's factory is his living room, where he has put his two wives and 11 children to work, cutting, shaping and gluing the intricate tissue-paper mosaics that make his kites stand out for their beauty and superior handling. The secret is in the glue, he makes, holding up a pot of evil-smelling green paste. "No one knows his recipe for making a glue that stays perfectly flat when it dries, without rippling the tissue paper". Business is so good these days that Agha has had to teach his wives how to make kites. He proudly calls one of them "the second best kite maker in Kabul," although he insists that she will never be as good as he is. "he has 45 years' experience and she'll never be able to catch up" but his 6-year-old daughter may have a better chance. Already she is making her own kites to sell to neighborhood children. Noor Agha had to take his business underground in order to make kites during the Taliban days, but now his work can be sold openly and easily.
'Kabul has changed a lot compared with how it was in the Taliban time. During their regime, if a child was even caught flying a kite even a (cheap) plastic kite, his father would be thrown in jail, but fortunately now, that dark time has over. Not only Noor Agha's traditional kites craft has reached to a level of excellence, he still flies them once a week on Fridays for competition with other kite fliers. He continues to experience the sheer joy of controlling a darting kite and battling with opponents for supremacy in the skies. The last thing I heard from Noor Agha on the last day of (Khalid Abdullah) Amir's kite lessons that he said I love my Art of kite making and flying "Making kite is my job and fighting it, is my disease."

This was a brief information about Afghan's famous traditional outdoor sport " Kite Flying. Please check out my blog frequently for more information about the Afghan culture and tradition. In the next page I will have a glance on Khalid Hosseini's best-selling novel and about the memory of the kite runner that how it's made in china and who are the main actors and from where they have been casted. If you would like to know more about Kites or if you are in America and Europe looking to purchase Afghan kites, Please contact me via email for more details and I will be more happy to assist you.

Brief Introduction of Afghanistan

Brief Introduction
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Ahmad Shah DURRANI the Pashtun tribes and founded Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between the British and Russian empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime, touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin.

A series of subsequent civil wars saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hard line Pakistani-sponsored movement that emerged in 1994 to end the country's civil war and anarchy. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, a US, Allied, and anti-Taliban Northern Alliance military action toppled the Taliban for sheltering Osama BIN LADIN. The UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001 established a process for political reconstruction that included the adoption of a new constitution, a presidential election in 2004, and National Assembly elections in 2005.

In December 2004, Hamid KARZAI became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan and the National Assembly was inaugurated the following December. Despite gains toward building a stable central government, a resurgent Taliban and continuing provincial instability-particularly in the south and the east - remain serious challenges for the Afghan Government. Afghanistan is a dry and mountainous country located in Southern Asia, north and west of Pakistan, east of Iran with the population of 32,738,376 people and two main languages Dari 50% and Pushtu 35%. Afghanistan has 32 provinces with different traditional cultures and ethnic groups such as Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara, Uzbec, Turkmen, Pashaye, Nooristani and other......Afghanistan is rich in culture and mines and famous with his traditional Sports such as Buzkashi, Kite Flying and many others. The main outdoor sport which every one loves it does it in the Capital Kabul is the kite flying which I am a real fun of that too, it's really fun.