- Lafz, the ceremony of 'giving word' takes place in the Taheris' home
- Amir and Soraya marry
- Baba passes away after a fight with terminal cancer
- In the summer of 1988, Amir successfully publishes his first novel
- Amir and Soraya discover they are unable to conceive
Chapter thirteen structurally marks the middle point of the novel, and ultimately hosts Amir’s journey from adolescence to adulthood. Within this chapter, several key plot developments occur within a relatively short period of time: Amir and Soraya marry, Baba dies and Amir releases his first novel. These events charter Amir’s maturity, as he not only experiences - for the first time - the ‘tenderness of a woman’ but Baba’s death results in his son having to become dependent, and responsible, for himself and his newly wedded wife.
Amir’s moral development is also represented through his wedding song and Khaled Hosseini’s choice to repeat the same song that ‘the Russian soldier at the Mahipar checkpoint had sung’ portrays just how far Amir’s character has come within the novel. The song, ‘make morning into a key and throw it into the well’ is used a constant in which the reader can compare the distance Amir has travelled on his journey from having to flee Kabul to the situation he is in now – living a free life in America, with a loving wife and a flourishing career.
Yet these ultimate highs Amir experiences throughout this chapter are juxtaposed with emotive lows, such as the loss of his father and the inability to have children. These lows, twinned with Amir’s resurfacing guilt that ‘perhaps something, someone, somewhere, has decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done’ results in readers foreshadowing that he will someday atone for what he has done towards Hassan, and validates the readers feelings that he will never really be a man until he shows this moral courage.
A large proportion of the chapter also focusses on the customs surrounding Afghan cultures and ceremonies. Hosseini manipulates female characters, mainly Soraya and her mother, to discuss the role of women in Afghan society. The reader learns that General Taheri does not allow his wife Jamila, who was once a great singer in Kabul, to sing in public, and that on the night Soraya was forced home, Khanum Taheri made his daughter cut off her hair. Moreover, the admittance from Amir that the fondness Khanum Taheri displays towards him is due to the idea that he ‘relieved her of the greatest fear of every Afghan mother: that no honourable khastegar would ask for her daughter’s hand’ highlights the double standards that apply to men and women in an Afghan community.
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