Word: hassanal
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...Hakim continued to swirl. It was not until 5 p.m. that his death was confirmed, and by then about 80 bodies had been counted. With more than 150 injured, the main hospital in Najaf was straining to cope with the load. "This is a catastrophe for Iraqis," said Hassan al-Naji al-Moussawi, imam of the Mohsen Mosque in Sadr City, Baghdad's Shi'ite-dominated suburb, once known as Saddam City. "And for it to happen at the walls of the Imam Ali shrine, it's as if somebody has reached into the body of Iraq...
...days before investigators come up with an answer, but the immediate assumption of many of those at the scene was that it could only have been an inside job. The bomb went off in the car park of the compound, which houses the police academy and the offices of Hassan Ali, the U.S.-appointed police chief. Although his office was damaged, he was not in the building at the time. Unconfirmed reports said one policeman was killed and 20 injured...
...Strolling in Golden Gate Park, Amir watches a pair of kites overhead and recalls his childhood friend and servant, Hassan, who is a Hazara, one of Afghanistan's persecuted minorities. The boys are inseparable, but their friendship is fraught with tension. Amir is quiet, bookish and jealous of the attention his father bestows on the athletic, courageous Hassan. Angry and frustrated, he plays cruel jokes on his friend, guiltily justifying them on the basis of Hassan's low status: "Because history isn't easy to overcome. I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, and nothing was ever going...
...ground glass. He longs to present his father with the last kite to fall: "I'd make a grand entrance, the prized trophy in my bloodied hands. Then the old warrior would walk up to the young one, embrace him, acknowledge his worthiness." Amir wins the battle and dispatches Hassan to capture the fallen kite. But Hassan is caught by a group of bullies who make him an offer: leave the kite or pay for it with his body. Bound by loyalty, Hassan chooses the kite. Amir stumbles upon the scene and watches mutely, too cowardly to stop them raping...
...times, the book suffers from relentless earnestness and somewhat hackneyed descriptions. But Hosseini has a remarkable ability to imprison the reader in horrific, shatteringly immediate scenes?not least the incident in which Hassan is violated. The result is a sickening sensation of complicity. Like Amir, the reader watches the suffering and does nothing. Hosseini turns that shared guilt into a subtle condemnation of a world that watched the rape of Afghanistan?first by the Soviets, then by regional warlords and the Taliban. True evil, he suggests, comes when good people allow bad things to happen...