Word: kite
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...were going to write a novel about an expatriate Afghan returning to the land of his birth, the usual way to do it would be, first, return to Afghanistan, and then, second, write a novel about it. Khaled Hosseini did it backward. He wrote the runaway best-seller The Kite Runner first, about an Afghan living in California who returns home to redeem a moment of cowardice from his childhood. Only in 2003, when the book was already done, did Hosseini go back to Kabul, the city where he was born. He hadn't seen it in 27 years...
...data. Newspapers are becoming websites, photos are becoming JPEGs, and songs are becoming MP3s. But what does this great digital awakening mean for the book? To find out, I--as the only person in the U.S. who has never read Khaled Hosseini--downloaded his novel onto a Sony Reader. Kite Runner, meet Blade Runner...
...books are obsolete. You can use Google Books to retrieve a single valuable snippet of information from a book, but you could never actually read a whole book on a computer screen. The Sony Reader isn't going to displace the humble book anytime soon either. Just to get Kite Runner onto the Reader, I had to charge it, find a computer running Windows XP--we're a Mac shop around here--stare down a cryptic error message and update some software. The half-second delay when you press the turn-the-page button eventually becomes maddening...
...laced green tea beckons passersby into tiny chai shops. As bird enthusiasts compare notes on how best to train a pigeon to turn on command, it's easy to forget that Kabul is only just emerging from the depredations of a brutal regime that banned bird fighting, music, even kite flying...
...glass technique is something the fourth-generation kite maker learned from his father. For kite fighters it was the equivalent of graduating from bow and arrow to gunpowder. But increasingly there is a risk that the fighting kites are becoming too effective. For a while, those made with Pakistani nylon fishing line were all but impervious to attack. Then canny arms dealers started importing flexible, razor-sharp wire from China. The escalating threat of mutually assured destruction, according to Agha, widely recognized as the best kite fighter around, has taken the artistry out of the game. "Now it's like...