Quarter 2: Outside Reading Post #5

Amir and Hassan, along with the rest of the district, were frightened my gun shots in the street, "The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born" (Hosseini 36). This event marked the beginning of a different kind of government in Afghanistan. A republic was taking the place of the monarchy and judging by this quote, I think that there will be many internal conflicts in Afghanistan. For the first couple years of the new republic, nothing really changed in the lives of Amir and Hassan. Every year on the day of Hassan's birthday, Baba always gives him a gift. One year, his present was very different from the previous presents that Hassan had received. Baba payed the surgery of the removal of Hassan cleft lip, and the surgery went very well and the scar was barely noticeable,"By the following winter, it was only a faint scar. Which was ironic. Because that was the winter that Hassan stopped smiling" (Hosseini 47). Throughout these first few chapters, Hassan is always known as the boy who is always smiling, and had been smiling since emerging from his mother's womb. So I am interested to see what had caused him to stop smiling.