The Kite Runner (Blog 3)
By: Khaled Hosseini

I found chapter 12 to be extremely upsetting.  One week, Baba catches a cold with a hacking cough.  His sickness only progresses, and his health is quickly deteriorating.  After two weeks, Amir sees his father coughing up blood.  He becomes very worried and finally takes his father to the doctor.  At the San Jose hospital, the doctor states that he has found a suspicious spot on Baba's right lung.  Baba has been a smoker for years, so the doctor is pretty sure it's lung cancer.  After multiple trips to the doctors and many tests later, Dr. Amani diagnosed Baba with cancer.  Even after this trip to the doctor, Baba wants to keep his illness a secret for as long as possible.  His secret is revealed at the flea market when he has a seizure one day, though.  They go to a doctor who puts films from Baba's CAT scan on a viewing box.  He shows that Baba's cancer has "metastasized" and will cause his death very soon.  Amir is distraught with the thought of having to live life without his father.  "I wept in the hallway, by the viewing box where, the night before, I'd seen the killer's face" (Hosseini, 160).  This quote serves as an analogy between cancer and a murderer.  Prior to this, Amir had said how cancer was like a killer.  The films on the viewing box were like a cop showing mug shots of a killer to a victim's family.  As depressing as this analogy is, I found it to be a very good comparison.