“I bcame what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.” I can see smoke on buildings because everytime I think of Pakistan, war comes to mind. The narator is telling about how whatever happend to him when was twelve in Pakistan makes him who he is. He follows his recollection by telling us about a call he received last summer from a friend in Pakistan named Rahim Khan. Rahim Khan asks our narrator, whose name is Amir, to come to Pakistan to see him. When Amir gets off the phone, he takes a walk through San Francisco, where he lives now. He notices kites flying, and thinks of his past, including his friend Hassan, a boy with a cleft lip whom he calls a kite runner.