The narrative returns to 2001 and the call from Rahim Khan, who beckons Amir to return to Pakistan where Rahim Khan is living, gravely ill and at the end of his life. Amir tells Soraya, who has now been teaching for six years, that he must go. On a long walk in Golden Gate Park where kites are being flown, Amir realizes that his suspicions of Rahim Khan’s knowledge of Hassan’s attack in Kabul were well founded. Rahim Khan has known all along: “Come. There is a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said on the phone” (168). At night Amir lies awake in bed after a dream of Hassan in snow: “He was yelling over his shoulder: For you, a thousand times over” (169). Amir flies to Pakistan a week later.

Rahim Khan answers his door in Pakistan, emaciated from sickness. Amir has not seen Rahim Khan since the night Baba and Amir fled Afghanistan in 1981. Over tea, Rahim Khan details the turmoil that has overtaken Kabul, the city broken into constant street warfare and missile strikes.