The Kite Runner: Why does Amir travel to Kabul?

The Kite Runner is one of my all-time favorite novels. I read it in a multicultural literature class that I took this past summer and was hooked. While the film is also great, it is extremely difficult to watch. There are extremely graphic parts that make even the thick-skinned feel uncomfortable. I am going to discuss why it is I think that Amir travels to Kabul. As a young boy, Amir betrays Hassan and actually watches him get raped by bullies in an ally. Rather than trying to stop the violence, he runs away--pretending to never have witnessed a thing. This incident instills guilt that Amir would then carry with him for years. Amir wanted redemption and to feel free of guilt--free of the pain of his past. The thing is, he did not know how he would actually achieve redemption and be at peace again. What he did could not be fixed---he could not travel back in time and change what happened--impossible! Instead, he does in his eyes, the next best thing he could--which was to travel to Kabul to find Hassan's son at the orphanage, where he would then take the boy home with him and raise him as his own with his wife. This is Amir's attempt to seek redemption--and to correct the past mistakes he had made. I do not believe that Amir would have ever felt fully redeemed, since he could not erase history, yet I feel as though that by doing the things he could then help out the remains of Hassan's family (his son) he felt peace in knowing that he was truly saving a life--rather than running away and neglecting one, as he did as a boy to Hassan. In short, I believe that Amir traveled to Kabul to save Hassan's boy--in order to seek redemption and finally do what was right.