I also felt The Kite Runner was a story that would lend itself well to a visual retelling in a graphic novel.

My family left Afghanistan in 1976, well before the Communist coup and the Soviet invasion. We certainly thought we would be going back. But when we saw those Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan, the prospect for return looked very dim. Few of us, I have to say, envisioned that nearly a quarter century of bloodletting would follow.

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval.

There [in The Kite Runner] certainly are, as is always the case with fiction, autobiographical elements woven through the narrative.

But time, it is like charm. You never have as much as you think.

Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.

Hassan and I looked at each other. Cracked up. The Hindi kid would soon learn what the British learned earlier in the century, and what the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980's: that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish customs but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The rules were simple: No rules. Fly your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.