Zabiha News

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Submitted by Zabiha News: “Regret is a major theme in the best-selling novel and film The Kite Runner. It is also a major theme in the life of the Afghan boy who plays the lead character as a child. The young actor, 12-year-old Zakria Ebrahimi, has been the target of threats from fellow Afghans who were offended by the movie, which includes a scene of child rape.

Fear that the child actors might be harmed by insurgents or mobs prompted Paramount to move four of them to Dubai in November, each with a guardian. The studio put the boys in a private international school, rented apartments for them, paid their families in Dubai and Kabul a monthly stipend, and searched for work for their guardians. But after months apart from his family, Zakria returned to Afghanistan.

According to Zakria’s aunt and guardian, Waheeda Ebrahimi, says she and her nephew, whom she has raised since he was a baby, spent roughly four miserable months in Dubai. She and Zakria worried he would be deported because his visa had expired, even though Paramount was working on getting him a new one. Waheeda says the small stipends and $400-a-month job she was offered were not enough for her to support her family. So they returned to Kabul in March. It was then, she says, that the trouble began.

Zakria was pulled out of his Kabul school because Hazara classmates threatened to kill him, Waheeda says, breaking down into tears. She says the family moved to a new neighborhood but quickly left after a gang of men tried to force their way into the home. Someone had distributed a dozen copies of The Kite Runner to her neighbors, each with a note describing where Zakria lived.”