My wife Bonnie and I don't get out to the movies as much as we used to. When we do it is often with the kids, so we miss out on many of the adult (no, I don't mean those kind of adult) themed movies that come out. We wait for the DVD, but even than I miss many. I compensate by watching movies on planes a lot. Recently I caught The Kingdom with Jaime Fox and We Own the Night with Marc Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix. Both good, powerful movies. However, last night on my way out to Vegas for Interop I watched a movie that will change my life. It is the Kite Runner, based on the book of the same title by Khaled Hosseini.

The movie tells the story of two boys growing up in pre-Soviet invasion Kabul, Afghanistan all the way up to the year 2000, with a pre-9/11 Taliban regime in charge. You can read the Wikipedia article I linked to or better yet go rent the movie or read the book (I am going to read it next) for all of the dramatic details. However, let me talk a bit about my take away from this film. First of all, like many Americans I had a pre-concieved notion of Afghanistan as a poor, backwater, backwards place that welcomed a repressive regime like the Taliban to power and were part of the Muslim world that runs from the Med through to Pakistan. Nothing distinctive and in fact lets face it, I am not sure we humanize the people who live in that part of the world, as we do Europeans or our fellow Americans. I knew little to nothing of Afghan history or lifestyle. Our American view of the world makes it hard for us to remember that children are children the world over and their lives are special. Whether it be something as simple as flying a kite or aspiring to be a writer, all children share the same dreams, hopes and challenges. Yes, in a place like Afghanistan with its ethnic tensions, there is room for a level of violence we don't often see here (but even that is BS, me living in Boca doesn't see it, but live in an inner city bad neighborhood in the US and is life any better for a child?). But parents are parents the world over and they love their children and have hopes for their children the same way you and I do. People have values they believe in and may not be the most religous, but are never the less good people.

The movie made me think about my role as a father, husband and American. The whole American immigration experience is such a great influence on the world. We have the ability to take people from anywhere and they become Americans. The father in the movie goes from being a man of power and wealth in Kabul, to working in a gas station here. The father-in-law was a general in Afghanistan, but just a lower middle class worker here. But they don't lose their identity or the pride and sense of who they are and most of all their values. They don't lose their identity into the melting pot, but we add their identities to our tapestry of life here in this country. That is the real special sauce in what makes America

That part of the world is not just full of religous extremists. There are real live human beings there who think and feel very much like we do. Yes there are incredible challenges with religous extremism to overcome, but there is a core of real people who are worthy of our efforts. At the end of the day, that is what the movie has succeeded in doing for me. It has made the Afghan people real.