"A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn’t been good to him, that he’d become homeless and destitute"

When Amir sees how Kabul looks compared to how it was in the past, he reflects, "A sadness came over me. Returning to Kabul was like running into an old, forgotten friend and seeing that life hadn't been good to him, that he'd become homeless and destitute" (246). Hosseini uses a simile to show the reader Amir's sadness when he sees that the neighborhood he grew up in as a child was destroyed and falling apart. He compares Amir's return to Kabul to seeing a friend many years later and seeing that he didn't have much to survive on and was not doing well. Through this quote, we can see how much war affects a neighborhood and those who live in them.