The first main turning point in the novel is when Amir witnesses Hassans’s rape and he makes the decision to do nothing. he just wanted to get the kite to please Baba. Hosseini has built up to this event by foreshadowing that something will happen that will change their lives forever in a negative way

Hossieni writes:

• “for you a thousand times over”
• “it may be unfair, but what happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, can change the course of a while lifetime…”
• “and thats the thing about people who mean everything they say. they think everyone else does to”
• “there is only one sin… and that is theft… when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth”
• “looking back on it now, i think the foundation for what happened in the winter in 1975-and all that followed- was already laid in those first words”
• “because suddenly Afghanistan changed forever”
• “because that was the winter that had stopped smiling”
• “but i hadn’t turned out like him. not at all.”

even in the first paragraph of the novel, hossieni is hinting at what is to come “i became what i am today at the age of twelve”