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General Taheri is Baba’s flea-market friend and Soraya’s father. He has come from a place of privilege and importance, having held a high-level government position before the turmoil forced him from Afghanistan. He is a man of great pride and tradition, governed by self-importance and a stoic defense of his family and reputation. Like Baba, he has found himself in America displaced from the power and influence he once enjoyed. General Taheri wrestles under the weight of the life he left behind. Unable to adjust fully to his new reality in America, he collects government welfare checks, refusing to lower himself and take a job he deems beneath him.
As a highly traditional Afghan man, General Taheri places great stock in how he is represented by his family. Specifically, he cares about the women in his life adhering to their designated roles. Soraya’s past sexual indiscretions have haunted him just as much as they have followed her, inflaming some of his harsher characteristics. He is hard, strong-willed, and at times cruel. There is an immovability in his character that makes connecting with Soraya difficult. Under it all, though, he is a man who deeply loves his daughter. Where he wrestles with pride and complacency in his professional pursuits, he leaps into action when he perceives that his family is threatened. This protective instinct is evidenced by his going out to rescue Soraya from the man she had run away to live with—an action that she later describes to Amir as having saved her life.
