In flashback, Chapter 2 starts identifying characters and telling the story of the narrator and his relationships to the names mentioned in the previous chapter. The narrator identifies Hassan as a childhood playmate and emphasizes, quite pointedly, Hassan's cleft lip. As they grow up together, Hassan, who is skilled with a slingshot, denies the narrator nothing, even when the narrator has asked potentially unethical requests. And Hassan takes the blame for their childhood pranks, never revealing to Ali, Hassan's father, that the narrator was the instigator.
Baba is the narrator's father. Baba and the narrator live in Kabul, the city that is clearly identified as the setting. As he grows up, the narrator is frustrated with his father's lack of attention. Rahim Khan is identified as Baba's best friend and business partner. The narrator mentions a picture of Baba, Rahim, and himself as a baby — a baby whose fingers curled around Khan's pinky and not his father's.
Baba's servants, Ali and Hassan, live in a little hut near the main house. An important similarity exists between the narrator and Hassan: the narrator's mother dies during childbirth, and Hassan loses his mother a week after his birth (she leaves her son and husband). Hassan is born a year after the narrator, and Baba arranges for the same nurse who fed his son nurse Hassan.
