'The Kite Runner' is delayed to protect child stars 2

Dowd and E. Bennett Walsh, a producer, said they met in Kabul with Ahmad Khan's father, Ahmad Jaan Mahmoodzada, and told him that his son's character was the victim of a "vicious sexual assault." Mahmoodzada seemed unmoved, they said, remarking that "bad things happen" in movies as in life. The boy, they continued, did not receive a script until a Dari translation was available on the set in western China. The rape scene was rehearsed twice, they said, once with the father present.

On Tuesday the elder Mahmoodzada, reached by cellphone, rejected this account, and said he never learned the rape was a plot point until the scene was about to be shot. He also said his son never received a script.

Forster said that during rehearsals he considered including a shot of Hassan's pants being pulled down, exposing his backside, and that neither Ahmad Khan nor his father objected. But the morning the scene was to be filmed, Forster found the boy in tears. Ahmad Khan said he did not want to be shown nude, Forster agreed to skip that shot, and the boy went ahead with the rape scene. Mahmoodzada confirmed this.

In the final version of the film, the rape is conveyed impressionistically, with the unstrapping of a belt, the victim's cries and a drop of blood.

The filmmakers said they were surprised when Ahmad Khan and his father told The Sunday Times of London in January that they feared for their lives. Walsh and Rebecca Yeldham, another producer, flew to Kabul to learn more in February.

The producers dispelled one fear, that the filmmakers would use computer tricks to depict the boy's genitals in the rape scene. But Ahmad Khan's parents also pressed for more cash, the producers said.

On the advice of a Kabul television company, the boys had been paid $1,000 to $1,500 a week, far less than the Screen Actors Guild weekly scale of $2,557, but far more than what Afghan actors typically receive.

In late July, with violence worsening in Kabul, studio executives looked for experts who could help them chart a safe course. Aided by lobbyists for Viacom, Paramount's parent company, they found John Kiriakou, the retired CIA operative with experience in the region, and had him conduct interviews in Washington and Kabul.

"They wanted to do the right thing, but they wanted to understand what the right thing was," Kiriakou said.

There was one absolute: "Nothing will be done if it puts any kid at risk," Megan Colligan, head of marketing at Paramount Vantage, said.

Kiriakou's briefing, which he reprised in a telephone interview, could make a pretty good movie by itself. A specialist on Islam at the State Department nearly wept envisioning a "Danish-cartoons situation," Kiriakou said. An Afghan literature professor, he added, said Paramount was "willing to burn an already scorched nation for a fistful of dollars." The head of an Afghan political party said the movie would energize the Taliban. Nearly everyone Kiriakou met said that the boys had to be removed from Afghanistan for their safety. And a Hazara member of Parliament warned that Pashtun and Hazara "would be killing each other every night" in response to the film's depiction of them. None of the interviewees had seen the movie.

Another consultant, whom Paramount did not identify, gave a less bleak assessment, but Colligan said the studio was taking no chances. "The only thing you get people to agree on is that the place is getting messier every single day," she said.

So on Sunday Rich Klein, a Middle East specialist at the consulting firm Kissinger McLarty Associates, flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange visas, housing and schooling for the young actors and jobs for their guardians. (The United States is not an option, he said, because Afghans do not qualify for refugee status.)

Those involved say that the studio doesn't want to be taken advantage of, but that it could accept responsibility for the boys' living expenses until they reach adulthood, a cost some estimated at up to $500,000. The families, of course, must first agree to the plan.

"I think there was a moral obligation even before any of these things were an issue," said Hosseini, the novel's author, who got to know the boys on the set. "How long that obligation lasts? I don't know that anybody has the answer to that."

Kirk Semple contributed reporting from Kabul.