THE KITE RUNNER

by

KHALED HOSSEINI

Riverhead Books - جدید York

Scanned and proofed by eReaderMan

Posted to alt.binaries.e-book

12/3/2005 - دشت Text Version 3.5 (maybe better)

The author makes liberal use of _italics_ and I have از دست رفته noting many of them, but the استراحت of this text file باید demonstrate good proofing.

Copyright © 2003 by Khaled Hosseini

Riverhead trade paperback

ISBN: 1-59488-000-1

This book is اختصاص یافته است to

Haris and Farah, both

the _noor_ of my eyes,

and to the children

of Afghanistan.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to the following colleagues for their advice, assistance, or support: Dr. Alfred Lerner, Don Vakis, Robin Heck, Dr. Todd Dray, Dr. Robert Tull, and Dr. Sandy Chun. Thanks همچنین to Lynette Parker of East San Jose Community Law Center for her advice about تصویب procedures, and to Mr. Daoud Wahab for sharing his experiences in Afghanistan with me. I am grateful to my عزیز friend Tamim Ansary for his هدایت and support and to the gang at the San Francisco Writers Workshop for their feed back and encouragement. I want to thank my father, my oldest friend and the inspiration for all that is noble in بابا؛ my mother who prayed for me and did nazr at هر stage of this book’s writing; my aunt for buying me books when I was young. Thanks go out to Ali, Sandy, Daoud, Walid, Raya, Shalla, Zahra, Rob, and Kader for خواندن my stories. I want to thank Dr. and Mrs. Kayoumy--my دیگر parents--for their warmth and تزلزل ناپذیر support.

I باید thank my عامل and friend, Elaine Koster, for her wisdom, patience, and gracious ways, as well as Cindy Spiegel, my keen-eyed and judicious editor who helped me unlock so many doors in this tale. And I would like to thank Susan Petersen Kennedy for گرفتن a chance on this book and the hardworking staff at Riverhead for کار over it.

Last, I don’t know how to thank my lovely wife, رویا - به whose نظر I am addicted--for her مهربانی and grace, and for reading, re-reading, and helping me edit هر single draft of this novel. برای your patience and understanding, I will always love you, Roya jan.

ONE

_December 2001_

I became چه I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast روز in the زمستان of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong چه they می گویند about the past, من learned, about how you می توانید bury it. Because the past claws its راه out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the آخرین twenty-six years.

One روز last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn’t just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins. After I hung up, I went for a walk along Spreckels دریاچه on the northern edge of طلایی Gate Park. The early-afternoon خورشید sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and دیدم a pair of kites, red with long آبی tails, soaring in the sky. They danced high above the درختان on the غرب end of the park, over the windmills, floating side by side like a pair of eyes به دنبال down on San Francisco, the city I now call home. And به طور ناگهانی Hassan’s voice whispered in my head: _For you, a هزار times over_. Hassan the harelipped kite runner.

I sat on a park bench near a willow tree. I فکر می کردم about something Rahim Khan said just before he hung up, almost as an after thought. _There is a راه to be good again_. I looked up at those دوقلو kites. I فکر می کردم about Hassan. فکر می کردم about Baba. Ali. Kabul. I فکر می کردم of the زندگی I had زندگی می کردند until the زمستان of 1975 came and changed everything. And made me چه I am today.

TWO

When we were children, Hassan and I استفاده می شود to climb the poplar درختان in the driveway of my father’s house and annoy our neighbors by بازتاب sunlight into their homes with a shard of mirror. We would sit در سراسر from each دیگر on a pair of high branches, our naked فوت است dangling, our trouser جیب filled with dried mulberries and walnuts. We took turns with the mirror as we ate mulberries, pelted each دیگر with them, giggling, laughing; I می توانید still see Hassan up on that tree, sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost perfectly round face, a face like a چینی doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad بینی and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on the light, gold, green, even sapphire I می توانید still see his tiny low-set ears and that pointed stub of a chin, a meaty appendage that looked like it was added as a mere afterthought. And the cleft lip, just left of midline, where the چینی doll maker’s instrument may have slipped; or perhaps he had simply grown خسته می شوند and careless.

Sometimes, up in those trees, I talked Hassan into firing walnuts with his slingshot at the neighbor’s one-eyed German shepherd. Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, _really_ asked, he wouldn’t انکار کند me. Hassan never denied me anything. And he was deadly with his slingshot. Hassan’s father, Ali, استفاده می شود to گرفتن us and get mad, or as mad as someone as gentle as Ali could ever get. He would wag his انگشت and wave us down from the tree. He would را the mirror and بگویید us چه his mother had گفت him, that the devil میدرخشید mirrors too, میدرخشید them to distract Muslims during prayer. “And he laughs while he does it,” he always added, scowling at his son.

“Yes, Father,” Hassan would mumble, به دنبال down at his feet. But he never گفت on me. Never گفت that the mirror, like shooting walnuts at the neighbor’s dog, was always my idea.

The poplar درختان lined the redbrick driveway, which led to a pair of wrought-iron gates. They in تبدیل شود opened into an extension of the driveway into my father’s estate. The house sat on the left side of the brick path, the backyard at the end of it.

Everyone agreed that my father, my Baba, had built the most beautiful house in the Wazir Akbar Khan district, a new and ثروتمند neighborhood in the northern part of Kabul. Some فکر می کردم it was the prettiest house in all of Kabul. A broad entryway flanked by rosebushes led to the sprawling house of marble floors and wide windows. Intricate موزاییک tiles, handpicked by Baba in Isfahan, covered the floors of the four bathrooms. Gold-stitched tapestries, which Baba had bought in Calcutta, lined the دیوار a crystal لوستر hung from the vaulted ceiling.

Upstairs was my bedroom, Baba’s room, and his study, همچنین known as “the smoking room,” which perpetually smelled of tobacco and cinnamon. Baba and his friends reclined on black leather chairs there after Ali had served dinner. They stuffed their لوله - به جز Baba always called it “fattening the pipe”--and discussed their favorite three topics: politics, business, soccer. گاهی اوقات I asked Baba if I could sit with them, but Baba would stand in the doorway. “Go on, now,” he’d say. “This is grown-ups’ time. Why don’t you go read یک of those books of yours?” He’d close the door, leave me to wonder why it was always grown-ups’ time with him. I’d sit by the door, knees drawn to my chest. گاهی اوقات I sat there for an hour, sometimes two, listening to their laughter, their chatter.

The living room downstairs had a curved wall with custombuilt cabinets. Inside sat framed family pictures: an old, grainy photo of my grandfather and King نادر Shah taken in 1931, two years before the king’s assassination; they are standing over a dead deer, dressed in knee-high boots, rifles slung over their shoulders. There was a picture of my parents’ wedding night, Baba بی باک in his black suit and my mother a smiling young princess in white. Here was Baba and his best friend and business partner, Rahim Khan, standing outside our house, neither یک smiling--I am a baby in that عکس and Baba is holding me, به دنبال tired and grim. I’m in his arms, but it’s Rahim Khan’s pinky my fingers are curled around.

The curved wall led into the ناهار خوری room, at the center of which was a mahogany جدول that could easily sit thirty guests-- and, given my father’s taste for extravagant parties, it did just that almost هر week. On the دیگر end of the ناهار خوری room was a tall marble fireplace, always روشن by the orange glow of a fire in the wintertime.

A large sliding glass door opened into a semicircular terrace that overlooked two acres of backyard and rows of cherry trees. Baba and Ali had planted a small vegetable garden along the eastern wall: tomatoes, mint, peppers, and a ردیف of corn that never really took. Hassan and I استفاده می شود to call it “the Wall of Ailing Corn.”

On the جنوب end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the servants’ home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan زندگی می کردند with his father.

It was there, in that little shack, that Hassan was born in the زمستان of 1964, just یک year after my mother died giving birth to me.

In the eighteen years that I زندگی می کردند in that house, I stepped into Hassan and Ali’s quarters only a تعداد انگشت شماری of times. When the خورشید dropped low behind the تپه and we were done playing for the day, Hassan and I parted ways. I went past the rosebushes to Baba’s mansion, Hassan to the mud shack where he had been born, where he’d زندگی می کردند his entire life. I remember it was spare, clean, dimly روشن by a pair of kerosene lamps. There were two mattresses on opposite sides of the room, a worn Herati rug with frayed edges in between, a three-legged stool, and a wooden جدول in the corner where Hassan did his drawings. The walls stood bare, save for a single tapestry with sewn-in beads forming the words _Allah-u-akbar_. Baba had bought it for Ali on یک of his trips to Mashad.

It was in that small shack that Hassan’s mother, Sanaubar, gave birth to him یک cold زمستان day in 1964. While my mother hemorrhaged to death during childbirth, Hassan lost his less than a هفته after he was born. Lost her to a fate most Afghans considered far worse than death: She ran off with a clan of traveling singers and dancers.

Hassan never talked about his mother, as if she’d never existed. I always wondered if he dreamed about her, about چه she looked like, where she was. I wondered if he longed to meet her. Did he ache for her, the راه I ached for the mother I had never ملاقات One day, we were walking from my father’s house to Cinema زینب for a new Iranian movie, گرفتن the shortcut through the military سربازخانه near Istiqlal Middle مدرسه - بابا had forbidden us to را that shortcut, but he was in پاکستان with Rahim Khan at the time. We پریدند the fence that احاطه شده است the barracks, skipped over a little creek, and شکست into the open dirt field where old, abandoned tanks جمع آوری شده dust. A group of soldiers نشسته اند in the shade of یک of those tanks, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. One of them دیدم us, elbowed the guy next to him, and called Hassan.

“Hey, you!” he said. “I know you.”

We had never seen him before. He was a squatly man with a shaved سر and black stubble on his face. The راه he grinned at us, leered, scared me. "فقط keep walking,” I muttered to Hassan.

“You! The Hazara! Look at me when I’m talking to you!” the soldier barked. He تحویل داده شد his cigarette to the guy next to him, made a circle with the thumb and index انگشت of یک hand. Poked the middle انگشت of his دیگر hand through the circle. Poked it in and out. In and out. “I knew خود را mother, did you know that? I knew her real good. I took her from behind by that creek over there.”

The soldiers laughed. One of them made a squealing sound. I گفت Hassan to keep walking, keep walking.

“What a tight little sugary cunt she حال! " the soldier was saying, shaking hands with the others, grinning. Later, in the dark, after the فیلم had started, I heard Hassan next to me, croaking. اشک were sliding down his cheeks. I reached در سراسر my seat, slung my arm around him, pulled him close. He rested his سر on my shoulder. “He took you for someone else,” I whispered. “He took you for someone else.”

I’m گفت no یک was really surprised when Sanaubar eloped. People _had_ raised their ابرو است when Ali, a man who had حفظ the Koran, married Sanaubar, a woman nineteen years younger, a beautiful but notoriously unscrupulous woman who زندگی می کردند up to her dishonorable reputation. Like Ali, she was a Shi’a Muslim and an ethnic Hazara. She was همچنین his first cousin and therefore a natural انتخاب for

a spouse. But beyond those similarities, Ali and Sanaubar had little in common, least of all their respective appearances. While Sanaubar’s brilliant green eyes and impish face had, rumor has it, tempted countless مردان into sin, Ali had a congenital paralysis of his lower صورت muscles, a condition that rendered him ممکن نیست to smile and left him perpetually grimfaced. It was an odd thing to see the stone-faced Ali happy, or sad, because only his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or welled with sorrow. People می گویند that eyes are windows to the soul. Never was that more درست است than with Ali, who could only reveal himself through his eyes.

I have heard that Sanaubar’s suggestive گام and نوسان hips ارسال می شود men to reveries of infidelity. But polio had left Ali with a twisted, atrophied right پا that was sallow skin over bone with little in between except a کاغذ نازک layer of muscle. I remember یک day, when I was eight, Ali was گرفتن me to the bazaar to buy some _naan_. I was walking behind him, humming, trying to imitate his walk. I تماشا him swing his scraggy پا in a sweeping arc, تماشا his whole body tilt impossibly to the right هر time he planted that foot. It seemed a minor miracle he didn’t tip over with each step. When I tried it, I almost fell into the gutter. That got me giggling. Ali turned around, caught me aping him. He didn’t می گویند anything. Not then, not ever. He just kept walking.

Ali’s face and his walk frightened some of the younger children in the neighborhood. But the real trouble was with the older kids. They chased him on the street, and mocked him when he hobbled by. Some had taken to calling him _Babalu_, or Boogeyman.

“Hey, Babalu, who did you خوردن today?” they barked to a chorus of laughter. “Who did you eat, you flat-nosed Babalu?”

They called him “flat-nosed” because of Ali and Hassan’s characteristic هزاره Mongoloid features. برای years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras, that they were Mogul descendants, and that they looked a little like چینی people. School text books barely mentioned them and referred to their اصل و نسب only in passing. Then یک day, I was in Baba’s study, به دنبال through his stuff, when I found یک of my mother’s old history books. It was نوشته شده است by an Iranian named Khorami. I blew the dust off it, sneaked it into bed with me that night, and was stunned to find an entire chapter on هزاره history. An entire chapter اختصاص یافته است to Hassan’s people! In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to افزایش یابد against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had “quelled them with unspeakable violence.” The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were اهل سنت است Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a. The book said a lot of things I didn’t know, things my teachers hadn’t mentioned. Things Baba hadn’t mentioned either. It همچنین said some things I did know, like that people called Hazaras _mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys_. I had heard some of the بچه ها in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.

The following week, after class, I showed the book to my teacher and pointed to the chapter on the Hazaras. He skimmed through a couple of pages, snickered, تحویل داده شد the book back. “That’s the یک thing Shi’a people do well,” he said, picking up his papers, “passing themselves as martyrs.” He wrinkled his بینی when he said the word Shi’a, like it was some kind of disease.

But با وجود sharing ethnic heritage and family blood, Sanaubar پیوست the neighborhood بچه ها in متلک Ali. I have heard that she made no secret of her نفرت for his appearance.

“This is a husband?” she would sneer. “I have seen old donkeys better مناسب است to be a husband.”

In the end, most people suspected the marriage had been an arrangement of sorts between Ali and his uncle, Sanaubar’s father. They said Ali had married his cousin to help restore some افتخار to his uncle’s blemished name, even though Ali, who had been orphaned at the age of five, had no دنیوی possessions or inheritance to صحبت می کنند of.

Ali never retaliated against any of his tormentors, I فرض کنید partly because he could never گرفتن them with that twisted پا dragging behind him. But mostly because Ali was ایمنی to the insults of his assailants; he had found his joy, his antidote, the moment Sanaubar had given birth to Hassan. It had been a simple enough affair. No obstetricians, no anesthesiologists, no fancy monitoring devices. Just Sanaubar lying on a stained, naked mattress with Ali and a midwife helping her. She hadn’t needed much help at all, because, even in birth, Hassan was درست است to his nature:

He was incapable of hurting anyone. A few grunts, a couple of pushes, and out came Hassan. Out he came smiling.

As confided to a neighbor’s servant by the garrulous midwife, who had then in تبدیل شود told anyone who would listen, Sanaubar had taken یک glance at the baby in Ali’s arms, seen the cleft lip, and barked a bitter laughter.

“There,” she had said. “Now you have خود را own idiot child to do all خود را smiling for you!” She had refused to even hold Hassan, and just five days later, she was gone.

Baba hired the همان nursing woman who had fed me to nurse Hassan. Ali گفت us she was a چشم آبی Hazara woman from Bamiyan, the city of the giant Buddha statues. “What a شیرین singing voice she had,” he استفاده می شود to می گویند to us.

What did she sing, Hassan and I always asked, though we already knew--Ali had گفت us countless times. We just wanted to hear Ali sing.

He’d clear his throat and begin:

_On a high mountain I stood,

And cried the name of Ali, Lion of God.

O Ali, Lion of God, King of Men,

Bring joy to our sorrowful hearts._

Then he would remind us that there was a brotherhood between people who had fed from the همان breast, a kinship that not even time could break.

Hassan and I fed from the همان breasts. We took our first steps on the همان lawn in the همان yard. And, under the همان roof, we spoke our first words.

Mine was _Baba_.

His was _Amir_. My name.

Looking back on it now, I think the foundation for چه happened in the زمستان of 1975--and all that به دنبال - بود already laid in those first words.

THREE

Lore has it my father once wrestled a black داشته باشد in Baluchistan with his bare hands. If the story had been about anyone else, it would have been dismissed as _laaf_, that Afghan tendency to exaggerate--sadly, almost a national رنج if someone bragged that his son was a doctor, chances were the kid had once passed a biology test in high school. But no یک ever شک the صحت of any story about Baba. And if they did, well, Baba did have those three parallel scars coursing a jagged path down his back. I have imagined Baba’s wrestling match countless times, even dreamed about it. And in those dreams, I می توانید never بگویید Baba from the bear.

It was Rahim Khan who first referred to him as چه eventually became Baba’s famous nickname, _Toophan agha_, or “Mr. Hurricane.” It was an apt enough nickname. My father was a force of nature, a towering Pashtun specimen with a ضخامت دارد beard, a wayward crop of curly brown hair as unruly as the man himself, hands that looked capable of uprooting a willow tree, and a black glare that would “drop the devil to his knees begging for mercy,” as Rahim Khan استفاده می شود to say. At parties, when all six-foot-five of him thundered into the room, توجه shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.

Baba was غیر ممکن است to ignore, even in his sleep. I استفاده می شود to bury cotton گسترش دهندهها رشتههای in my ears, بکشید the پتو over my head, and هنوز هم the sounds of Baba’s snoring--so much like a growling truck engine--penetrated the walls. And my room was در سراسر the hall from Baba’s bedroom. How my mother ever اداره می شود to خواب in the همان room as him is a mystery to me. It’s on the long list of things I would have asked my mother if I had ever met her.

In the late 1960s, when I was five or six, Baba decided to build an orphanage. I heard the story through Rahim Khan. He گفت me Baba had drawn the blueprints himself با وجود the fact that he’d had no architectural experience at all. Skeptics had urged him to stop his foolishness and hire an architect. Of course, Baba refused, and everyone shook their heads in dismay at his obstinate ways. Then Baba موفق شد and everyone shook their heads in awe at his triumphant ways. Baba پرداخت می شود for the construction of the two-story orphanage, just off the main نوار of Jadeh Maywand جنوب of the Kabul River, with his own money. Rahim Khan گفت me Baba had personally funded the entire project, paying for the engineers, electricians, plumbers, and laborers, not to mention the city officials whose “mustaches needed oiling.”

It took three years to build the orphanage. I was eight by then. I remember the روز before the یتیم خانه opened, Baba took me to Ghargha Lake, a few miles north of Kabul. He asked me to fetch Hassan too, but I lied and گفت him Hassan had the runs. I wanted Baba all to myself. And besides, یک time at Ghargha Lake, Hassan and I were skimming stones and Hassan made his stone skip eight times. The most I اداره می شود was five. Baba was there, watching, and he patted Hassan on the back. Even قرار داده است his arm around his shoulder.

We sat at a picnic جدول on the banks of the lake, just Baba and me, eating boiled eggs with _kofta_ sandwiches--meatballs and pickles wrapped in _naan_. The water was a deep آبی and sunlight glittered on its به دنبال glass-clear surface. On Fridays, the lake was شلوغ with families out for a روز in the sun. But it was midweek and there was only Baba and me, us and a couple of longhaired, bearded tourists--“hippies,” I’d heard them called. They were

sitting on the dock, فوت است dangling in the water, ماهیگیری poles in hand. I asked Baba why they grew their hair long, but Baba grunted, didn’t answer. He was preparing his speech for the next day, کوه در می رم through a ویران کردن of handwritten pages, making یادداشت ها here and there with a pencil. I bit into my egg and asked Baba if it was درست است what a boy in school had گفت me, that if you ate a piece of eggshell, you’d have to pee it out. Baba grunted again.

I took a bite of my sandwich. One of the زرد با موهای tourists laughed and سیلی زد the دیگر one on the back. In the distance, در سراسر the lake, a کامیون lumbered around a corner on the hill. Sunlight twinkled in its side-view mirror.

“I think I have _saratan_,” I said. Cancer. Baba برداشته شده است his سر from the pages flapping in the breeze. گفت me I could get the soda myself, all I had to do was look in the trunk of the car.

Outside the orphanage, the next day, they ran out of chairs. A lot of people had to stand to watch the opening ceremony. It was a windy day, and I sat behind Baba on the little podium just outside the main entrance of the new building. Baba was wearing a green suit and a caracul hat. Midway through the speech, the باد knocked his hat off and everyone laughed. He motioned to me to hold his hat for him and I was خوشحالم to, because then everyone would see that he was my father, my Baba. He turned back to the microphone and said he امیدوار است the building was sturdier than his hat, and everyone laughed again. When Baba ended his speech, people stood up and cheered. They clapped for a long time. Afterward, people shook his hand. Some of them tousled my hair and shook my hand too. I was so proud of Baba, of us.

But با وجود Baba’s successes, people were always doubting him. They گفت Baba that running a business wasn’t in his blood and he باید study law like his father. So Baba به اثبات رساند them all wrong by not only running his own business but becoming یک of the richest merchants in Kabul. Baba and Rahim Khan built a wildly successful carpet-exporting business, two pharmacies, and a restaurant.

When people scoffed that Baba would never marry well--after all, he was not of royal blood--he wedded my mother, Sofia Akrami, a highly educated woman universally در نظر گرفته as یک of Kabul’s most respected, beautiful, and فضیلت ladies. And not only did she teach کلاسیک Farsi literature at the university she was a descendant of the royal family, a fact that my father playfully rubbed in the skeptics’ faces by referring to her as “my princess.”

With me as the glaring exception, my father تولیدات the world around him to his liking. The problem, of course, was that Baba دیدم the world in black and white. And he got to decide چه was black and چه was white. You can’t love a person who lives that راه without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

When I was in fifth grade, we had a mullah who تدریس us about Islam. His name was Mullah Fatiullah Khan, a short, stubby man with a face full of acne scars and a gruff voice. He lectured us about the virtues of _zakat_ and the duty of _hadj_ he تدریس us the intricacies of performing the five روزانه _namaz_ prayers, and made us memorize verses from the قرآن - و though he never translated the words for us, he did stress, sometimes with the help of a stripped willow branch, that we had to pronounce the Arabic words correctly so God would hear us better. He گفت us یک day that Islam considered نوشیدن a terrible sin; those who نوشید would answer for their sin on the روز of _Qiyamat_, Judgment Day. In those days, نوشیدن was fairly common in Kabul. No یک gave you a public lashing for it, but those Afghans who did drink did so in private, out of respect. People bought their scotch as “medicine” in brown paper

bags from انتخاب شده است “pharmacies.” They would leave with the bag tucked out of sight, sometimes نقاشی furtive, disapproving glances from those who knew about the store’s reputation for such transactions.

We were upstairs in Baba’s study, the smoking room, when I گفت him چه Mullah Fatiullah Khan had تدریس us in class. Baba was pouring himself a ویسکی from the bar he had built in the corner of the room. He listened, nodded, took a sip from his drink. Then he lowered himself into the leather sofa, قرار داده است down his drink, and propped me up on his lap. I felt as if I were sitting on a pair of tree trunks. He took a deep نفس and exhaled through his nose, the هوا hissing through his mustache for چه seemed an eternity I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to hug him or leap from his lap in mortal fear.

“I see you’ve confused چه you’re learning in school with actual education,” he said in his ضخامت دارد voice.

“But if چه he said is درست است then does it make you a sinner, Baba?”

“Hmm.” Baba خرد an یخ cube between his teeth. “Do you want to know چه your father thinks about sin?”

“Yes.”

“Then من tell you,” Baba said, “but first understand this and understand it now, Amir: You’ll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots.”

“You معنی Mullah Fatiullah Khan?”

Baba gestured with his glass. The یخ clinked. “I معنی all of them. Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys.”

I began to giggle. The image of Baba pissing on the beard of any monkey, self-righteous or otherwise, was بیش از حد much.

“They do هیچ چیز نیست but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book نوشته شده است in a tongue they don’t even understand.” He took a sip. “God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”

“But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice,” I اداره می شود between انفجار of tittering.

“So did Genghis Khan,” Baba said. “But enough about that. You asked about sin and I want to بگویید you. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I said, pressing my lips together. But a chortle escaped through my بینی and made a snorting sound. That got me giggling again.

Baba’s stony eyes bore into mine and, just like that, I wasn’t laughing anymore. “I معنی to صحبت می کنند to you man to man. Do you think you می توانید handle that for once?”

“Yes, Baba jan,” I muttered, marveling, not for the first time, at how badly Baba could sting me with so few words. We’d had a fleeting good moment--it wasn’t often Baba talked to me, let alone on his دامان - و I’d been a fool to waste it.

“Good,” Baba said, but his eyes wondered. “Now, no matter چه the mullah teaches, there is only یک sin, only one. And that is theft. Every دیگر sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?”

“No, Baba jan,” I said, desperately مایل I did. I didn’t want to disappoint him again.

Baba heaved a sigh of impatience. That stung too, because he was not an impatient man. I remembered all the times he didn’t come home تا after dark, all the times I ate dinner alone. I’d ask Ali where Baba was, when he was coming home, though I knew full well he was at the construction site, overlooking this, supervising that. Didn’t that را patience? I already hated all the بچه ها he was building the یتیم خانه for; sometimes I wished they’d all died along with their parents.

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. "شما steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you بگویید a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

I did. When Baba was six, a thief walked into my grandfather’s house in the middle of the night. My grandfather, a respected judge, confronted him, but the thief stabbed him in the throat, killing him instantly--and سرقت Baba of a father. The townspeople caught the قاتل just before noon the next day; he turned out to be a wanderer from the Kunduz region. They hanged him from the branch of an oak tree with هنوز هم two hours to go before afternoon prayer. It was Rahim Khan, not Baba, who had گفت me that story. I was always learning things about Baba from دیگر people.

“There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir,” Baba said. “A man who takes what’s not his to take, be it a زندگی or a loaf of _naan_... I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him. Do you understand?”

I found the ایده of Baba clobbering a thief both exhilarating and terribly frightening. “Yes, Baba.”

“If there’s a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend to than my نوشیدن scotch or eating pork. Now, hop down. All this talk about sin has made me thirsty again.”

I تماشا him fill his glass at the bar and wondered how much time would pass before we talked again the راه we just had. Because the truth of it was, I always felt like Baba hated me a little. And why not? After all, I _had_ killed his beloved wife, his beautiful princess, hadn’t I? The least I could have done was to have had the decency to have turned out a little more like him. But I hadn’t turned out like him. Not at all.

IN SCHOOL, we استفاده می شود to play a game called _Sherjangi_, or “Battle of the Poems.” The Farsi teacher moderated it and it went something like this: You خوانده a verse from a شعر and خود را opponent had sixty ثانیه صورت گرفت to reply with a verse that began with the همان letter that ended yours. Everyone in my class wanted me on their team, because by the time I was eleven, I could recite dozens of verses from Khayyam, Hãfez, or مولانا famous _Masnawi_. One time, I took on the whole class and won. I گفت Baba about it بعد that night, but he just nodded, muttered, “Good.”

That was how I escaped my father’s aloofness, in my dead mother’s books. That and Hassan, of course. I read everything, Rumi, Hãfez, Saadi, ویکتور Hugo, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Ian Fleming. When I had finished my mother’s books--not the

boring history ones, I was never much into those, but the novels, the epics--I started spending my allowance on books. I bought یک a هفته from the bookstore near Cinema Park, and stored them in cardboard boxes when I ran out of shelf room.

Of course, ازدواج a poet was یک thing, but fathering a son who preferred burying his face in poetry books to hunting... well, that wasn’t how Baba had envisioned it, I suppose. Real مردان didn’t read poetry--and God ممنوع they باید ever write it! Real men--real boys--played soccer just as Baba had when he had been young. Now _that_ was something to be passionate about. In 1970, Baba took a break from the construction of the یتیم خانه and flew to Tehran for a month to watch the World Cup games on television, since at the time Afghanistan didn’t have تلویزیون های yet. He امضا me up for soccer teams to stir the همان passion in me. But I was pathetic, a blundering مسئولیت to my own team, always in the راه of an opportune pass or ناخواسته blocking an open lane. I shambled about the field on scraggy legs, squalled for passes that never came my way. And the سخت تر I tried, waving my arms over my سر frantically and screeching, “I’m open! I’m باز کردن " the more I went ignored. But Baba wouldn’t give up. When it became abundantly clear that I hadn’t inherited a shred of his athletic talents, he حل و فصل for trying to تبدیل شود me into a passionate spectator. بدیهی است I could manage that, couldn’t I? I faked interest for as long as possible. I تشویق with him when Kabul’s team scored against Kandahar and yelped insults at the referee when he called a penalty against our team. But Baba sensed my عدم of genuine interest and resigned himself to the bleak fact that his son was never going to either play or watch soccer.

I remember یک time Baba took me to the yearly _Buzkashi_ مسابقات that took محل on the first روز of spring, جدید Year’s Day. Buzkashi was, and هنوز هم is, Afghanistan’s national passion. A _chapandaz_, a highly skilled horseman usually حمایت by rich aficionados, has to snatch a بز or گاو carcass from the midst of a melee, ادامه می دهند that carcass with him around the stadium at full gallop, and قطره it in a scoring circle while a team of دیگر _chapandaz_ chases him and does everything in its power--kick, claw, whip, punch--to snatch the carcass from him. That day, the crowd roared with excitement as the horsemen on the field bellowed their battle cries and jostled for the carcass in a cloud of dust. The earth trembled with the clatter of hooves. We تماشا from the upper سفید as riders pounded past us at full gallop, yipping and yelling, foam flying from their اسب mouths.

At یک point Baba pointed to someone. “Amir, do you see that man sitting up there with those دیگر men around him?”

I did.

“That’s Henry Kissinger.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know who Henry Kissinger was, and I might have asked. But at the moment, I تماشا with ترسناک as یک of the _chapandaz_ fell off his زین and was trampled under a score of hooves. His body was tossed and hurled in the stampede like a rag doll, finally rolling to a stop when the melee moved on. He twitched once and غیر روحانی motionless, his legs bent at غیر طبیعی angles, a pool of his blood غوطه ور شدن through the sand.

I began to cry.

I cried all the راه back home. I remember how Baba’s hands clenched around the فرمان wheel. Clenched and unclenched. Mostly, I will never forget Baba’s

valiant efforts to conceal the بیزارند look on his face as he drove in silence.

Later that night, I was passing by my father’s study when I overheard him speaking to Rahim Khan. I pressed my ear to the closed door.

“--grateful that he’s healthy,” Rahim Khan was saying.

“I know, I know. But he’s always buried in those books or shuffling around the house like he’s lost in some dream.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t like that.” Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry.

Rahim Khan laughed. “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with خود را favorite colors.”

“I’m telling you,” Baba said, “I wasn’t like that at all, and neither were any of the بچه ها I grew up with.”

“You know, sometimes you are the most خود محور man I know,” Rahim Khan said. He was the only person I knew who could get دور with saying something like that to Baba.

“It has هیچ چیز نیست to do with that.”

“Nay?”

“Nay.”

“Then what?”

I heard the leather of Baba’s seat creaking as he shifted on it. I closed my eyes, pressed my ear even سخت تر against the door, wanting to hear, not wanting to hear. "گاهی اوقات I look out this window and I see him playing on the street with the neighborhood boys. I see how they push him around, را his اسباب بازی from him, give him a shove here, a whack there. And, you know, he never fights back. Never. He just... قطره his سر and...”

“So he’s not violent,” Rahim Khan said.

“That’s not چه I mean, Rahim, and you know it,” Baba shot back. “There is something missing in that boy.”

“Yes, a معنی streak.”

“Self-defense has هیچ چیز نیست to do with meanness. You know چه always happens when the neighborhood boys tease او Hassan steps in and fends them off. من seen it with my own eyes. And when they come home, I می گویند to him, ‘How did Hassan get that خراش on his روبرو هستند؟ ' And he says, ‘He fell down.’ I’m telling you, Rahim, there is something missing in that boy.”

“You just need to let him find his way,” Rahim Khan said.

“And where is he headed?” Baba said. “A boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.”

“As usual you’re oversimplifying.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re angry because you’re afraid او به never را over the business for you.”

“Now who’s oversimplifying?” Baba said. “Look, I know there’s a علاقه between you and him and I’m خوشحال about that. Envious, but happy. I معنی that. He needs someone who...understands him, because God می داند I don’t. But something about Amir troubles me in a راه that I can’t express. It’s like...” I could see him searching, reaching for the right words. He lowered his voice, but I heard him anyway. “If I hadn’t seen the doctor بکشید him out of my wife with my own eyes, I’d never believe he’s my son.”

THE NEXT MORNING, as he was preparing my breakfast, Hassan asked if something was آزار me. I snapped at him, گفت him to mind his own business.

Rahim Khan had been wrong about the معنی streak thing.

FOUR

In 1933, the year Baba was born and the year Zahir شاه began his چهل سال است reign of Afghanistan, two brothers, young مردان from a wealthy and reputable family in Kabul, got behind the wheel of their father’s Ford roadster. High on hashish and _mast_ on French wine, they struck and killed a هزاره husband and wife on the road to Paghman. The police brought the somewhat contrite young مردان and the dead زن و شوهر است five-year-old orphan boy before my grandfather, who was a highly در نظر گرفته judge and a man of impeccable reputation. After hearing the brothers’ حساب and their father’s plea for mercy, my grandfather ordered the two young مردان to go to Kandahar at once and enlist in the army for یک year--this با وجود the fact that their family had somehow اداره می شود to obtain them معافیت from the draft. Their father argued, but not بیش از حد vehemently, and in the end, everyone agreed that the punishment had been perhaps harsh but fair. As for the orphan, my grandfather adopted him into his own household, and گفت the دیگر servants to tutor him, but to be kind to him. That boy was Ali.

Ali and Baba grew up together as childhood playmates--at least تا polio crippled Ali’s پا - فقط like Hassan and I grew up a نسل later. Baba was always telling us about the mischief he and Ali استفاده می شود to cause, and Ali would shake his سر and say, “But, Agha sahib, بگویید them who was the معمار of the mischief and who the ضعیف است laborer?” Baba would laugh and throw his arm around Ali.

But in none of his stories did Baba ever مراجعه کنید to Ali as his friend.

The curious thing was, I never فکر می کردم of Hassan and me as friends either. Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that we تدریس each دیگر to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a cardboard box. Never mind that we به سر برد entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a چینی doll face perpetually روشن by a harelipped smile.

Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was اهل سنت است and he was Shi’a, and هیچ چیز نیست was ever going to change that. Nothing.

But we were بچه ها who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either. I به سر برد most of the first twelve years of my زندگی playing with Hassan. Sometimes, my entire childhood seems like یک long lazy summer روز with Hassan, chasing each دیگر between tangles of درختان in my father’s yard, playing hide-and-seek, پلیس and robbers, cowboys and Indians, insect torture--with our crowning achievement undeniably the time we plucked the stinger off a bee and tied a string around the ضعیف است thing to yank it back هر time it took flight.

We chased the _Kochi_, the nomads who passed through Kabul on their راه to the mountains of the north. We would hear their caravans approaching our neighborhood, the mewling of their sheep, the _baa_ing of their goats, the jingle of bells around their camels’ necks. We’d run outside to watch the caravan plod through our street, مردان with dusty, آب و هوا مورد ضرب و شتم faces and women dressed in long, colorful shawls, beads, and silver bracelets around their wrists and ankles. We hurled pebbles at their goats. We squirted water on their mules. I’d make Hassan sit on the Wall of Ailing Corn and fire pebbles with his slingshot at the camels’ rears.

We دیدم our first Western together, _Rio Bravo_ with John Wayne, at the Cinema Park, در سراسر the street from my favorite bookstore. I remember begging Baba to را us to ایران so we could meet John Wayne. Baba burst out in گالس of his deepthroated laughter--a sound not unlike a کامیون engine revving up--and, when he could talk again, explained to us the concept of voice dubbing. Hassan and I were stunned. Dazed. John Wayne didn’t really صحبت می کنند Farsi and he wasn’t Iranian! He was American, just like the friendly, longhaired مردان and women we always دیدم hanging around in Kabul, dressed in their tattered, به روشنی colored shirts. We دیدم _Rio Bravo_ three times, but we دیدم our favorite Western, _The Magnificent Seven_, thirteen times. With each viewing, we cried at the end when the Mexican بچه ها buried چارلز Bronson--who, as it turned out, wasn’t Iranian either.

We took زدن in the musty-smelling بازار of the Shar-e-Nau بخش of Kabul, or the new city, غرب of the Wazir Akbar Khan district. We talked about whatever film we had just seen and walked amid the شلوغ crowds of _bazarris_. We snaked our راه among the merchants and the beggars, wandered through narrow alleys cramped with rows of tiny, tightly packed stalls. Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afghanis and we به سر برد it on گرم است Coca-Cola and rosewater یخ cream topped with خرد pistachios.

During the school year, we had a روزانه routine. By the time I کشیده میشوند myself out of bed and lumbered to the bathroom, Hassan had already washed up, prayed the morning _namaz_ with Ali, and prepared my breakfast: hot black tea with three sugar cubes and a slice of toasted _naan_ topped with my favorite sour cherry marmalade, all neatly placed on the ناهار خوری table. While I ate and complained about homework, Hassan made my bed, polished my shoes, ironed my outfit for the day, packed my books and pencils. I’d hear him singing to himself in the foyer as he ironed, singing old هزاره songs in his بینی voice. Then, Baba and I drove off in his black Ford موستانگ - car that به خود جلب کرد envious looks everywhere because it was the همان car Steve McQueen had driven in _Bullitt_, a film that played in یک theater for six months. Hassan در آنجا ماند home and helped Ali with the روز chores: hand-washing dirty لباس and hanging them to dry in the yard, sweeping the floors, buying fresh _naan_ from the bazaar, خواباندن گوشت meat for dinner, آبیاری the lawn.

After school, Hassan and I met up, برداشت a book, and trotted up a کاسه مانند hill just north of my father’s property in Wazir Akbar Khan. There was an old

abandoned cemetery atop the hill with rows of unmarked headstones and tangles of خار و خاشاک clogging the aisles. فصل به فصل of باران and snow had turned the iron gate زنگ زده and left the cemetery’s low white stone walls in decay. There was a انار tree near the entrance to the cemetery. One summer day, I استفاده می شود one of Ali’s kitchen knives to carve our names on it: “Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul.” Those words made it formal: the tree was ours. After school, Hassan and I climbed its branches and snatched its bloodred pomegranates. After we’d eaten the fruit and wiped our hands on the grass, I would read to Hassan.

Sitting cross-legged, sunlight and shadows of انار leaves dancing on his face, Hassan absently plucked blades of grass from the ground as I read him stories he couldn’t read for himself. That Hassan would grow up illiterate like Ali and most Hazaras had been decided the minute he had been born, perhaps even the moment he had been conceived in Sanaubar’s unwelcoming womb--after all, چه use did a servant have for the نوشته شده است word? But با وجود his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words, seduced by a secret world forbidden to him. I read him poems and stories, sometimes riddles--though I stopped خواندن those when I دیدم he was far better at solving them than I was. So I read him unchallenging things, like the misadventures of the bumbling Mullah Nasruddin and his donkey. We sat for hours under that tree, sat there تا the خورشید faded in the west, and هنوز هم Hassan insisted we had enough daylight for یک more story, یک more chapter.

My favorite part of خواندن to Hassan was when we came در سراسر a big word that he didn’t know. I’d tease him, expose his ignorance. One time, I was خواندن him a Mullah Nasruddin story and he stopped me. “What does that word mean?”

“Which one?”

“Imbecile.”

“You don’t know چه it به این معنی است؟ " I said, grinning.

“Nay, Amir agha.”

“But it’s such a common word!”

“Still, I don’t know it.” If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face didn’t show it.

“Well, everyone in my school می داند what it means,” I said. “Let’s see. ‘Imbecile.’ It means smart, intelligent. من use it in a sentence for you. ‘When it comes to words, Hassan is an imbecile.’”

“Aaah,” he said, nodding.

I would always feel guilty about it later. So I’d try to make up for it by giving him یک of my old پیراهن or a شکسته toy. I would بگویید myself that was amends enough for a harmless prank.

Hassan’s favorite book by far was the _Shahnamah_, the tenth-century epic of ancient Persian heroes. He liked all of the chapters, the shahs of old, Feridoun, Zal, and Rudabeh. But his favorite story, and mine, was “Rostam and Sohrab,” the داستان of the بزرگ است warrior Rostam and his fleet-footed horse, Rakhsh. Rostam mortally wounds his valiant nemesis, Sohrab, in battle, only to کشف that سهراب is his طولانی از دست داد son. Stricken with grief, Rostam hears his son’s dying words:

If thou art در واقع my father, then hast thou stained thy شمشیر in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of تو obstinacy. برای I sought to تبدیل شود thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I فکر می کردم to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I درخواست کرد unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting...

“Read it again please, Amir agha,” Hassan would say. گاهی اوقات tears مخلوط in Hassan’s eyes as I read him this passage, and I always wondered whom he wept for, the grief-stricken Rostam who tears his لباس and covers his سر with ashes, or the dying سهراب who only longed for his father’s love? Personally, I couldn’t see the tragedy in Rostam’s fate. After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons?

One day, in July 1973, I played another little فوت و فن on Hassan. I was خواندن to him, and به طور ناگهانی I strayed from the نوشته شده است story. I وانمود I was خواندن from the book, کوه در می رم pages regularly, but I had abandoned the text altogether, taken over the story, and made up my own. Hassan, of course, was oblivious to this. To him, the words on the page were a scramble of codes, indecipherable, mysterious. Words were secret doorways and I برگزار شد all the keys. After, I started to ask him if he’d liked the story, a giggle rising in my throat, when Hassan began to clap.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“That was the best story you’ve read me in a long time,” he said, هنوز هم clapping.

I laughed. “Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s fascinating,” I muttered. I meant it too. This was... wholly unexpected. “Are you sure, Hassan?”

He was هنوز هم clapping. “It was great, Amir agha. خواهد شد you read me more of it tomorrow?”

“Fascinating,” I repeated, a little breathless, feeling like a man who discovers a buried گنج in his own backyard. Walking down the hill, thoughts were exploding in my سر like the fireworks at _Chaman_. _Best story you’ve read me in a long time_, he’d said. I had read him a _lot_ of stories. Hassan was asking me something.

“What?” I said.

“What does that mean, ‘fascinating’?”

I laughed. Clutched him in a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“What was that برای؟ " he said, startled, blushing.

I gave him a friendly shove. Smiled. “You’re a prince, Hassan. You’re a شاهزاده and I love you.”

That همان night, I wrote my first کوتاه است story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a تاریک little داستان about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept

into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a خوشحال man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the مروارید piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping بی اراده into the cup with his beloved wife’s کشته body in his arms.

That evening, I climbed the stairs and walked into Baba’s smoking room, in my hands the two ورق of paper on which I had scribbled the story. Baba and Rahim Khan were smoking pipes and sipping brandy when I came in.

“What is it, Amir?” Baba said, خمیده on the sofa and lacing his hands behind his head. Blue smoke swirled around his face. His glare made my throat feel dry. I cleared it and گفت him I’d نوشته شده است a story.

Baba nodded and gave a thin smile that conveyed little more than feigned interest. “Well, that’s very good, isn’t آن؟ " he said. Then هیچ چیز نیست more. He just looked at me through the cloud of smoke.

I probably stood there for under a minute, but, to this day, it was یک of the longest minutes of my life. Seconds plodded by, each جدا شده است from the next by an eternity. Air grew heavy damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks. Baba went on staring me down, and didn’t offer to read.

As always, it was Rahim Khan who نجات me. He برگزار شد out his hand and favored me with a smile that had هیچ چیز نیست feigned about it. “May I have it, Amir jan? I would very much like to read it.” Baba به سختی ever استفاده می شود the term of endearment _jan_ when he addressed me.

Baba shrugged and stood up. He looked relieved, as if he بیش از حد had been نجات by Rahim Khan. “Yes, give it to Kaka Rahim. I’m going upstairs to get ready.” And with that, he left the room. Most days I worshiped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.

An hour later, as the evening sky dimmed, the two of them drove off in my father’s car to attend a party. On his راه out, Rahim Khan hunkered before me and تحویل داده شد me my story and another خورده piece of paper. He flashed a smile and winked. "برای you. Read it later.” Then he paused and added a single word that did more to encourage me to pursue writing than any compliment any editor has ever پرداخت می شود me. That word was _Bravo_.

When they left, I sat on my bed and wished Rahim Khan had been my father. Then I فکر می کردم of Baba and his بزرگ است big chest and how good it felt when he برگزار شد me against it, how he smelled of Brut in the morning, and how his beard غلغلک my face. I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink.

Later that night, curled up in bed, I read Rahim Khan’s note over and over. It read like this:

Amir jan,

I enjoyed خود را story very much. _Mashallah_, God has granted you a special talent. It is now خود را duty to با سنگ تیز کردن that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey. You have نوشته شده است your story with sound grammar and interesting style. But the most impressive thing about خود را story is that it

has irony. You may not even know چه that word means. But you will someday. It is something that some writers reach for their entire careers and never attain. You have achieved it with خود را first story.

My door is and always will be open to you, Amir jan. I shall hear any story you have to tell. Bravo.

Your friend,

Rahim

Buoyed by Rahim Khan’s note, I برداشت the story and با عجله downstairs to the foyer where Ali and Hassan were sleeping on a mattress. That was the only time they خواب in the house, when Baba was دور and Ali had to watch over me. I shook Hassan بیدار and asked him if he wanted to hear a story.

He rubbed his sleep-clogged eyes and stretched. “Now? What time is it?”

“Never mind the time. This story’s special. I wrote it myself,” I whispered, امید not to wake Ali. Hassan’s face brightened.

“Then I _have_ to hear it,” he said, already pulling the پتو off him.

I read it to him in the living room by the marble fireplace. No playful straying from the words this time; this was about me! Hassan was the perfect مخاطبان in many ways, totally immersed in the tale, his face shifting with the changing تن in the story. When I read the آخرین sentence, he made a muted کف زدن sound with his hands.

“_Mashallah_, Amir agha. براوو! " He was beaming.

“You liked آن؟ " I said, getting my second طعم - و how شیرین it was--of a positive review.

“Some day, _Inshallah_, you will be a بزرگ است writer,” Hassan said. “And people all over the world will read خود را stories.”

“You exaggerate, Hassan,” I said, loving him for it.

“No. You will be بزرگ است and famous,” he insisted. Then he paused, as if on the verge of adding something. He weighed his words and cleared his throat. “But will you permit me to ask a question about the story?” he said shyly.

“Of course.”

“Well...” he started, شکست off.

“Tell me, Hassan,” I said. I smiled, though به طور ناگهانی the insecure writer in me wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear it.

“Well,” he said, "اگر I may ask, why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn’t he have just smelled an onion?”

I was stunned. That particular point, so obvious it was utterly stupid, hadn’t even occurred to me. I moved my lips soundlessly. It appeared that on the همان night I had learned about یک of writing’s objectives, irony, I would همچنین be introduced to یک of its pitfalls: the فیلم Hole. Taught by Hassan, of all people. Hassan who couldn’t read and had never نوشته شده است a single word in his

entire life. A voice, cold and dark, به طور ناگهانی whispered in my ear, _What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? He’ll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticize you?_

“Well,” I began. But I never got to finish that sentence.

Because به طور ناگهانی Afghanistan changed forever.

FIVE

Something roared like thunder. The earth shook a little and we heard the _rat-A-TAT-tat_ of gunfire. “Father!” Hassan cried. We sprung to our فوت است and raced out of the living room. We found Ali hobbling frantically در سراسر the foyer.

“Father! What’s that sound?” Hassan yelped, his hands دراز toward Ali. Ali wrapped his arms around us. A white light flashed, روشن the sky in silver. It flashed again and was followed by a rapid staccato of gunfire.

“They’re hunting ducks,” Ali said in a hoarse voice. “They hunt ducks at night, you know. Don’t be afraid.”

A siren went off in the distance. Somewhere glass shattered and someone shouted. I heard people on the street, jolted from خواب and probably هنوز هم in their pajamas, with ruffled hair and puffy eyes. Hassan was crying. Ali pulled him close, clutched him with tenderness. Later, I would بگویید myself I hadn’t felt envious of Hassan. Not at all.

We در آنجا ماند huddled that راه until the early hours of the morning. The تیراندازی and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The نسل of Afghan children whose ears would know هیچ چیز نیست but the sounds of bombs and تیراندازی was not yet born. Huddled together in the ناهار خوری room and waiting for the خورشید to rise, none of us had any مفهوم that a راه of زندگی had ended. Our راه of life. If not quite yet, then at least it was the beginning of the end. The end, the _official_ end, would come first in April 1978 with the کمونیست coup d’état, and then in December 1979, when Russian tanks would roll into the very همان streets where Hassan and I played, bringing the death of the Afghanistan I knew and marking the start of a هنوز هم ongoing era of bloodletting.

Just before sunrise, Baba’s car peeled into the driveway. His door slammed shut and his running footsteps pounded the stairs. Then he appeared in the doorway and I دیدم something on his face. چیزی I didn’t recognize right دور because I’d never seen it before: fear. “Amir! Hassan!” he exclaimed as he ran to us, opening his arms wide. “They blocked all the roads and the tele تلفن didn’t work. I was so worried!”

We let him wrap us in his arms and, for a brief insane moment, I was خوشحالم about whatever had اتفاق افتاده است that night.

THEY WEREN’T SHOOTING ducks after all. As it turned out, they hadn’t shot much of anything that night of July 17, 1973. Kabul awoke the next morning to find that the monarchy was a thing of the past. The king, Zahir Shah, was دور in Italy. In his absence, his cousin Daoud Khan had ended the king’s چهل سال است reign with a bloodless coup.

I remember Hassan and I crouching that next morning outside my father’s study, as Baba and Rahim Khan sipped black tea and گوش to breaking news of the coup on Radio Kabul.

“Amir agha?” Hassan whispered.

“What?”

“What’s a ‘republic’?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” On Baba’s radio, they were saying that word, “republic,” over and over again.

“Amir agha?”

“What?”

“Does ‘republic’ معنی Father and I will have to move away?”

“I don’t think so,” I whispered back.

Hassan considered this. “Amir agha?”

“What?”

“I don’t want them to ارسال کنید me and Father away.”

I smiled. “_Bas_, you donkey. No one’s sending you away.”

“Amir agha?”

“What?”

“Do you want to go climb our tree?”

My smile broadened. That was another thing about Hassan. He always knew when to می گویند the right thing--the news on the radio was getting pretty boring. Hassan went to his shack to get ready and I ran upstairs to گرفتن a book. Then I went to the kitchen, stuffed my جیب with handfuls of pine nuts, and ran outside to find Hassan waiting for me. We burst through the front gates and به عهده دارد for the hill.

We crossed the residential street and were کوه پیمایی through a barren patch of rough land that led to the hill when, suddenly, a rock struck Hassan in the back. We whirled around and my heart dropped. Assef and two of his friends, Wali and Kamal, were approaching us.

Assef was the son of یک of my father’s friends, Mahmood, an airline pilot. His family زندگی می کردند a few streets جنوب of our home, in a posh, high-walled compound with palm trees. If you were a kid living in the Wazir Akbar Khan بخش of Kabul, you knew about Assef and his famous فولاد ضد زنگ brass knuckles, hopefully not through personal experience. Born to a German mother and Afghan father, the blond, چشم آبی Assef towered over the دیگر kids. His well-earned reputation for savagery preceded him on the streets. Flanked by his obeying friends, he walked the neighborhood like a Khan strolling through his land with his مشتاق به لطفا entourage. His word was law, and if you needed a little legal education, then those brass knuckles were just the right teaching tool. I

saw him use those knuckles once on a kid from the Karteh-Char district. I will never forget how Assef’s آبی eyes glinted with a light not entirely sane and how he grinned, how he _grinned_, as he pummeled that ضعیف است kid unconscious. Some of the boys in Wazir Akbar Khan had با نام مستعار him Assef _Goshkhor_, or Assef “the Ear Eater.” Of course, none of them dared utter it to his face مگر اینکه they wished to suffer the همان fate as the ضعیف است kid who had ناخواسته inspired that نام مستعار when he had fought Assef over a kite and ended up ماهیگیری his right ear from a نمیاد gutter. Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist:

“sociopath.”

Of all the neighborhood boys who tortured Ali, Assef was by far the most relentless. He was, in fact, the originator of the Babalu jeer, _Hey, Babalu, who did you خوردن today? Huh? Come on, Babalu, give us a لبخند! _ And on days when he felt particularly inspired, he spiced up his badgering a little, _Hey, you flat-nosed Babalu, who did you خوردن today? Tell us, you کج چشم donkey!_

Now he was walking toward us, hands on his hips, his کفش ورزشی kicking up little puffs of dust.

“Good morning, _kunis_!” Assef exclaimed, waving. “Fag,” that was another of his favorite insults. Hassan عقب نشینی کردند behind me as the three older boys closed in. They stood before us, three tall boys dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Towering over us all, Assef crossed his ضخامت دارد arms on his chest, a savage sort of پوزخند on his lips. Not for the first time, it occurred to me that Assef might not be entirely sane. It همچنین occurred to me how lucky I was to have Baba as my father, the sole reason, I believe, Assef had mostly refrained from harassing me بیش از حد much.

He tipped his chin to Hassan. “Hey, Flat-Nose,” he said. “How is Babalu?”

Hassan said هیچ چیز نیست and crept another step behind me.

“Have you heard the news, boys?” Assef said, his پوزخند never faltering. “The king is gone. Good riddance. Long live the president! My father می داند Daoud Khan, did you know that, Amir?”

“So does my father,” I said. In reality, I had no ایده if that was درست است or not.

“So does my father,” Assef mimicked me in a ناله voice. Kamal and Wali cackled in unison. I wished Baba were there.

“Well, Daoud Khan dined at our house آخرین year,” Assef went on. “How do you like that, Amir?”

I wondered if anyone would hear us scream in this remote patch of land. Baba’s house was a good kilometer away. I wished we’d در آنجا ماند at the house.

“Do you know چه I will بگویید Daoud Khan the next time he comes to our house for dinner?” Assef said. “I’m going to have a little chat with him, man to man, _mard_ to _mard_. Tell him چه I گفت my mother. About Hitler. Now, there was a leader. A بزرگ است leader.

A man with vision. من tell Daoud Khan to remember that if they had let Hitler finish چه he had started, the world be a better محل now”

“Baba says Hitler was crazy, that he ordered a lot of innocent people killed,” I heard خودم say before I could clamp a hand on my mouth.

Assef snickered. “He sounds like my mother, and she’s German; she باید know better. But then they want you to believe that, don’t they? They don’t want you to know the truth.”

I didn’t know who “they” were, or چه truth they were hiding, and I didn’t want to find out. I wished I hadn’t said anything. I wished again I’d look up and see Baba coming up the hill.

“But you have to read books they don’t give out in school,” Assef said. “I have. And my eyes have been opened. Now I have a vision, and I’m going to share it with our new president. Do you know چه it is?”

I shook my head. He’d بگویید me anyway; Assef always answered his own questions.

His آبی eyes flicked to Hassan. "افغانستان is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the درست است Afghans, the خالص است Afghans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood.” He made a sweeping, grandiose gesture with his hands. "افغانستان for Pashtuns, I say. That’s my vision.”

Assef shifted his gaze to me again. He looked like someone coming out of a good dream. "بیش از حد late for Hitler,” he said. “But not for us.”

He reached for something from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll ask the president to do چه the king didn’t have the quwat to do. To rid Afghanistan of all the dirty, kasseef Hazaras.”

“Just let us go, Assef,” I said, hating the راه my voice trembled. “We’re not آزار you.”

“Oh, you’re آزار me,” Assef said. And I دیدم with a sinking heart چه he had fished out of his pocket. Of course. His فولاد ضد زنگ brass knuckles برق زد in the sun. “You’re آزار me very much. In fact, you زحمت me more than this هزاره here. How می توانید you talk to him, play with him, let him touch you?” he said, his voice dripping with disgust. Wali and Kamal nodded and grunted in agreement. Assef تنگ his eyes. Shook his head. When he spoke again, he sounded as baffled as he looked. “How می توانید you call him خود را ‘friend’?”

_But he’s not my friend!_ I almost blurted. _He’s my servant!_ Had I really فکر می کردم that? Of course I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I treated Hassan well, just like a friend, better even, more like a brother. But if so, then why, when Baba’s friends came to visit with their kids, didn’t I ever include Hassan in our games? Why did I play with Hassan only when no یک else was around?

Assef slipped on the brass knuckles. Gave me an icy look. “You’re part of the problem, Amir. If idiots like you and خود را father didn’t را these people in, we’d be rid of them by now. آنها می خواهم all just go rot in Hazarajat where they belong. You’re a disgrace to Afghanistan.”

I looked in his crazy eyes and دیدم that he meant it. He _really_ meant to hurt me. Assef raised his مشت and came for me.

There was a flurry of rapid movement behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I دیدم Hassan bend down and stand up quickly. Assef’s eyes flicked to something

behind me and widened with surprise. I دیدم that همان look ol astonishment on Kamal and Wali’s faces as they بیش از حد saw چه had اتفاق افتاده است behind me.

I turned and came face to face with Hassan’s slingshot. Hassan had pulled the wide elastic band all the راه back. In the cup was a rock the size of a walnut. Hassan برگزار شد the slingshot pointed directly at Assef’s face. His hand trembled with the strain of the pulled elastic band and beads of sweat had erupted on his brow.

“Please leave us alone, Agha,” Hassan said in a flat tone. He’d referred to Assef as “Agha,” and I wondered briefly چه it باید be like to live with such an ingrained حس of one’s محل in a hierarchy.

Assef gritted his teeth. “Put it down, you motherless Hazara.”

“Please leave us be, Agha,” Hassan said.

Assef smiled. "شاید you didn’t notice, but there are three of us and two of you.”

Hassan shrugged. To an outsider, he didn’t look scared. But Hassan’s face was my اولین memory and I knew all of its subtle nuances, knew each and هر twitch and flicker that ever rippled در سراسر it. And I دیدم that he was scared. He was scared plenty.

“You are right, Agha. But perhaps you didn’t notice that I’m the یک holding the slingshot. If you make a move, they’ll have to change خود را nickname from Assef ‘the Ear Eater’ to ‘One-Eyed Assef,’ because I have this rock pointed at خود را left eye.” He said this so flatly that even I had to strain to hear the ترس that I knew مخفی شدند under that calm voice.

Assef’s دهان twitched. Wali and Kamal تماشا this exchange with something akin to fascination. Someone had challenged their god. Humiliated him. And, worst of all, that someone was a skinny Hazara. Assef looked from the rock to Hassan. He searched Hassan’s face intently. What he found in it باید have متقاعد شده him of the seriousness of Hassan’s intentions, because he lowered his fist.

“You باید know something about me, Hazara,” Assef said gravely. “I’m a very بیمار است person. This doesn’t end today, believe me.” He turned to me. “This isn’t the end for you either, Amir. Someday, من make you face me یک on one.” Assef عقب نشینی کردند a step. His شاگردان followed.

“Your هزاره made a big mistake today, Amir,” he said. They then turned around, walked away. I تماشا them walk down the hill and disappear behind a wall.

Hassan was trying to tuck the slingshot in his waist with a pair of trembling hands. His دهان curled up into something that was قرار to be a reassuring smile. It took him five tries to tie the string of his trousers. Neither یک of us said much of anything as we walked home in trepidation, certain that Assef and his friends would ambush us هر time we turned a corner. They didn’t and that باید have comforted us a little. But it didn’t. Not at all.

FOR THE NEXT COUPLE of years, the words _economic development_ and _reform_ danced on a lot of lips in Kabul. The constitutional monarchy had been abolished, replaced by a republic, led by a president of the republic. برای a

while, a حس of rejuvenation and purpose swept در سراسر the land. People spoke of women’s rights and modern technology.

And for the most part, even though a new رهبر lived in _Arg_--the royal کاخ in Kabul--life went on as before. People went to work Saturday through Thursday and gathered for picnics on Fridays in parks, on the banks of Ghargha Lake, in the gardens of Paghman. Multicolored buses and lorries filled with passengers rolled through the narrow streets of Kabul, led by the constant shouts of the driver assistants who straddled the vehicles’ rear bumpers and yelped directions to the driver in their ضخامت دارد Kabuli accent. On _Eid_, the three days of celebration after the holy month

of Ramadan, Kabulis dressed in their best and newest لباس and visited their families. People hugged and kissed and greeted each دیگر with “_Eid Mubarak_.” مبارک Eid. Children opened gifts and played with dyed سفت eggs.

Early that following زمستان of 1974, Hassan and I were playing in the yard یک day, building a snow fort, when Ali called him in. “Hassan, Agha صاحب wants to talk to you!” He was standing by the front door, dressed in white, hands tucked under his armpits, نفس puffing from his mouth.

Hassan and I exchanged a smile. We’d been waiting for his call all day: It was Hassan’s birthday. “What is it, Father, do you know? خواهد شد you بگویید us?” Hassan said. His eyes were gleaming.

Ali shrugged. “Agha صاحب hasn’t discussed it with me.”

“Come on, Ali, بگویید us,” I pressed. “Is it a نقاشی book? Maybe a new pistol?”

Like Hassan, Ali was incapable of lying. Every year, he وانمود not to know چه Baba had bought Hassan or me for our birthdays. And هر year, his eyes betrayed him and we coaxed the goods out of him. This time, though, it seemed he was telling the truth.

Baba never از دست رفته Hassan’s birthday. برای a while, he استفاده می شود to ask Hassan چه he wanted, but he gave up doing that because Hassan was always بیش از حد modest to actually suggest a present. So هر winter Baba picked something out himself. He bought him a Japanese toy کامیون one year, an electric locomotive and train track set another year. The previous year, Baba had surprised Hassan with a leather cowboy hat just like the یک Clint Eastwood عینک in _The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_--which had unseated _The Magnificent Seven_ as our favorite Western. That whole winter, Hassan and I took turns wearing the hat, and belted out the film’s famous music as we climbed mounds of snow and shot each دیگر dead.

We took off our دستکش and removed our برف لادن boots at the front door. When we stepped into the foyer, we found Baba sitting by the wood-burning چدن stove with a short, balding Indian man dressed in a brown suit and red tie.

“Hassan,” Baba said, smiling coyly, “meet خود را birthday present.”

Hassan and I داد و ستد blank looks. There was no gift-wrapped جعبه in sight. No bag. No toy. Just Ali standing behind us, and Baba with this slight Indian همکار who looked a little like a mathematics teacher.

The Indian man in the brown suit smiled and offered Hassan his hand. “I am Dr. Kumar,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He spoke Farsi with a thick, rolling Hindi accent.

“_Salaam alaykum_,” Hassan said uncertainly. He gave a polite tip of the head, but his eyes sought his father behind him. Ali moved closer and set his hand on Hassan’s shoulder.

Baba met Hassan’s احتیاط - و puzzled--eyes. “I have summoned Dr. Kumar from جدید Delhi. Dr. Kumar is a plastic surgeon.”

“Do you know چه that is?” the Indian man--Dr. کومار - said.

Hassan shook his head. He looked to me for help but I shrugged. All I knew was that you went to a جراح to fix you when you had appendicitis. I knew this because یک of my classmates had died of it the year before and the teacher had گفت us they had waited بیش از حد long to را him to a surgeon. We both looked to Ali, but of course with him you could never tell. His face was impassive as ever, though something sober had melted into his eyes.

“Well,” Dr. Kumar said, “my job is to fix things on people’s bodies. گاهی اوقات their faces.”

“Oh,” Hassan said. He looked from Dr. Kumar to Baba to Ali. His hand touched his upper lip. “Oh,” he said again.

“It’s an unusual present, I know,” Baba said. “And probably not چه you had in mind, but this present will آخرین you forever.”

“Oh,” Hassan said. He licked his lips. Cleared his throat. “Agha sahib, will it... will it--”

“Nothing doing,” Dr. Kumar intervened, smiling kindly. “It will not hurt you یک bit. In fact, I will give you a medicine and you will not remember a thing.”

“Oh,” Hassan said. He smiled back with relief. A little امداد anyway. “I wasn’t scared, Agha sahib, I just...” Hassan might have been fooled, but I wasn’t. I knew that when doctors said it wouldn’t hurt, that’s when you knew you were in trouble. With dread, I remembered my circumcision the year prior. The doctor had given me the همان line, reassured me it wouldn’t hurt یک bit. But when the numbing medicine عینک off بعد that night, it felt like someone had pressed a red hot ذغال سنگ است to my loins. Why Baba waited تا I was ten to have me circumcised was beyond me and یک of the things I will never forgive him for.

I wished I بیش از حد had some kind of scar that would beget Baba’s sympathy. It wasn’t fair. Hassan hadn’t done anything to کسب درآمد Baba’s affections; he’d just been born with that stupid harelip.

The surgery went well. We were all a little shocked when they first removed the bandages, but kept our لبخند می زند on just as Dr. Kumar had instructed us. It wasn’t easy, because Hassan’s upper lip was a grotesque mesh of swollen, خام tissue. I expected Hassan to cry with ترسناک when the nurse تحویل داده شد him the mirror. Ali برگزار شد his hand as Hassan took a long, thoughtful look into it. He muttered something I didn’t understand. I قرار داده است my ear to his mouth. He whispered it again.

“_Tashakor_.” Thank you.

Then his lips twisted, and, that time, I knew just چه he was doing. He was smiling. Just as he had, emerging from his mother’s womb.

The swelling subsided, and the wound healed with time. Soon, it was just a pink jagged line running up from his lip. By the following winter, it was only a ضعف scar. Which was ironic. Because that was the زمستان that Hassan stopped smiling.

SIX

Winter.

Here is چه I do on the first روز of snowfall هر year: I step out of the house early in the morning, هنوز هم in my pajamas, hugging my arms against the chill. I find the driveway, my father’s car, the walls, the trees, the rooftops, and the تپه buried under a foot of snow. I smile. The sky is seamless and blue, the snow so white my eyes burn. I shovel a تعداد انگشت شماری of the fresh snow into my mouth, lis ten to the muffled stillness شکسته only by the cawing of crows. I walk down the front steps, barefoot, and call for Hassan to come out and see.

Winter was هر kid’s favorite فصل in Kabul, at least those whose fathers could afford to buy a good iron stove. The reason was simple: They shut down school for the icy season. زمستان to me was the end of long division and naming the capital of Bulgaria, and the start of three months of playing cards by the stove with Hassan, free Russian movies on Tuesday mornings at Cinema Park, شیرین turnip _qurma_ over rice for lunch after a morning of building snowmen.

And kites, of course. Flying kites. And running them.

For a few unfortunate kids, زمستان did not spell the end of the school year. There were the به اصطلاح voluntary زمستان courses. No kid I knew ever volunteered to go to these classes; parents, of course, did the volunteering for them. Fortunately for me, Baba was not یک of them. I remember یک kid, Ahmad, who زندگی می کردند across the street from us. His father was some kind of doctor, I think. Ahmad had epilepsy and always عینک a wool vest and ضخامت دارد blackrimmed glasses--he was یک of Assef’s regular victims. Every morning, I تماشا from my bedroom window as their هزاره servant shoveled snow from the driveway, cleared the راه for the black Opel. I made a point of watching Ahmad and his father get into the car, Ahmad in his wool vest and زمستان coat, his schoolbag filled with books and pencils. I waited تا they pulled away, turned the corner, then I slipped back into bed in my flannel pajamas. I pulled the پتو to my chin and تماشا the snowcapped تپه in the north through the window. Watched them تا I drifted back to sleep.

I loved wintertime in Kabul. I loved it for the soft pattering of snow against my window at night, for the راه fresh snow crunched under my black rubber boots, for the warmth of the چدن stove as the باد screeched through the yards, the streets. But mostly because, as the درختان froze and یخ sheathed the roads, the chill between Baba and me thawed a little. And the reason for that was the kites. Baba and I زندگی می کردند in the همان house, but in different حوزه of existence. Kites were the یک paper thin slice of intersection between those spheres.

EVERY WINTER, مناطق in Kabul برگزار شد a kite-fighting tournament. And if you were a boy living in Kabul, the روز of the مسابقات was undeniably the highlight of the cold season. I never خواب the night before the tournament. I’d roll from side to side, make shadow animals on the wall, even sit on the balcony in the dark, a پتو wrapped around me. I felt like a soldier trying to sleep

in the ترانشه the night before a major battle. And that wasn’t so far off. In Kabul, fighting kites was a little like going to war.

As with any war, you had to ready خودتان for battle. برای a while, Hassan and I استفاده می شود to build our own kites. We saved our weekly allowances in the fall, کاهش یافته است the money in a little porcelain horse Raba had brought یک time from Herat. When the winds of زمستان began to ضربه and snow fell in chunks, we undid the snap under the horse’s belly. We went to the bazaar and bought bamboo, glue, string, and paper. We به سر برد hours هر day تراشیدن bamboo for the center and cross spars, cutting the thin بافت paper which made for easy dipping and recovery And then, of course, we had to make our own string, or tar. If the kite was the gun, then _tar_, the glass-coated cutting line, was the bullet in the chamber. We’d go out in the yard and feed up to five hundred فوت است of string through a مخلوط of ground glass and glue. We’d then hang the line between the trees, leave it to dry. The next day, we’d باد the battle-ready line around a wooden spool. By the time the snow melted and the rains of بهار swept in, هر boy in Kabul bore telltale horizontal gashes on his fingers from a whole زمستان of fighting kites. I remember how my classmates and I استفاده می شود to huddle, compare our battle scars on the first روز of school. The کاهش stung and didn’t زخم التیام یابد for a couple of weeks, but I didn’t mind. They were reminders of a beloved فصل that had once again passed بیش از حد quickly. Then the class captain would ضربه his whistle and we’d march in a single file to our classrooms, longing for زمستان already, greeted instead by the specter of yet another long school year.

But it به سرعت became apparent that Hassan and I were better kite fighters than kite makers. Some flaw or دیگر in our design always spelled its doom. So Baba started گرفتن us to Saifo’s to buy our kites. Saifo was a nearly کور old man who was a _moochi_ by profession--a shoe repairman. But he was همچنین the city’s most famous kite maker, working out of a tiny hovel on Jadeh Maywand, the شلوغ است street جنوب of the نمیاد banks of the Kabul River. I remember you had to دولا شدن to enter the prison سلول به اندازه store, and then had to lift a trapdoor to creep down a set of wooden steps to the dank زیرزمین where Saifo stored his coveted kites. Baba would buy us each three identical kites and spools of glass string. If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier kite, Baba would buy it for من - اما then he’d buy it for Hassan too. گاهی اوقات I wished he wouldn’t do that. Wished he’d let me be the favorite.

The kite-fighting مسابقات was an old زمستان tradition in Afghanistan. It started early in the morning on the روز of the contest and didn’t end تا only the winning kite flew in the sky--I remember یک year the مسابقات outlasted daylight. People gathered on sidewalks and roofs to cheer for their kids. The streets filled with kite fighters, jerking and tugging on their lines, squinting up to the sky, trying to gain position to را کاهش دهد the opponent’s line. Every kite جنگنده had an assistant--in my case, Hassan--who برگزار شد the spool and fed the line.

One time, a bratty Hindi kid whose family had به تازگی moved into the neighborhood گفت us that in his hometown, kite fighting had strict قوانین and regulations. "شما have to play in a boxed area and you have to stand at a right angle to the wind,” he said proudly. “And you can’t use aluminum to make خود را glass string.” Hassan and I looked at each other. ترک خورده up. The Hindi kid would soon learn چه the British learned earlier in the century, and چه the Russians would eventually learn by the late 1980s:

that Afghans are an independent people. Afghans cherish custom but abhor rules. And so it was with kite fighting. The قوانین were simple: No rules. پرواز your kite. Cut the opponents. Good luck.

Except that wasn’t all. The real fun began when a kite was cut. That was where the kite runners came in, those بچه ها who chased the windblown kite drifting through the neighborhoods تا it came spiraling down in a field, dropping in someone’s yard, on a tree, or a rooftop. The chase got pretty fierce; hordes of kite runners swarmed the streets, shoved past each دیگر like those people from Spain I’d read about once, the آنهایی که who ran from the bulls. One year a neighborhood kid climbed a pine tree for a kite. A branch snapped under his weight and he fell thirty feet. شکست his back and never walked again. But he fell with the kite هنوز هم in his hands. And when a kite runner had his hands on a kite, no یک could را it from him. That wasn’t a rule. That was custom.

For kite runners, the most coveted جایزه was the آخرین fallen kite of a زمستان tournament. It was a trophy of honor, something to be نمایش داده می شود on a mantle for guests to admire. When the sky cleared of kites and only the final two remained, هر kite runner readied himself for the chance to land this prize. He positioned himself at a spot that he فکر می کردم would give him a سر start. Tense muscles readied themselves to uncoil. Necks craned. Eyes crinkled. Fights شکست out. And when the آخرین kite was cut, all hell شکست loose.

Over the years, I had seen a lot of guys run kites. But Hassan was by far the greatest kite runner I’d ever seen. It was downright eerie the راه he always got to the spot the kite would land before the kite did, as if he had some sort of inner compass.

I remember یک overcast زمستان day, Hassan and I were running a kite. I was chasing him through neighborhoods, hopping

gutters, weaving through narrow streets. I was a year older than him, but Hassan ran سریع تر than I did, and I was falling behind.

“Hassan! Wait!” I yelled, my breathing hot and ragged.

He whirled around, motioned with his hand. “This way!” he called before بی باک around another corner. I looked up, دیدم that the direction we were running was opposite to the یک the kite was drifting.

“We’re losing it! ما هستیم going the wrong way!” I cried out.

“Trust me!” I heard him call up ahead. I reached the corner and دیدم Hassan bolting along, his سر down, not even به دنبال at the sky, sweat غوطه ور شدن through the back of his shirt. I tripped over a rock and fell--I wasn’t just slower than Hassan but clumsier too; I’d always envied his natural athieticism. When I staggered to my feet, I caught a نگاه اجمالی of Hassan disappearing around another street corner. I hobbled after him, spikes of pain battering my scraped knees.

I دیدم we had ended up on a rutted dirt road near Isteqial Middle School. There was a field on یک side where lettuce grew in the summer, and a ردیف of sour cherry درختان on the other. I found Hassan sitting cross-legged at the foot of یک of the trees, eating from a fistful of dried mulberries.

“What are we doing here?” I panted, my stomach roiling with nausea.

He smiled. “Sit with me, Amir agha.”

I کاهش یافته است next to him, غیر روحانی on a thin patch of snow, wheezing. “You’re wasting our time. It was going the دیگر way, didn’t you see?”

Hassan ظهور a mulberry in his mouth. “It’s coming,” he said. I could به سختی breathe and he didn’t even sound tired.

“How do you می دانید؟ " I said.

“I know.”

“How می توانید you know?”

He turned to me. A few sweat beads rolled from his bald scalp. “Would I ever lie to you, Amir agha?”

Suddenly I decided to toy with him a little. “I don’t know. Would you?”

“I’d دیر eat dirt,” he said with a look of indignation.

“Really? You’d do that?”

He threw me a puzzled look. “Do what?”

“Eat dirt if I گفت you to,” I said. I knew I was being cruel, like when I’d taunt him if he didn’t know some big word. But there was something fascinating--albeit in a sick way--about teasing Hassan. Kind of like when we استفاده می شود to play insect torture. به جز now, he was the ant and I was holding the magnifying glass.

His eyes searched my face for a long time. We sat there, two boys under a sour cherry tree, به طور ناگهانی looking, really looking, at each other. That’s when it اتفاق افتاده است again: Hassan’s face changed. Maybe not _changed_, not really, but به طور ناگهانی I had the feeling I was به دنبال at two faces, the یک I knew, the یک that was my first memory, and another, a second face, this یک lurking just beneath the surface. I’d seen it happen before--it always shook me up a little. It just appeared, this دیگر face, for a fraction of a moment, long enough to leave me with the unsettling feeling that maybe I’d seen it someplace before. Then Hassan blinked and it was just him again. Just Hassan.

“If you asked, I would,” he finally said, به دنبال right at me. I کاهش یافته است my eyes. To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who معنی every word they say.

“But I wonder,” he added. “Would you ever ask me to do such a thing, Amir agha?” And, just like that, he had thrown at me his own little test. If I was going to toy with him and به چالش بکشد his loyalty, then he’d toy with me, test my integrity.

I wished I hadn’t started this conversation. I forced a smile. "آیا نمی کند be stupid, Hassan. You know I wouldn’t.”

Hassan returned the smile. به جز his didn’t look forced. “I know,” he said. And that’s the thing about people who معنی everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

“Here it comes,” Hassan said, pointing to the sky. He rose to his فوت است and walked a few paces to his left. I looked up, دیدم the kite plummeting toward us. I heard footfalls, shouts, an approaching melee of kite runners. But they were wasting their time. Because Hassan stood with his arms wide open, smiling,

waiting for the kite. And may God--if He exists, that is--strike me کور if the kite didn’t just قطره into his دراز arms.

IN THE WINTER OF 1975, I دیدم Hassan run a kite for the آخرین time.

Usually, each neighborhood برگزار شد its own competition. But that year, the مسابقات was going to be برگزار شد in my neighborhood, Wazir Akbar Khan, and several دیگر districts--Karteh-Char, Karteh-Parwan, Mekro-Rayan, and Koteh-Sangi--had been invited. You could به سختی go anywhere without hearing talk of the آینده tournament. Word had it this was going to be the بزرگترین tournament in twenty-five years.

One night that winter, with the big contest only four days away, Baba and I sat in his study in overstuffed leather chairs by the glow of the fireplace. We were sipping tea, talking. Ali had served dinner earlier--potatoes and curried cauliflower over rice--and had بازنشسته شد for the night with Hassan. Baba was fattening his pipe and I was asking him to بگویید the story about the زمستان a pack of گرگ had descended from the mountains in هرات and forced everyone to stay indoors for a week, when he روشن a match and said, casually, “I think maybe you’ll win the مسابقات this year. What do you think?”

I didn’t know چه to think. Or چه to say. Was that چه it would take? Had he just slipped me a key? I was a good kite fighter. Actually, a very good one. A few times, I’d even come close to winning the زمستان tournament--once, I’d made it to the final three. But coming close wasn’t the همان as winning, was it? Baba hadn’t _come close_. He had به دست آورد because winners به دست آورد and everyone else just went home. Baba was استفاده می شود to winning, winning at everything he set his mind to. Didn’t he have a right to expect the همان from his son? And just imagine. If I did win...

Baba smoked his pipe and talked. I وانمود to listen. But I couldn’t listen, not really, because Baba’s casual little comment had planted a seed in my head: the resolution that I would win that winter’s tournament. I was going to win. There was no دیگر viable option. I was going to win, and I was going to run that آخرین kite. Then I’d bring it home and show it to Baba. Show him once and for all that his son was worthy. Then maybe my زندگی as a شبح in this house would finally be over. I let خودم dream: I imagined conversation and laughter over dinner instead of silence شکسته only by the clinking of silverware and the occasional grunt. I envisioned us گرفتن a جمعه drive in Baba’s car to Paghman, stopping on the راه at Ghargha دریاچه for some fried trout and potatoes. We’d go to the zoo to see Marjan the lion, and maybe Baba wouldn’t yawn and steal looks at his wristwatch all the time. Maybe Baba would even read یک of my stories. I’d write him a hundred if I فکر می کردم he’d read one. Maybe he’d call me Amir jan like Rahim Khan did. And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother.

Baba was telling me about the time he’d را کاهش دهد fourteen kites on the همان day. I smiled, nodded, laughed at all the right places, but

I به سختی heard a word he said. I had a mission now. And I wasn’t going to fail Baba. Not this time.

IT برف HEAVILY the night before the tournament. Hassan and I sat under the kursi and played panjpar as wind-rattled tree branches شنود گذاشته باشند on the window. Earlier that day, I’d asked Ali to set up the kursi for us--which was اساسا an electric heater under a low جدول covered with a thick, دوخته شده blanket.

Around the table, he arranged mattresses and cushions, so as many as twenty people could sit and slip their legs under. Hassan and I استفاده می شود to spend entire snowy days snug under the kursi, playing chess, cards--mostly panjpar.

I killed Hassan’s ten of diamonds, played him two jacks and a six. بعدی door, in Baba’s study, Baba and Rahim Khan were بحث در مورد business with a couple of دیگر men-one of them I recognized as Assef’s father. از طریق the wall, I could hear the scratchy sound of Radio Kabul News.

Hassan killed the six and picked up the jacks. On the radio, Daoud Khan was announcing something about foreign investments.

“He says someday we’ll have television in Kabul,” I said.

“Who?”

“Daoud Khan, you ass, the president.”

Hassan giggled. “I heard they already have it in Iran,” he said. I sighed. “Those Iranians...” برای a lot of Hazaras, ایران represented a sanctuary of sorts--I حدس می زنم because, like Hazaras, most Iranians were Shi’a Muslims. But I remembered something my teacher had said that summer about Iranians, that they were grinning smooth talkers who patted you on the back with یک hand and picked خود را pocket with the other. I گفت Baba about that and he said my teacher was یک of those jealous Afghans, jealous because ایران was a rising power in آسیا and most people around the world couldn’t even find Afghanistan on a world map. “It لطمه می زند to می گویند that,” he said, shrugging. “But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

“I’ll buy you یک someday,” I said.

Hassan’s face brightened. “A television? In truth?”

“Sure. And not the black-and-white kind either. We’ll probably be grown-ups by then, but من get us two. One for you and یک for me.”

“I’ll قرار داده است it on my table, where I keep my drawings,” Hassan said.

His saying that made me kind of sad. Sad for who Hassan was, where he lived. برای how he’d accepted the fact that he’d grow old in that mud shack in the yard, the راه his father had. I به خود جلب کرد the آخرین card, played him a pair of ملکه and a ten.

Hassan picked up the queens. "شما know, I think you’re going to make Agha صاحب very proud tomorrow.”

“You think so?”

“_Inshallah_,” he said.

“_Inshallah_,”I echoed, though the “God willing” qualifier didn’t sound as sincere coming from my lips. That was the thing with Hassan. He was so goddamn pure, you always felt like a phony around him.

I killed his king and played him my final card, the ace of spades. He had to pick it up. I’d won, but as I shuffled for a new game, I had the distinct سوء ظن است that Hassan had let me win.

“Amir agha?”

“What?”

“You know... I _like_ where I live.” He was always doing that, خواندن my mind. “It’s my home.”

“Whatever,” I said. "دریافت ready to lose again.”

SEVEN

The next morning, as he brewed black tea for breakfast, Hassan گفت me he’d had a dream. “We were at Ghargha Lake, you, me, Father, Agha sahib, Rahim Khan, and thousands of دیگر people,” he said. “It was گرم است and sunny, and the lake was clear like a mirror. But no یک was swimming because they said a monster had come to the lake. It was swimming at the bottom, waiting.”

He poured me a cup and added sugar, blew on it a few times. Put it before me. “So everyone is scared to get in the water, and به طور ناگهانی you kick off خود را shoes, Amir agha, and را off خود را shirt. ‘There’s no monster,’ you say. 'من show you all.’ And before anyone می توانید stop you, you dive into the water, start swimming away. I follow you in and we’re both swimming.”

“But you can’t swim.”

Hassan laughed. “It’s a dream, Amir agha, you می توانید do anything. Anyway, everyone is screaming, ‘Get از Get out!’ but we just swim in the cold water. We make it راه out to the middle of the lake and we stop swimming. We تبدیل شود toward the shore and wave to the people. They look small like ants, but we می توانید hear them clapping. They see now. There is no monster, just water. They change the name of the lake after that, and call it the 'دریاچه of Amir and Hassan, Sultans of Kabul,’ and we get to charge people money for swimming in it.”

“So چه does it mean?” I said.

He coated my _naan_ with marmalade, placed it on a plate. “I don’t know. I was امید you could بگویید me.”

“Well, it’s a dumb dream. Nothing happens in it.”

“Father says dreams always معنی something.”

I sipped some tea. “Why don’t you ask him, then? He’s so smart,” I said, more curtly than I had intended. I hadn’t خواب all night. My neck and back were like coiled springs, and my eyes stung. Still, I had been معنی to Hassan. I almost apologized, then didn’t. Hassan understood I was just nervous. Hassan always understood about me.

Upstairs, I could hear the water running in Baba’s bathroom.

THE STREETS GLISTENED with fresh snow and the sky was a بی گناه blue. Snow blanketed هر rooftop and weighed on the branches of the stunted mulberry درختان that lined our street. Overnight, snow had nudged its راه into هر crack and gutter. I squinted against the blinding white when Hassan and I stepped through the wrought-iron gates. Ali shut the gates behind us. I heard him mutter a prayer under his breath--he always said a prayer when his son left the house.

I had never seen so many people on our street. Kids were flinging snowballs, squabbling, chasing یک another, giggling. Kite fighters were huddling with their spool holders, making lastminute preparations. From adjacent streets, I could hear laughter and chatter. Already, rooftops were jammed with spectators خمیده in lawn chairs, hot tea steaming from thermoses, and the music of Ahmad Zahir blaring from cassette players. The فوق العاده popular Ahmad Zahir had revolutionized Afghan music and outraged the از purists by adding electric guitars, drums, and horns to the traditional tabla and harmonium; on مرحله or at parties, he shirked the austere and nearly morose stance of older singers and actually smiled when he sang--sometimes even at women. I turned my gaze to our rooftop, found Baba and Rahim Khan sitting on a bench, both dressed in wool sweaters, sipping tea. Baba waved. I couldn’t بگویید if he was waving at me or Hassan.

“We باید get started,” Hassan said. He عینک black rubber snow چکمه and a bright green chapan over a ضخامت دارد sweater and پژمرده corduroy pants. Sunlight washed over his face, and, in it, I دیدم how well the pink scar above his lip had healed.

Suddenly I wanted to withdraw. Pack it all in, go back home. What was I فکر کردن؟ Why was I putting خودم through this, when I already knew the outcome? Baba was on the roof, watching me. I felt his glare on me like the heat of a blistering sun. This would be failure on a grand scale, even for me.

“I’m not sure I want to پرواز a kite today,” I said.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Hassan said.

I shifted on my feet. Tried to peel my gaze دور from our rooftop. “I don’t know. Maybe we باید go home.”

Then he stepped toward me and, in a low voice, said something that scared me a little. “Remember, Amir agha. There’s no monster, just a beautiful day.” How could I be such an open book to him when, نیم the time, I had no ایده what was milling around in his head? I was the یک who went to school, the یک who could read, write. I was the smart one. Hassan couldn’t read a firstgrade textbook but he’d read me plenty. That was a little unsettling, but همچنین sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew چه you needed.

“No monster,” I said, feeling a little better, to my own surprise.

He smiled. “No monster.”

“Are you sure?”

He closed his eyes. Nodded.

I looked to the بچه ها scampering down the street, flinging snowballs. “It is a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Let’s fly,” he said.

It occurred to me then that maybe Hassan had made up his dream. Was that possible? I decided it wasn’t. Hassan wasn’t that smart. I wasn’t that smart. But made up or not, the احمقانه است dream had برداشته شده است some of my anxiety. Maybe I باید take off my shirt, را a swim in the lake. Why not?

“Let’s do it,” I said.

Hassan’s face brightened. “Good,” he said. He برداشته شده است our kite, red with زرد borders, and, just beneath where the central and cross spars met, marked with Saifo’s unmistakable signature. He licked his انگشت and برگزار شد it up, tested the wind, then ran in its direction-on those rare occasions we flew kites in the summer, he’d kick up dust to see which راه the باد blew it. The spool rolled in my hands تا Hassan stopped, about fifty فوت است away. He برگزار شد the kite high over his head, like an Olympic athlete showing his gold medal. I jerked the string twice, our usual signal, and Hassan tossed the kite.

Caught between Baba and the mullahs at school, I هنوز هم hadn’t made up my mind about God. But when a Koran ayat I had learned in my diniyat class rose to my lips, I muttered it. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and pulled on the string. در a minute, my kite was rocketing to the sky. It made a sound like a paper bird flapping its wings. Hassan clapped his hands, whistled, and ran back to me. I تحویل داده شد him the spool, holding on to the string, and he spun it به سرعت to roll the loose string back on.

At least two dozen kites already hung in the sky, like paper sharks roaming for prey. در an hour, the number doubled, and red, blue, and زرد kites glided and spun in the sky. A cold نسیم wafted through my hair. The باد was perfect for kite flying, دمیدن just hard enough to give some lift, make the sweeps easier. بعدی to me, Hassan برگزار شد the spool, his hands already bloodied by the string.

Soon, the cutting started and the first of the defeated kites whirled out of control. They fell from the sky like shooting stars with brilliant, rippling tails, showering the neighborhoods زیر with prizes for the kite runners. I could hear the runners now, hollering as they ran the streets. Someone shouted reports of a fight breaking out two streets down.

I kept stealing glances at Baba sitting with Rahim Khan on the roof, wondered چه he was thinking. Was he cheering for من؟ Or did a part of him enjoy watching me شکست That was the thing about kite flying: Your mind drifted with the kite.

They were coming down all over the محل now, the kites, and I was هنوز هم flying. I was هنوز هم flying. My eyes kept wandering over to Baba, bundled up in his wool sweater. Was he surprised I had lasted as long as I had? You don’t keep خود را eyes to the sky, you won’t آخرین much longer. I snapped my gaze back to the sky. A red kite was closing in on me--I’d caught it just in time. I tangled a bit with it, ended up besting him when he became impatient and tried to را کاهش دهد me from below.

Up and down the streets, kite runners were returning triumphantly, their captured kites برگزار شد high. They showed them off to their parents, their friends. But they all knew the best was yet to come. The بزرگترین prize of all was هنوز هم flying. I sliced a bright زرد kite with a coiled white tail. It cost me another gash on the’ index انگشت and blood trickled down into my palm. I had Hassan hold the string and sucked the blood dry, blotted my انگشت against my jeans.

Within another hour, the number of surviving kites dwindled from maybe fifty to a dozen. I was یک of them. I’d made it to the آخرین dozen. I knew this part of the مسابقات would را a while, because the guys who had lasted this long

were good--they wouldn’t easily سقوط into simple traps like the old lift-and-dive, Hassan’s favorite trick.

By three o’clock that afternoon, تافتز of clouds had drifted in and the خورشید had slipped behind them. Shadows started to lengthen. The spectators on the roofs bundled up in scarves and ضخامت دارد coats. We were down to a نیم dozen and I was هنوز هم flying. My legs ached and my neck was stiff. But with each defeated kite,’ hope grew in my heart, like snow collecting on a wall, یک flake at a time.

My eyes kept returning to a آبی kite that had been wreaking ویران کردن for the آخرین hour.

“How many has he قطع " I asked.

“I counted eleven,” Hassan said.

“Do you know whose it might be?”

Hassan clucked his tongue and tipped his chin. That was a trademark Hassan gesture, meant he had no idea. The آبی kite sliced a big purple یک and swept twice in big loops. ده minutes later, he’d را کاهش دهد another two, sending hordes of kite runners racing after them.

After another thirty minutes, only four kites remained. And I was هنوز هم flying. It seemed I could به سختی make a wrong move, as if هر gust of باد blew in my favor. I’d never felt so in command, so lucky It felt intoxicating. I didn’t dare look up to the roof. Didn’t dare را my eyes off the sky. I had to concentrate, play it smart. Another fifteen minutes and چه had seemed like a خنده دار dream that morning had به طور ناگهانی become reality: It was just me and the دیگر guy. The آبی kite.

The tension in the هوا was as taut as the glass string I was tugging with my bloody hands. People were stomping their feet, clapping, whistling, chanting, “Boboresh! Boboresh!” Cut him! Cut him! I wondered if Baba’s voice was یک of them. Music blasted. The smell of steamed mantu and fried pakora drifted from rooftops and open doors.

But all I heard--all I willed خودم to hear--was the thudding of blood in my head. All I دیدم was the آبی kite. All I smelled was victory. Salvation. Redemption. If Baba was wrong and there was a God like they said in school, then He’d let me win. I didn’t know چه the دیگر guy was playing for, maybe just bragging rights. But this was my یک chance to become someone who was looked at, not seen, گوش to, not heard. If there was a God, He’d guide the winds, let them ضربه for me so that, with a tug of my string, I’d را کاهش دهد loose my pain, my longing. I’d endured بیش از حد much, come بیش از حد far. And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.

It turned out to be دیر than later. A gust of باد lifted my kite and I took advantage. Fed the string, pulled up. Looped my kite on top of the آبی one. I برگزار شد position. The آبی kite knew it was in trouble. It was trying desperately to maneuver out of the jam, but I didn’t let go. I برگزار شد position. The crowd sensed the end was at hand. The chorus of “Cut him! Cut him!” grew louder, like Romans chanting for the gladiators to kill, kill!

“You’re almost there, Amir agha! Almost وجود دارد! " Hassan was panting.

Then the moment came. I closed my eyes and loosened my grip on the string. It sliced my fingers again as the باد dragged it. And then... I didn’t need to hear the crowd’s roar to know I didn’t need to see either. Hassan was screaming and his arm was wrapped around my neck.

“Bravo! Bravo, Amir agha!”

I opened my eyes, دیدم the آبی kite چرخش wildly like a tire come loose from a speeding car. I blinked, tried to می گویند something. Nothing came out. ناگهان I was hovering, به دنبال down on خودم from above. Black leather coat, red scarf, پژمرده jeans. A thin boy, a little sallow, and a tad کوتاه است for his twelve years. He had narrow shoulders and a hint of تاریک circles around his pale hazel eyes. The نسیم rustled his light brown hair. He looked up to me and we smiled at each other.

Then I was screaming, and everything was color and sound, everything was alive and good. I was throwing my free arm around Hassan and we were hopping up and down, both of us laughing, both of us weeping. "شما won, Amir agha! You won!”

“We won! We won!” was all I could say. This wasn’t happening. In a moment, I’d blink and rouse from this beautiful dream, get out of bed, march down to the kitchen to خوردن breakfast with no یک to talk to but Hassan. Get dressed. Wait for Baba. Give up. Back to my old life. Then I دیدم Baba on our roof. He was standing on the edge, pumping both of his fists. Hollering and clapping. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, دیدن Baba on that roof, proud of me at last.

But he was doing something now, حرکتی with his hands in an فوری است way. Then I understood. “Hassan, we--”

“I know,” he said, breaking our embrace. “_Inshallah_, we’ll celebrate later. راست now, I’m going to run that آبی kite for you,” he said. He کاهش یافته است the spool and took off running, the hem of his green chapan dragging in the snow behind him.

“Hassan!” I called. “Come back with it!”

He was already turning the street corner, his rubber چکمه kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. He گود his hands around his mouth. "برای you a هزار times over!” he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner. The next time I دیدم him smile unabashedly like that was twenty-six years later, in a پژمرده Polaroid photograph.

I began to بکشید my kite back as people عجله to congratulate me. I shook hands with them, said my thanks. The younger بچه ها looked at me with an awestruck twinkle in their eyes; I was a hero. Hands patted my back and tousled my hair. I pulled on the string and returned هر smile, but my mind was on the آبی kite.

Finally, I had my kite in hand. I wrapped the loose string that had جمع آوری شده at my فوت است around the spool, shook a few more hands, and trotted home. When I reached the wrought-iron gates, Ali was waiting on the دیگر side. He stuck his hand through the bars. “Congratulations,” he said.

I gave him my kite and spool, shook his hand. “Tashakor, Ali jan.”

“I was دعا for you the whole time.”

“Then keep praying. ما هستیم not done yet.”

I با عجله back to the street. I didn’t ask Ali about Baba. I didn’t want to see him yet. In my head, I had it all planned: I’d make a grand entrance, a hero, prized trophy in my bloodied hands. هد would تبدیل شود and eyes would lock. Rostam and سهراب sizing each دیگر up. A dramatic moment of silence. Then the old warrior would walk to the young one, embrace him, acknowledge his worthiness. Vindication. Salvation. Redemption. And then? Well... خوش و خرم ever after, of course. What else?

The streets of Wazir Akbar Khan were numbered and set at right angles to each دیگر like a grid. It was a new neighborhood then, هنوز هم developing, with empty lots of land and half-constructed homes on هر street between compounds احاطه شده است by eight-foot walls. I ran up and down هر street, به دنبال for Hassan. Everywhere, people were busy folding chairs, packing food and ظروف after a long روز of partying. Some, هنوز هم sitting on their rooftops, shouted their congratulations to me.

Four streets جنوب of ours, I دیدم Omar, the son of an مهندس who was a friend of Baba’s. He was dribbling a soccer ball with his برادر on the front lawn of their house. Omar was a pretty good guy. We’d been classmates in fourth grade, and یک time he’d given me a fountain pen, the kind you had to load with a cartridge.

“I heard you won, Amir,” he said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. داشته باشید you seen Hassan?”

“Your Hazara?”

I nodded.

Omar به عهده دارد the ball to his brother. “I hear he’s a بزرگ است kite runner.” His برادر headed the ball back to him. Omar caught it, tossed it up and down. “Although من always wondered how he manages. I mean, with those tight little eyes, how does he see anything?”

His برادر laughed, a کوتاه است burst, and asked for the ball. Omar استفاده کنه him.

“Have you seen him?”

Omar flicked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing southwest. “I دیدم him running toward the bazaar چندی ago.”

“Thanks.” I scuttled away.

By the time I reached the marketplace, the خورشید had almost sunk behind the تپه and dusk had painted the sky pink and purple. A few بلوک away, from the Haji Yaghoub Mosque, the mullah bellowed azan, calling for the faithful to unroll their rugs and bow their heads غرب in prayer. Hassan never از دست رفته any of the five روزانه prayers. Even when we were out playing, he’d excuse himself, draw water from the well in the yard, بشویید up, and disappear into the hut. He’d come out a few minutes later, smiling, find me sitting against the wall or perched on a tree. He was going to miss prayer tonight, though, because of me.

The bazaar was emptying quickly, the merchants finishing up their haggling for the day. I trotted in the mud between rows of closely packed cubicles where you

could buy a freshly قتل عام pheasant in یک stand and a calculator from the adjacent one. I picked my راه through the dwindling crowd, the lame گدا dressed in layers of tattered rags, the vendors with rugs on their shoulders, the پارچه merchants and butchers closing shop for the day. I found no sign of Hassan.

I stopped by a dried fruit stand, described Hassan to an old merchant loading his mule with crates of pine seeds and raisins. He عینک a powder آبی turban.

He paused to look at me for a long time before answering. “I might have seen him.”

“Which راه did he go?”

He eyed me up and down. “What is a boy like you doing here at this time of the روز looking for a Hazara?” His glance lingered admiringly on my leather coat and my jeans--cowboy pants, we استفاده می شود to call them. In Afghanistan, داشتن anything American, especially if it wasn’t secondhand, was a sign of wealth.

“I need to find him, Agha.”

“What is he to you?” he said. I didn’t see the point of his question, but I reminded خودم that بی صبری wasn’t going to make him بگویید me any faster.

“He’s our servant’s son,” I said.

The old man raised a فلفل gray eyebrow. “He is? Lucky Hazara, having such a concerned master. His father باید get on his knees, sweep the dust at خود را feet with his eyelashes.”

“Are you going to بگویید me or not?”

He rested an arm on the mule’s back, pointed south. “I think I دیدم the boy you described running that way. He had a kite in his hand. A آبی one.”

“He did?” I said. برای you a هزار times over, he’d promised. Good old Hassan. Good old reliable Hassan. He’d kept his promise and run the آخرین kite for me.

“Of course, they’ve probably caught him by now,” the old merchant said, grunting and loading another جعبه on the mule’s back.

“Who?”

“The دیگر boys,” he said. “The آنهایی که chasing him. They were dressed like you.” He glanced to the sky and sighed. “Now, run along, you’re making me late for nainaz.”

But I was already scrambling down the lane.

For the next few minutes, I scoured the bazaar in vain. Maybe the old تاجر eyes had betrayed him. به جز he’d seen the آبی kite. The فکر می کردم of getting my hands on that kite... I poked my سر behind هر lane, هر shop. No sign of Hassan.

I had begun to worry that تاریکی would سقوط before I found Hassan when I heard صدای from up ahead. I’d reached a secluded, نمیاد road. It ran عمود بر to the end of the main thoroughfare bisecting the bazaar. I turned onto the

rutted track and followed the voices. My boot squished in mud with هر step and my نفس puffed out in white clouds before me. The narrow path ran parallel on یک side to a snow-filled ravine through which a جریان may have سقوط in the spring. To my دیگر side stood rows of برف بر دوش cypress درختان peppered among flat-topped clay houses--no more than mud shacks in most cases--separated by narrow alleys.

I heard the صدای again, louder this time, coming from یک of the alleys. I crept close to the دهان of the alley. Held my breath. Peeked around the corner.

Hassan was standing at the کور end of the alley in a defiant stance: fists curled, legs slightly apart. Behind him, sitting on شمع of scrap and rubble, was the آبی kite. My کلیدی است to Baba’s heart.

Blocking Hassan’s راه out of the alley were three boys, the همان three from that روز on the hill, the روز after Daoud Khan’s coup, when Hassan had saved us with his slingshot. Wali was standing on یک side, Kamal on the other, and in the middle, Assef. I felt my body clench up, and something cold rippled up my spine. Assef seemed relaxed, confident. He was twirling his brass knuckles. The دیگر two guys shifted nervously on their feet, به دنبال from Assef to Hassan, like they’d در گوشه ای some kind of wild animal that only Assef could tame.

“Where is خود را slingshot, Hazara?” Assef said, turning the brass knuckles in his hand. “What was it you said? 'آنها have to call you One-Eyed Assef.’ That’s right. One-Eyed Assef. That was clever. Really clever. Then again, it’s easy to be هوشمندانه when you’re holding a لود می شود weapon.”

I realized I هنوز هم hadn’t breathed out. I exhaled, slowly, quietly. I felt paralyzed. I تماشا them close in on the boy I’d grown up with, the boy whose harelipped face had been my first memory.

“But today is خود را lucky day, Hazara,” Assef said. He had his back to me, but I would have bet he was grinning. “I’m in a خلق و خوی to forgive. What do you می گویند to that, boys?”

“That’s generous,” Kamal blurted, “Especially after the rude رفتار he showed us آخرین time.” He was trying to sound like Assef, except there was a لرزش in his voice. Then I understood:

He wasn’t afraid of Hassan, not really. He was afraid because he had no ایده what Assef had in mind.

Assef waved a dismissive hand. “Bakhshida. Forgiven. It’s done.” His voice کاهش یافته است a little. “Of course, هیچ چیز نیست is free in this world, and my pardon comes with a small price.”

“That’s fair,” Kamal said.

“Nothing is free,” Wali added.

“You’re a lucky Hazara,” Assef said, گرفتن a step toward Hassan. "از آنجا که today, it’s only going to cost you that آبی kite. A fair deal, boys, isn’t it?”

“More than fair,” Kamal said.

Even from where I was standing, I could see the ترس creeping into Hassan’s eyes, but he shook his head. “Amir آقا won the مسابقات and I ran this kite for him. I ran it fairly. This is his kite.”

“A loyal Hazara. Loyal as a dog,” Assef said. Kamal’s laugh was a shrill, nervous sound.

“But before you قربانی yourself for him, think about this:

Would he do the همان for you? داشته باشید you ever wondered why he never includes you in games when he has guests? Why he only بازی می کند with you when no یک else is در اطراف I’ll بگویید you why, Hazara. Because to him, you’re هیچ چیز نیست but an ugly pet. چیزی he می توانید play with when he’s bored, something he می توانید kick when he’s angry. Don’t ever fool خودتان and think you’re something more.”

“Amir آقا and I are friends,” Hassan said. He looked flushed.

“Friends?” Assef said, laughing. "شما pathetic احمق! Someday you’ll wake up from خود را little fantasy and learn just how good of a friend he is. Now, bas! Enough of this. Give us that kite.”

Hassan stooped and picked up a rock.

Assef flinched. He began to را a step back, stopped. “Last chance, Hazara.”

Hassan’s answer was to cock the arm that برگزار شد the rock.

“Whatever you wish.” Assef گشوده his زمستان coat, took it off, خورده it slowly and deliberately. He placed it against the wall.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The استراحت of my زندگی might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t. I just watched. Paralyzed.

Assef motioned with his hand, and the دیگر two boys separated, forming a نیم circle, trapping Hassan in the alley.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Assef said. “I’m letting you keep the kite, Hazara. من let you keep it so it will always remind you of چه I’m about to do.”

Then he charged. Hassan hurled the rock. It struck Assef in the forehead. Assef yelped as he پرت himself at Hassan, knocking him to the ground. Wall and Kamal followed.

I bit on my fist. Shut my eyes.

A MEMORY:

Did you know Hassan and you fed from the همان breast? Did you know that, Amir agha? Sakina, her name was. She was a fair, چشم آبی Hazara woman from Bamiyan and she sang you old wedding songs. They می گویند there is a brotherhood between people who’ve fed from the همان breast. Did you know that?

A memory:

“A rupia each, children. Just یک rupia each and I will part the curtain of truth.” The old man نشسته است against a mud wall. His sightless eyes are like molten silver embedded in deep, دوقلو craters.

Hunched over his cane, the fortune-teller runs a gnarled hand در سراسر the surface of his تخلیه cheeks. Cups it before us. “Not much to ask for the truth, is it, a rupia each?” Hassan قطره a coin in the leathery palm. I قطره mine too. “In the name of خدا most beneficent, most merciful,” the old fortune-teller whispers. He takes Hassan’s hand first, strokes the palm with یک hornlike fingernail, round and round, round and round. The انگشت then floats to Hassan’s face and makes a dry, scratchy sound as it slowly traces the منحنی of his cheeks, the outline of his ears. The calloused pads of his fingers brush against Hassan’s eyes. The hand stops there. Lingers. A shadow passes در سراسر the old مرد face. Hassan and I exchange a glance. The old man takes Hassan’s hand and puts the rupia back in Hassan’s palm. He turns to me. “How about you, young friend?” he says. On the دیگر side of the wall, a خروس crows. The old man reaches for my hand and I برداشت it.

A dream:

I am lost in a snowstorm. The باد shrieks, blows stinging ورق of snow into my eyes. I stagger through layers of shifting white. I call for help but the باد drowns my cries. I سقوط and lie panting on the snow, lost in the white, the باد wailing in my ears. I watch the snow پاک کردن my fresh footprints. I’m a شبح now, I think, a شبح with no footprints. I cry out again, hope fading like my footprints. But this time, a muffled reply. I shield my eyes and manage to sit up. Out of the swaying curtains of snow, I گرفتن a نگاه اجمالی of movement, a flurry of color. A آشنا shape materializes. A hand reaches out for me. I see deep, parallel gashes در سراسر the palm, blood dripping, staining the snow. I را the hand and به طور ناگهانی the snow is gone. ما هستیم standing in در صحرا of apple green grass with soft گسترش دهندهها رشتههای of clouds drifting above. I look up and see the clear sky is filled with kites, green, yellow, red, orange. They shimmer in the afternoon light.

A HAVOC OF SCRAP AND RUBBLE littered the alley. Worn bicycle tires, bottles with peeled labels, ripped up magazines, yellowed newspapers, all scattered amid a pile of bricks and slabs of cement. A rusted چدن stove with a gaping سوراخ on its side tilted against a wall. But there were two things amid the زباله that I couldn’t stop به دنبال at: One was the آبی kite resting against the wall, close to the چدن stove; the دیگر was Hassan’s brown corduroy pants thrown on a heap of eroded bricks.

“I don’t know,” Wali was saying. “My father says it’s sinful.” He sounded unsure, excited, scared, all at the همان time. Hassan غیر روحانی with his chest pinned to the ground. Kamal and Wali each gripped an arm, twisted and bent at the elbow so that Hassan’s hands were pressed to his back. Assef was standing over them, the پاشنه پا of his snow چکمه crushing the back of Hassan’s neck.

“Your father won’t find out,” Assef said. “And there’s هیچ چیز نیست sinful about teaching a lesson to a disrespectful donkey.”

“I don’t know,” Wali muttered.

“Suit yourself,” Assef said. He turned to Kamal. “What about you?”

“I... well...”

“It’s just a Hazara,” Assef said. But Kamal kept به دنبال away.

“Fine,” Assef snapped. “All I want you weaklings to do is hold him down. Can you manage that?”

Wali and Kamal nodded. They looked relieved.

Assef knelt behind Hassan, قرار داده است his hands on Hassan’s hips and برداشته شده است his bare buttocks. He kept یک hand on Hassan’s back and undid his own کمربند buckle with his free hand. He استخراج his jeans. Dropped his underwear. He positioned himself behind Hassan. Hassan didn’t struggle. Didn’t even whimper. He moved his سر slightly and I caught a نگاه اجمالی of his face. Saw the resignation in it. It was a look I had seen before. It was the look of the lamb.

TOMORROW IS THE دهم DAY of Dhul-Hijjah, the آخرین month of the Muslim calendar, and the first of three days of Eid AlAdha, or Eid-e-Qorban, as Afghans call آن - day to celebrate how the prophet Ibrahim almost sacrificed his own son for God. Baba has handpicked the گوسفند again this year, a powder white یک with crooked black ears.

We all stand in the backyard, Hassan, Ali, Baba, and I. The mullah بخواند the prayer, rubs his beard. Baba mutters, Get on with it, under his breath. He sounds annoyed with the endless praying, the ritual of making the meat halal. Baba مسخره the story behind this Eid, like he مسخره everything religious. But he respects the tradition of Eid-e-Qorban. The custom is to divide the meat in thirds, یک for the family, یک for friends, and یک for the poor. Every year, Baba gives it all to the poor. The rich are چربی است enough already, he says.

The mullah finishes the prayer. Ameen. He میدارد up the kitchen knife with the long blade. The custom is to not let the گوسفند see the knife. All feeds the animal a cube of sugar--another custom, to make death sweeter. The گوسفند kicks, but not much. The mullah grabs it under its jaw and places the blade on its neck. Just a second before he slices the throat in یک expert motion, I see the sheep’s eyes. It is a look that will haunt my dreams for weeks. I don’t know why I watch this yearly ritual in our backyard; my کابوس persist long after the bloodstains on the grass have faded. But I always watch. I watch because of that look of acceptance in the animal’s eyes. Absurdly, I imagine the animal understands. I imagine the animal sees that its imminent demise is for a higher purpose. This is the look...

I متوقف شد WATCHING, turned دور from the alley. چیزی warm was running down my wrist. I blinked, دیدم I was هنوز هم biting down on my fist, hard enough to draw blood from the knuckles. I realized something else. I was weeping. From just around the corner, I could hear Assef’s quick, rhythmic grunts.

I had یک last chance to make a decision. One final فرصت to decide who I was going to be. I could step into that alley, stand up for حسن - way he’d stood up for me all those times in the گذشته - و accept whatever would happen to me. Or I could run.

In the end, I ran.

I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and چه he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That’s چه I گفت myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan. That’s چه I made خودم believe. I actually aspired to

cowardice, because the alternative, the real reason I was running, was that Assef was right: Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he?

I ran back the راه I’d come. ران back to the all but deserted bazaar. I lurched to a cubicle and leaned against the padlocked swinging doors. I stood there panting, sweating, مایل things had turned out some دیگر way.

About fifteen minutes later, I heard صدای and running footfalls. I crouched behind the cubicle and تماشا Assef and the دیگر two sprinting by, laughing as they با عجله down the deserted

lane. I forced خودم to صبر کنید ten more minutes. Then I walked back to the rutted track that ran along the snow-filled ravine. I squinted in the dimming light and spotted Hassan walking slowly toward me. I met him by a leafless توس tree on the edge of the ravine.

He had the آبی kite in his دست that was the first thing I saw. And I can’t lie now and می گویند my eyes didn’t اسکن it for any rips. His chapan had mud smudges down the front and his shirt was ripped just زیر the collar. He stopped. Swayed on his فوت است like he was going to collapse. Then he steadied himself. دست me the kite.

“Where were you? I looked for you,” I said. Speaking those words was like chewing on a rock.

Hassan کشیده میشوند a آستین across his face, wiped snot and tears. I waited for him to می گویند something, but we just stood there in silence, in the fading light. I was grateful for the early-evening shadows that fell on Hassan’s face and concealed mine. I was خوشحالم I didn’t have to return his gaze. Did he know I knew? And if he knew, then چه would I see if I did look in his چشم Blame? Indignation? Or, God forbid, چه I feared most: بی تزویر devotion? That, most of all, I couldn’t داشته باشد to see.

He began to می گویند something and his voice cracked. He closed his mouth, opened it, and closed it again. Took a step back. Wiped his face. And that was as close as Hassan and I ever came to بحث در مورد what had اتفاق افتاده است in the alley. I فکر می کردم he might burst into tears, but, to my relief, he didn’t, and I وانمود I hadn’t heard the crack in his voice. Just like I وانمود I hadn’t seen the تاریک stain in the seat of his pants. Or those tiny قطره that fell from between his legs and stained the snow black.

“Agha صاحب will worry,” was all he said. He turned from me and limped away.

IT HAPPENED JUST THE WAY I’d imagined. I opened the door to the smoky study and stepped in. Baba and Rahim Khan were نوشیدن tea and listening to the news crackling on the radio. Their heads turned. Then a smile played on my father’s lips. He opened his arms. I قرار داده است the kite down and walked into his ضخامت دارد hairy arms. I buried my face in the warmth of his chest and wept. Baba برگزار شد me close to him, rocking me back and forth. In his arms, I forgot چه I’d done. And that was good.

EIGHT

For a week, I barely دیدم Hassan. I woke up to find toasted bread, brewed tea, and a boiled egg already on the kitchen table. My لباس for the روز were

ironed and folded, left on the cane-seat chair in the foyer where Hassan usually did his ironing. He استفاده می شود to صبر کنید for me to sit at the breakfast جدول before he started ironing--that way, we could talk. Used to sing too, over the hissing of the iron, sang old هزاره songs about tulip fields. Now only the خورده clothes greeted me. That, and a breakfast I به سختی finished anymore.

One overcast morning, as I was pushing the boiled egg around on my plate, Ali walked in cradling a pile of chopped wood. I asked him where Hassan was.

“He went back to sleep,” Ali said, kneeling before the stove. He pulled the little square door open.

Would Hassan be able to play today?

Ali paused with a وارد شوید in his hand. A worried look crossed his face. “Lately, it seems all he wants to do is sleep. He does his chores--I see to that--but then he just wants to crawl under his blanket. Can I ask you something?”

“If you have to.”

“After that kite tournament, he came home a little bloodied and his shirt was torn. I asked him چه had اتفاق افتاده است and he said it was nothing, that he’d gotten into a little درگیری with some بچه ها over the kite.”

I didn’t می گویند anything. Just kept pushing the egg around on my plate.

“Did something happen to him, Amir agha? چیزی he’s not telling me?”

I shrugged. “How باید I know?”

“You would بگویید me, nay? _Inshallah_, you would بگویید me if some thing had happened?”

“Like I said, how باید I know what’s wrong with او؟ " I snapped. "شاید he’s sick. People get sick all the time, Ali. Now, am I going to freeze to death or are you planning on lighting the stove today?”

THAT NIGHT I asked Baba if we could go to Jalalabad on Friday. He was rocking on the leather swivel chair behind his desk, خواندن a newspaper. He قرار داده است it down, took off the خواندن glasses I disliked so much--Baba wasn’t old, not at all, and he had lots of years left to live, so why did he have to wear those stupid glasses?

“Why نه! " he said. Lately, Baba agreed to everything I asked. Not only that, just two nights before, he’d asked me if I wanted to see _El Cid_ with Charlton Heston at Cinema Aryana. “Do you want to ask Hassan to come along to Jalalabad?”

Why did Baba have to spoil it like that? “He’s mazreez,” I said. Not feeling well.

“Really?” Baba stopped rocking in his chair. “What’s wrong with him?”

I gave a شانه را بالا انداختن and sank in the sofa by the fireplace. “He’s got a cold or something. Ali says he’s sleeping it off.”

“I haven’t seen much of Hassan the آخرین few days,” Baba said. “That’s all it is, then, a cold?” I couldn’t help hating the راه his ابرو furrowed with worry.

“Just a cold. So are we going Friday, Baba?”

“Yes, yes,” Baba said, pushing دور from the desk. "بیش از حد bad about Hassan. I فکر می کردم you might have had more fun if he came.”

“Well, the two of us می توانید have fun together,” I said. Baba smiled. Winked. “Dress warm,” he said.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN just the two of us--that was the way, I wanted it--but by Wednesday night, Baba had اداره می شود to دعوت می کنند another two dozen people. He called his cousin Homayoun--he was actually Baba’s second cousin--and mentioned he was going to Jalalabad on Friday, and Homayoun, who had studied engineering in France and had a house in Jalalabad, said he’d love to have everyone over, he’d bring the kids, his two wives, and, while he was at it, cousin Shafiqa and her family were visiting from Herat, maybe she’d like to tag along, and since she was staying with cousin Nader in Kabul, his family would have to be invited as well even though Homayoun and Nader had a bit of a feud going, and if Nader was invited, surely his برادر Faruq had to be asked بیش از حد or his feelings would be hurt and he might not دعوت می کنند them to his daughter’s wedding next month and...

We filled three vans. I rode with Baba, Rahim Khan, Kaka Homayoun--Baba had تدریس me at a young age to call any older male Kaka, or Uncle, and any older female, Khala, or Aunt. Kaka همایون است two wives rode with us too--the تنگنا مواجه شده است older یک with the warts on her hands and the younger یک who always smelled of perfume and danced with her eyes close--as did Kaka همایون است twin girls. I sat in the back row, carsick and dizzy, sandwiched between the seven-year-old twins who kept reaching over my lap to slap at each other. The road to Jalalabad is a two-hour trek through mountain roads winding along a steep drop, and my stomach lurched with each hairpin turn. Everyone in the van was talking, talking loudly and at the همان time, nearly shrieking, which is how Afghans talk. I asked یک of the twins--Fazila or Karima, I could never بگویید which was which--if she’d trade her window seat with me so I could get fresh هوا on حساب of my car sickness. She stuck her tongue out and said no. I گفت her that was fine, but I couldn’t be برگزار شد accountable for vomiting on her new dress. A minute later, I was leaning out the window. I تماشا the cratered road افزایش یابد and fall, whirl its tail around the mountainside, counted the multicolored کامیون packed with چمباتمه men lumbering past. I tried closing my eyes, letting the باد slap at my cheeks, opened my دهان to swallow the clean air. I هنوز هم didn’t feel better. A انگشت poked me in the side. It was Fazila/Karima.

“What?” I said.

“I was just telling everyone about the tournament,” Baba said from behind the wheel. Kaka Homayoun and his wives were smiling at me from the middle ردیف of seats.

“There باید have been a hundred kites in the sky that day?” Baba said. “Is that about right, Amir?”

“I حدس می زنم so,” I mumbled.

“A hundred kites, Homayoun jan. No _laaf_. And the only یک still flying at the end of the روز was Amir’s. He has the آخرین kite at home, a beautiful آبی kite. Hassan and Amir ran it together.”

“Congratulations,” Kaka Homayoun said. His first wife, the یک with the warts, clapped her hands. “Wah wah, Amir jan, we’re all so proud of you!” she said. The younger wife پیوست in. Then they were all clapping, yelping their praises, telling me how proud I’d made them all. Only Rahim Khan, sitting in the passenger seat next to Baba, was silent. He was به دنبال at me in an odd way.

“Please بکشید over, Baba,” I said.

“What?”

“Getting sick,” I muttered, leaning در سراسر the seat, pressing against Kaka همایون است daughters.

Fazilal/Karima’s face twisted. “Pull over, Kaka! His face is yellow! I don’t want him throwing up on my new لباس! " she squealed.

Baba began to بکشید over, but I didn’t make it. A few minutes later, I was sitting on a rock on the side of the road as they aired out the van. Baba was smoking with Kaka Homayoun who was telling Fazila/Karima to stop crying; he’d buy her another dress in Jalalabad. I closed my eyes, turned my face to the sun. Little shapes formed behind my eyelids, like hands playing shadows on the wall. They twisted, merged, formed a single image: Hassan’s brown corduroy pants discarded on a pile of old bricks in the alley.

KAKA HOMAYOUN’S WHITE, two-story house in Jalalabad had a balcony overlooking a large, walled garden with apple and persimmon trees. There were hedges that, in the summer, the gardener shaped like animals, and a swimming pool with emeraldcolored tiles. I sat on the edge of the pool, empty save for a layer of slushy snow at the bottom, فوت است dangling in. Kaka همایون است kids were playing hide-and-seek at the دیگر end of the yard. The women were cooking and I could smell onions سرخ کردن already, could hear the phht-phht of a pressure cooker, music, laughter. Baba, Rahim Khan, Kaka Homayoun, and Kaka Nader were sitting on the balcony, smoking. Kaka Homayoun was telling them he’d brought the projector along to show his اسلاید of France. ده years since he’d returned from Paris and he was هنوز هم showing those stupid slides.

It shouldn’t have felt this way. Baba and I were finally friends. We’d gone to the zoo a few days before, seen Marjan the lion, and I had hurled a pebble at the داشته باشد when no یک was watching. We’d gone to Dadkhoda’s Kabob House afterward, در سراسر from Cinema Park, had lamb kabob with freshly baked _naan_ from the tandoor. Baba گفت me stories of his travels to India and Russia, the people he had met, like the armless, legless couple in Bombay who’d been married forty-seven years and raised eleven children. That باید have been fun, spending a روز like that with Baba, hearing his stories. I finally had چه I’d wanted all those years. به جز now that I had it, I felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

The wives and daughters served dinner--rice, kofta, and chicken _qurma_--at sundown. We dined the traditional way, sitting on cushions around the room, سفره spread on the floor, eating with our hands in groups of four or five from common platters. I wasn’t hungry but sat down to خوردن anyway with Baba, Kaka Faruq, and Kaka همایون است two boys. Baba, who’d had a few scotches before

dinner, was هنوز هم ranting about the kite tournament, how I’d outlasted them all, how I’d come home with the آخرین kite. His booming voice dominated the room. People raised their heads from their platters, called out their congratulations. Kaka Faruq patted my back with his clean hand. I felt like چسبیده a knife in my eye.

Later, well past midnight, after a few hours of poker between Baba and his cousins, the مردان lay down to خواب on parallel mattresses in the همان room where we’d dined. The women went upstairs. An hour later, I هنوز هم couldn’t sleep. I kept tossing and turning as my relatives grunted, sighed, and snored in their sleep. I sat up. A گرفتار می کند of moonlight streamed in through the window.

“I تماشا Hassan get raped,” I said to no one. Baba stirred in his sleep. Kaka Homayoun grunted. A part of me was امید someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn’t have to live with this lie anymore. But no یک woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get دور with it.

I فکر می کردم about Hassan’s dream, the یک about us swimming in the lake. There is no monster, he’d said, just water. به جز he’d been wrong about that. There was a monster in the lake. It had برداشت Hassan by the ankles, کشیده میشوند him to the murky bottom. I was that monster.

That was the night I became an insomniac.

I DIDN’T SPEAK TO HASSAN تا the middle of the next week. I had just half-eaten my lunch and Hassan was doing the dishes. I was walking upstairs, going to my room, when Hassan asked if I wanted to hike up the hill. I said I was tired. Hassan looked خسته می شوند too--he’d lost weight and gray circles had formed under his puffed-up eyes. But when he asked again, I reluctantly agreed.

We trekked up the hill, our چکمه squishing in the نمیاد snow. Neither یک of us said anything. We sat under our انار tree and I knew I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come up the hill. The words I’d carved on the tree trunk with Ali’s kitchen knife, Amir and Hassan: The Sultans of Kabul... I couldn’t stand به دنبال at them now.

He asked me to read to him from the _Shahnamah_ and I گفت him I’d changed my mind. گفت him I just wanted to go back to my room. He looked دور and shrugged. We walked back down the راه we’d gone up in silence. And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t صبر کنید for spring.

MY MEMORY OF THE REST of that زمستان of 1975 is pretty hazy. I remember I was fairly خوشحال when Baba was home. We’d خوردن together, go to see a film, visit Kaka Homayoun or Kaka Faruq. گاهی اوقات Rahim Khan came over and Baba let me sit in his study and sip tea with them. He’d even have me read him some of my stories. It was good and I even believed it would last. And Baba believed it too, I think. We both باید have known better. برای at least a few months after the kite tournament, Baba and I immersed ourselves in a شیرین illusion, دیدم each دیگر in a راه that we never had before. We’d actually deceived ourselves into thinking that a toy made of بافت paper, glue, and bamboo could somehow close the chasm between us.

But when Baba was out--and he was out a lot--I closed خودم in my room. I read a book هر couple of days, wrote sto ries, learned to draw horses. I’d hear

Hassan shuffling around the kitchen in the morning, hear the clinking of silverware, the whistle of the teapot. I’d صبر کنید to hear the door shut and only then I would walk down to eat. On my calendar, I circled the date of the first روز of school and began a countdown.

To my dismay, Hassan kept trying to rekindle things between us. I remember the آخرین time. I was in my room, خواندن an abbreviated Farsi translation of Ivanhoe, when he knocked on my door.

“What is it?”

“I’m going to the baker to buy _naan_,” he said from the دیگر side. “I was wondering if you... if you wanted to come along.”

“I think I’m just going to read,” I said, rubbing my temples. Lately, هر time Hassan was around, I was getting a headache.

“It’s a sunny day,” he said.

“I می توانید see that.”

“Might be fun to go for a walk.”

“You go.”

“I wish you’d come along,” he said. Paused. چیزی thumped against the door, maybe his forehead. “I don’t know چه I’ve done, Amir agha. I wish you’d بگویید me. I don’t know why we don’t play anymore.”

“You haven’t done anything, Hassan. Just go.”

“You می توانید tell me, من stop doing it.”

I buried my سر in my lap, squeezed my temples with my knees, like a vice. “I’ll بگویید you چه I want you to stop doing,” I said, eyes pressed shut.

“Anything.”

“I want you to stop harassing me. I want you to go away,” I snapped. I wished he would give it right back to me, break the door open and بگویید me off--it would have made things easier, better. But he didn’t do anything like that, and when I opened the door minutes later, he wasn’t there. I fell on my bed, buried my سر under the pillow, and cried.

HASSAN MILLED ABOUT the periphery of my زندگی after that. I made sure our paths crossed as little as possible, برنامه ریزی my روز that way. Because when he was around, the oxygen seeped out of the room. My chest تنگ تر and I couldn’t draw enough هوا I’d stand there, gasping in my own little airless حباب of atmosphere. But even when he wasn’t around, he was. He was there in the hand-washed and ironed لباس on the cane-seat chair, in the گرم است slippers left outside my door, in the wood already سوختن in the stove when I came down for breakfast. Everywhere I turned, I دیدم signs of his loyalty, his goddamn تزلزل ناپذیر loyalty.

Early that spring, a few days before the new school year started, Baba and I were planting tulips in the garden. Most of the snow had melted and the تپه in

the north were already dotted with تکه of green grass. It was a cool, gray morning, and Baba was چمباتمه next to me, digging the خاک and planting the bulbs I تحویل داده شد to him. He was telling me how most people فکر می کردم it was better to plant tulips in the سقوط and how that wasn’t true, when I came right out and said it. “Baba, have you ever فکر می کردم about get ting new servants?”

He کاهش یافته است the tulip bulb and buried the trowel in the dirt. Took off his gardening gloves. I’d startled him. “Chi? What did you say?”

“I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“Why would I ever want to do that?” Baba said curtly.

“You wouldn’t, I guess. It was just a question,” I said, my voice fading to a murmur. I was already sorry I’d said it.

“Is this about you and Hassan? I know there’s something going on between you two, but whatever it is, you have to deal with it, not me. I’m staying out of it.”

“I’m sorry, Baba.”

He قرار داده است on his دستکش again. “I grew up with Ali,” he said through clenched teeth. “My father took him in, he loved Ali like his own son. Forty years Ali’s been with my family. Forty goddamn years. And you think I’m just going to throw him out?” He turned to me now, his face as red as a tulip. “I’ve never laid a hand on you, Amir, but you ever می گویند that again...” He looked away, shaking his head. "شما bring me shame. And Hassan... Hassan’s not going anywhere, do you understand?”

I looked down and picked up a fistful of سرد soil. اجازه دهید it pour between my fingers.

“I said, Do you درک " Baba roared.

I flinched. “Yes, Baba.”

“Hassan’s not going anywhere,” Baba snapped. He dug a new سوراخ with the trowel, striking the dirt سخت تر than he had to. “He’s staying right here with us, where he belongs. This is his home and we’re his family. Don’t you ever ask me that question again!”

“I won’t, Baba. I’m sorry.”

We planted the استراحت of the tulips in silence.

I was رها شوند when school started that next week. Students with new نوت بوک and sharpened pencils in hand ambled about the courtyard, kicking up dust, chatting in groups, waiting for the class captains’ whistles. Baba drove down the dirt lane that led to the entrance. The school was an old two-story building with شکسته windows and dim, سنگ فرش hallways, تکه of its اصلی dull زرد paint هنوز هم showing between sloughing chunks of plaster. Most of the boys walked to school, and Baba’s black Mustang به خود جلب کرد more than یک envious look. I باید have been beaming with pride when he کاهش یافته است me خاموش - old me would have--but all I could muster was a mild form of embarrassment. That and emptiness. Baba drove دور without saying good-bye.

I bypassed the customary comparing of kite-fighting scars and stood in line. The bell rang and we marched to our assigned class, ب in in pairs. I sat in the back row. As the Farsi teacher تحویل داده شد out our textbooks, I prayed for a heavy load of homework.

School gave me an excuse to stay in my room for long hours. And, for a while, it took my mind off چه had اتفاق افتاده است that winter, چه I had let happen. برای a few weeks, I مشغول myself with gravity and momentum, atoms and cells, the Anglo-Afghan wars, instead of thinking about Hassan and چه had اتفاق افتاده است to him. But, always, my mind returned to the alley. To Hassan’s brown corduroy pants lying on the bricks. To the droplets of blood staining the snow تاریک red, almost black.

One sluggish, hazy afternoon early that summer, I asked Hassan to go up the hill with me. گفت him I wanted to read him a new story I’d written. He was hanging لباس to dry in the yard and I دیدم his eagerness in the harried راه he finished the job.

We climbed the hill, making small talk. He asked about school, چه I was learning, and I talked about my teachers, especially the معنی math teacher who punished talkative students by چسبیده a metal rod between their fingers and then squeezing them together. Hassan winced at that, said he امیدوار است I’d never have to experience it. I said I’d been lucky so far, knowing that luck had هیچ چیز نیست to do with it. I had done my share of talking in class too. But my father was rich and everyone knew him, so I was spared the metal rod treatment.

We sat against the low cemetery wall under the shade thrown by the انار tree. In another month or two, crops of scorched زرد weeds would پتو the hillside, but that year the بهار showers had lasted longer than usual, nudging their راه into early summer, and the grass was هنوز هم green, peppered with tangles of wildflowers. Below us, Wazir Akbar Khan’s white walled, flat-topped houses gleamed in the sunshine, the لباس های شسته شده hanging on clotheslines in their yards stirred by the نسیم to dance like butterflies.

We had picked a dozen pomegranates from the tree. I unfolded the story I’d brought along, turned to the first page, then قرار داده است it down. I stood up and picked up an overripe انار that had fallen to the ground.

“What would you do if I hit you with this?” I said, tossing the fruit up and down.

Hassan’s smile wilted. He looked older than I’d remembered. No, not older, old. Was that possible? Lines had etched into his tanned face and creases framed his eyes, his mouth. I might as well have taken a knife and carved those lines myself.

“What would you do?” I repeated.

The color fell from his face. بعدی to him, the stapled pages of the story I’d promised to read him fluttered in the breeze. I hurled the انار at him. It struck him in the chest, exploded in a spray of red pulp. Hassan’s cry was pregnant with surprise and pain.

“Hit me back!” I snapped. Hassan looked from the stain on his chest to me.

“Get up! Hit me!” I said. Hassan did get up, but he just stood there, به دنبال dazed like a man کشیده میشوند into the ocean by a riptide when, just a moment ago, he was enjoying a nice stroll on the beach.

I hit him with another pomegranate, in the shoulder this time. The juice splattered his face. "آمار me back!” I spat. "آمار me back, goddamn you!” I wished he would. I wished he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d finally خواب at night. Maybe then things could return to how they استفاده می شود to be between us. But Hassan did هیچ چیز نیست as I pelted him again and again. “You’re a coward!” I said. “Nothing but a goddamn coward!”

I don’t know how many times I hit him. All I know is that, when I finally stopped, خسته and panting, Hassan was smeared in red like he’d been shot by a firing squad. I fell to my knees, tired, spent, frustrated.

Then Hassan did pick up a pomegranate. He walked toward me. He opened it and خرد it against his own forehead. “There,” he croaked, red dripping down his face like blood. “Are you satisfied? Do you feel better?” He turned around and started down the hill.

I let the tears break free, rocked back and forth on my knees.

“What am I going to do with you, Hassan? What am I going to do with you?” But by the time the tears dried up and I trudged down the hill, I knew the answer to that question.

I TURNED THIRTEEN that summer of 1976, Afghanistan’s next to آخرین summer of peace and anonymity. Things between Baba and me were already cooling off again. I think چه started it was the stupid comment I’d made the روز we were planting tulips, about getting new servants. I ابراز تاسف saying it--I really did--but I think even if I hadn’t, our خوشحال little interlude would have come to an end. Maybe not quite so soon, but it would have. By the end of the summer, the scraping of spoon and fork against the plate had replaced dinner جدول chatter and Baba had از سر گرفت retreating to his study after supper. And closing the door. I’d gone back to thumbing through Hãfez and Khayyám, gnawing my nails down to the cuticles, writing stories. I kept the stories in a stack under my bed, keeping them just in case, though I شک Baba would ever again ask me to read them to him.

Baba’s motto about throwing parties was this: Invite the whole world or it’s not a party. I remember scanning over the دعوت list a هفته before my birthday party and not recognizing at least three-quarters of the four hundred--plus Kakas and Khalas who were going to bring me gifts and congratulate me for having زندگی می کردند to thirteen. Then I realized they weren’t really coming for me. It was my birthday, but I knew who the real star of the show was.

For days, the house was teeming with Baba’s hired help. There was Salahuddin the butcher, who showed up with a calf and two گوسفند in tow, امتناع ورزیدند payment for any of the three. He قتل عام the animals himself in the yard by a poplar tree. “Blood is good for the tree,” I remember him saying as the grass around the poplar خیس red. Men I didn’t know climbed the oak درختان with coils of small electric bulbs and meters of extension cords. Others set up dozens of جداول in the yard, spread a سفره on each. The night before the big party Baba’s friend Del-Muhammad, who owned a kabob house in Shar-e-Nau, came to the house with his bags of spices. Like the butcher, Del-Muhammad--or Dello, as Baba called him--refused payment for his services. He said Baba had done enough for

his family already. It was Rahim Khan who whispered to me, as Dello marinated the meat, that Baba had lent Dello the money to open his restaurant. Baba had refused repayment تا Dello had نشان داده شده است up یک day in our driveway in a Benz and insisted he wouldn’t leave تا Baba took his money.

I حدس می زنم in most ways, or at least in the ways in which parties are judged, my birthday bash was a بزرگ success. I’d never seen the house so packed. Guests with نوشیدنی in hand were chatting in the hallways, smoking on the stairs, leaning against doorways. They sat where they found space, on kitchen counters, in the foyer, even under the stairwell. In the backyard, they mingled under the glow of blue, red, and green lights winking in the trees, their faces illuminated by the light of kerosene torches propped everywhere. Baba had had a مرحله built on the balcony that overlooked the garden and planted speakers throughout the yard. Ahmad Zahir was playing an accordion and singing on the مرحله over masses of dancing bodies.

I had to greet each of the guests personally--Baba made sure of that; no یک was going to gossip the next روز about how he’d raised a son with no manners. I kissed hundreds of cheeks, hugged total strangers, thanked them for their gifts. My face ached from the strain of my plastered smile.

I was standing with Baba in the yard near the bar when someone said, “Happy birthday, Amir.” It was Assef, with his parents. Assef’s father, Mahmood, was a short, lanky sort with تاریک skin and a narrow face. His mother, Tanya, was a small, nervous woman who smiled and blinked a lot. Assef was standing between the two of them now, grinning, looming over both, his arms resting on their shoulders. He led them toward us, like he had brought them here. Like he was the parent, and they his children. A wave of dizziness عجله through me. Baba thanked them for coming.

“I picked out خود را present myself,” Assef said. Tanya’s face twitched and her eyes flicked from Assef to me. She smiled, unconvincingly, and blinked. I wondered if Baba had noticed.

“Still playing soccer, Assef jan?” Baba said. He’d always wanted me to be friends with Assef.

Assef smiled. It was creepy how genuinely شیرین he made it look. “Of course, Kaka jan.”

“Right wing, as I recall?”

“Actually, I switched to center forward this year,” Assef said. "شما get to score more that way. ما هستیم playing the Mekro-Rayan team next week. Should be a good match. They have some good players.”

Baba nodded. "شما know, I played center forward بیش از حد when I was young.”

“I’ll bet you هنوز هم could if you wanted to,”Assef said. He favored Baba with a مهربان wink.

Baba returned the wink. “I see خود را father has تدریس you his world-famous flattering ways.” He elbowed Assef’s father, almost knocked the little همکار down. محمود laughter was about as convincing as Tanya’s smile, and به طور ناگهانی I wondered if maybe, on some level, their son frightened them. I tried to fake a smile, but all I could manage was a feeble upturning of the corners of my mouth--my stomach was turning at the sight of my father باند with Assef.

Assef shifted his eyes to me. “Wali and Kamal are here too. They wouldn’t miss خود را birthday for anything,” he said, laughter lurking just beneath the surface. I nodded silently.

“We’re thinking about playing a little game of volleyball tomorrow at my house,” Assef said. "شاید you’ll join us. به ارمغان بیاورد Hassan if you want to.”

“That sounds fun,” Baba said, beaming. “What do you think, Amir?”

“I don’t really like volleyball,” I muttered. I دیدم the light wink out of Baba’s eyes and an uncomfortable silence followed.

“Sorry, Assefjan,” Baba said, shrugging. That stung, his پوزشخواهی for me.

“Nay, no harm done,” Assef said. “But you have an open invitation, Amir jan. Anyway, I heard you like to read so I brought you a book. One of my favorites.” He extended a wrapped birthday gift to me. “Happy birthday.”

He was dressed in a cotton shirt and آبی slacks, a red silk tie and shiny black loafers. He smelled of ادکلن and his blond hair was neatly combed back. On the surface, he was the تجسم of هر parent’s dream, a strong, tall, well-dressed and well-mannered boy with talent and striking looks, not to mention the wit to joke with an adult. But to me, his eyes betrayed him. When I looked into them, the facade faltered, revealed a نگاه اجمالی of the madness hiding behind them.

“Aren’t you going to را it, Amir?” Baba was saying. “Huh?”

“Your present,” he said testily. "Assefjan is giving you a present.”

“Oh,” I said. I took the جعبه from Assef and lowered my gaze. I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, دور from these people.

“Well?” Baba said.

“What?”

Baba spoke in a low voice, the یک he took on whenever I embarrassed him in public. “Aren’t you going to thank Assef jan? That was very considerate of him.”

I wished Baba would stop calling him that. How often did he call me “Amir jan”? “Thanks,” I said. Assef’s mother looked at me like she wanted to می گویند something, but she didn’t, and I realized that neither of Assef’s parents had said a word. Before I could embarrass خودم and Baba anymore--but mostly to get دور from Assef and his grin--I stepped away. “Thanks for coming,” I said.

I squirmed my راه through the throng of guests and slipped through the wrought-iron gates. Two houses down from our house, there was a large, barren dirt lot. I’d heard Baba بگویید Rahim Khan that a judge had bought the land and that an معمار was working on the design. برای now, the lot was bare, save for dirt, stones, and weeds.

I tore the wrapping paper from Assef’s present and tilted the book cover in the moonlight. It was a biography of Hitler. I threw it amid a tangle of weeds.

I leaned against the neighbor’s wall, slid down to the ground. I just sat in the تاریک for a while, knees drawn to my chest, به دنبال up at the stars, waiting for the night to be over.

“Shouldn’t you be entertaining خود را guests?” a آشنا voice said. Rahim Khan was walking toward me along the wall.

“They don’t need me for that. Baba’s there, remember?” I said. The یخ in Rahim Khan’s drink clinked when he sat next to me. “I didn’t know you drank.”

“Turns out I do,” he said. Elbowed me playfully. “But only on the most important occasions.”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

He tipped his drink to me and took a sip. He روشن a cigarette, یک of the unfiltered Pakistani cigarettes he and Baba were always smoking. “Did I ever بگویید you I was almost married once?”

“Really?” I said, smiling a little at the مفهوم of Rahim Khan getting married. I’d always فکر می کردم of him as Baba’s quiet alter ego, my writing mentor, my pal, the یک who never forgot to bring me a souvenir, a saughat, when he returned from a trip abroad. But a husband? A father?

He nodded. “It’s true. I was eighteen. Her name was Homaira. She was a Hazara, the daughter of our neighbor’s servants. She was as beautiful as a pari, light brown hair, big hazel eyes... she had this laugh... I می توانید still hear it sometimes.” He twirled his glass. “We استفاده می شود to meet secretly in my father’s apple orchards, always after midnight when everyone had gone to sleep. We’d walk under the درختان and I’d hold her hand... Am I embarrassing you, Amir jan?”

“A little,” I said.

“It won’t kill you,” he said, گرفتن another puff. “Anyway, we had this fantasy. We’d have a great, fancy wedding and دعوت می کنند family and friends from Kabul to Kandahar. I would build us a big house, white with a tiled patio and large windows. We would plant fruit درختان in the garden and grow all sorts of flowers, have a lawn for our بچه ها to play on. On Fridays, after _namaz_ at the mosque, everyone would get together at our house for lunch and we’d خوردن in the garden, under cherry trees, drink fresh water from the well. Then tea with candy as we تماشا our بچه ها play with their cousins...”

He took a long gulp of his scotch. Coughed. "شما should have seen the look on my father’s face when I گفت him. My mother actually fainted. My خواهر splashed her face with water. They fanned her and looked at me as if I had slit her throat. My برادر Jalal actually went to fetch his hunting rifle before my father stopped him.” Rahim Khan barked a bitter laughter. “It was Homaira and me against the world. And من tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That’s just the راه of things.”

“So چه happened?”

“That همان day, my father قرار داده است Homaira and her family on a lorry and ارسال می شود them off to Hazarajat. I never دیدم her again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Probably for the best, though,” Rahim Khan said, shrugging. “She would have suffered. My family would have never accepted her as an equal. You don’t order someone to polish خود را shoes یک day and call them ‘sister’ the next.” He looked at me. "شما know, you می توانید tell me anything you want, Amir jan. Anytime.”

“I know,” I said uncertainly. He looked at me for a long time, like he was waiting, his black bottomless eyes hinting at an unspoken secret between us. برای a moment, I almost did بگویید him. Almost گفت him everything, but then چه would he think of من؟ He’d hate me, and rightfully.

“Here.” He تحویل داده شد me something. “I almost forgot. مبارک birthday.” It was a brown leather-bound notebook. I traced my fingers along the gold-colored stitching on the borders. I smelled the

leather. "برای your stories,” he said. I was going to thank him when something exploded and انفجار of fire روشن up the sky.

“Fireworks!”

We با عجله back to the house and found the guests all standing in the yard, به دنبال up to the sky. Kids hooted and screamed with each crackle and whoosh. People cheered, burst into applause each time flares sizzled and exploded into bouquets of fire. Every few seconds, the backyard روشن up in sudden flashes of red, green, and yellow.

In یک of those brief انفجار of light, I دیدم something من never forget: Hassan serving نوشیدنی to Assef and Wali from a silver platter. The light winked out, a hiss and a crackle, then another flicker of orange light: Assef grinning, kneading Hassan in the chest with a knuckle.

Then, mercifully, darkness.

NINE

Sitting in the middle of my room the next morning, I ripped open جعبه after جعبه of presents. I don’t know why I even bothered, since I just gave them a سیاه glance and pitched them to the corner of the room. The pile was growing there: a Polaroid camera, a ترانزیستور radio, an elaborate electric train set--and several sealed envelopes containing cash. I knew I’d never spend the money or listen to the radio, and the electric train would never trundle down its tracks in my room. I didn’t want any of it--it was all blood money; Baba would have never thrown me a party like that if I hadn’t به دست آورد the tournament.

Baba gave me two presents. One was sure to become the envy of هر kid in the neighborhood: a brand new Schwinn Stingray, the king of all bicycles. Only a تعداد انگشت شماری of بچه ها in all of Kabul owned a new نوعی ماهی پهن برقی and now I was یک of them. It had high-rise handlebars with black rubber grips and its famous banana seat. The پره were gold colored and the steel-frame body red, like a candy apple. Or blood. Any دیگر kid would have پریدند on the دوچرخه سواری immediately and taken it for a full block skid. I might have done the همان a few months ago.

“You like آن؟ " Baba said, leaning in the doorway to my room. I gave him a ترسو grin and a quick "تشکر کرده اند you.” I wished I could have mustered more.

“We could go for a ride,” Baba said. An invitation, but only a halfhearted one.

“Maybe later. I’m a little tired,” I said.

“Sure,” Baba said.

“Baba?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for the fireworks,” I said. A thank-you, but only a halfhearted one.

“Get some rest,” Baba said, walking toward his room.

The دیگر present Baba gave من - و he didn’t صبر کنید around for me to open this one--was a wristwatch. It had a آبی face with gold hands in the shape of رعد و برق bolts. I didn’t even try it on. I tossed it on the pile of اسباب بازی in the corner. The only gift I didn’t بازی شیر یا خط on that mound was Rahim Khan’s leather-bound notebook. That was the only یک that didn’t feel like blood money.

I sat on the edge of my bed, turned the notebook in my hands, فکر می کردم about چه Rahim Khan had said about Homaira, how his father’s dismissing her had been for the best in the end. She would have suffered. Like the times Kaka همایون است projector got stuck on the همان slide, the همان image kept flashing in my mind over and over: Hassan, his سر downcast, serving نوشیدنی to Assef and Wali. Maybe it would be for the best. Lessen his suffering. And mine too. Either way, this much had become clear: One of us had to go.

Later that afternoon, I took the Schwinn for its first and آخرین spin. I pedaled around the block a couple of times and came back. I rolled up the driveway to the backyard where Hassan and Ali were cleaning up the mess from آخرین night’s party. Paper cups, crumpled napkins, and empty bottles of soda littered the yard. Ali was folding chairs, تنظیم می باشد them along the wall. He دیدم me and waved.

“Salaam, All,” I said, waving back.

He برگزار شد up a finger, asking me to wait, and walked to his living quarters. A moment later, he پدید آمده است with something in his hands. “The فرصت never presented itself آخرین night for Hassan and me to give you this,” he said, handing me a box. “It’s وزارت دفاع est and not worthy of you, Amir agha. But we hope you like it still. مبارک birthday.”

A lump was rising in my throat. "تشکر کرده اند you, Ali,” I said. I wished they hadn’t bought me anything. I opened the جعبه and found a brand new _Shahnamah_, a hardback with glossy colored illustrations beneath the passages. Here was Ferangis gazing at her نوزاد son, Kai Khosrau. There was Afrasiyab riding his horse, شمشیر drawn, leading his army. And, of course, Rostam تحمیل a mortal wound onto his son, the warrior Sohrab. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Hassan said خود را copy was old and ragged, and that some of the pages were missing,” Ali said. “All the pictures are دست کشیده شده است in this یک with pen and ink,” he added proudly, eyeing a book neither he نه his son could read.

“It’s lovely,” I said. And it was. And, I suspected, not inexpensive either. I wanted to بگویید Ali it was not the book, but I who was unworthy. I پریدند back on the bicycle. "تشکر کرده اند Hassan for me,” I said.

I ended up tossing the book on the heap of gifts in the corner of my room. But my eyes kept going back to it, so I buried it at the

bottom. Before I went to bed that night, I asked Baba if he’d seen my new watch anywhere.

THE NEXT MORNING, I waited in my room for Ali to clear the breakfast جدول in the kitchen. Waited for him to do the dishes, پاک کردن the counters. I looked out my bedroom window and waited تا Ali and Hassan went grocery shopping to the bazaar, pushing the empty wheelbarrows in front of them.

Then I took a couple of the envelopes of پول نقد from the pile of gifts and my watch, and tiptoed out. I paused before Baba’s study and گوش in. He’d been in there all morning, making تلفن calls. He was talking to someone now, about a shipment of rugs due to arrive next week. I went downstairs, crossed the yard, and entered Ali and Hassan’s living quarters by the loquat tree. I برداشته شده است Hassan’s mattress and planted my new watch and a تعداد انگشت شماری of Afghani صورت حساب under it.

I waited another thirty minutes. Then I knocked on Baba’s door and گفت what I امیدوار است would be the آخرین in a long line of shameful lies.

THROUGH MY BEDROOM WINDOW, I تماشا Ali and Hassan push the wheelbarrows لود می شود with meat, _naan_, fruit, and vegetables up the driveway. I دیدم Baba پدیدار شود from the house and walk up to Ali. Their mouths moved over words I couldn’t hear. Baba pointed to the house and Ali nodded. They separated. Baba came back to the house; Ali followed Hassan to their hut.

A few لحظات later, Baba knocked on my door. “Come to my office,” he said. “We’re all going to sit down and settle this thing.”

I went to Baba’s study, sat in یک of the leather sofas. It was thirty minutes or more before Hassan and Ali پیوست us.

THEY’D BOTH BEEN CRYING; I could بگویید from their red, puffed up eyes. They stood before Baba, hand in hand, and I wondered how and when I’d become capable of causing this kind of pain.

Baba came right out and asked. “Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir’s watch, Hassan?”

Hassan’s reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, دارای صدای گوش خراش voice: “Yes.”

I flinched, like I’d been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final قربانی for me. If he’d said no, Baba would have believed him because we all knew Hassan never lied. And if Baba believed him, then I’d be the accused; I would have to explain and I would be revealed for چه I really was. Baba would never, ever forgive me. And that led to another understanding: Hassan knew He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that I’d stood there and done nothing. He knew I had betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the آخرین time. I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone, and I wanted to بگویید them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn’t worthy of this قربانی I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but زندگی would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

Except Baba stunned me by saying, “I forgive you.”

Forgive? But theft was the یک unforgivable sin, the common denominator of all sins. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you بگویید a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing. Hadn’t Baba sat me on his lap and said those words to من؟ Then how could he just forgive Hassan? And if Baba could forgive that, then why couldn’t he forgive me for not being the son he’d always می خواستم؟ Why--“We are leaving, Agha sahib,” Ali said.

“What?” Baba said, the color draining from his face.

“We can’t live here anymore,” Ali said.

“But I forgive him, Ali, didn’t you hear?” said Baba.

“Life here is غیر ممکن است for us now, Agha sahib. ما هستیم leaving.” Ali به خود جلب کرد Hassan to him, curled his arm around his son’s shoulder. It was a protective gesture and I knew whom Ali was protecting him from. Ali glanced my راه and in his cold, unforgiving look, I دیدم that Hassan had گفت him. He had گفت him everything, about چه Assef and his friends had done to him, about the kite, about me. Strangely, I was خوشحالم that someone knew me for who I really was; I was خسته می شوند of pretending.

“I don’t care about the money or the watch,” Baba said, his arms open, palms up. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this... چه do you معنی ‘impossible’?”

“I’m sorry, Agha sahib, but our bags are already packed. We have made our decision.”

Baba stood up, a شین of grief در سراسر his face. “Ali, haven’t I provided well for you? ندارد I been good to you and Hassan? You’re the برادر I never had, Ali, you know that. Please don’t do this.”

“Don’t make this even more difficult than it already is, Agha sahib,” Ali said. His دهان twitched and, for a moment, I فکر می کردم I دیدم a grimace. That was when I understood the depth of the pain I had caused, the blackness of the grief I had brought onto everyone, that not even Ali’s paralyzed face could mask his sorrow. I forced خودم to look at Hassan, but his سر was downcast, his shoulders slumped, his انگشت twirling a loose string on the hem of his shirt.

Baba was pleading now. “At least بگویید me why. I need to know!”

Ali didn’t بگویید Baba, just as he didn’t protest when Hassan confessed to the stealing. من never really know why, but I could imagine the two of them in that dim little hut, weeping, Hassan pleading him not to give me away. But I couldn’t imagine the restraint it باید have taken Ali to keep that promise.

“Will you رانندگی us to the bus station?”

“I ممنوع you to do this!” Baba bellowed. “Do you hear من؟ I ممنوع you!”

“Respectfully, you can’t ممنوع me anything, Agha sahib,” Ali said. “We don’t work for you anymore.”

“Where will you go?” Baba asked. His voice was breaking.

“Hazarajat.”

“To خود را cousin?”

“Yes. خواهد شد you را us to the bus station, Agha sahib?”

Then I دیدم Baba do something I had never seen him do before:

He cried. It scared me a little, دیدن a grown man sob. پدران weren’t قرار to cry. “Please,” Baba was saying, but Ali had already turned to the door, Hassan trailing him. من never forget the راه Baba said that, the pain in his plea, the fear.

IN KABUL, it rarely rained in the summer. Blue skies stood tall and far, the خورشید like a branding iron سوزاننده the back of خود را neck. Creeks where Hassan and I skipped stones all بهار turned dry, and rickshaws stirred dust when they sputtered by. People went to mosques for their ten raka’ts of noontime prayer and then عقب نشینی کردند to whatever shade they could find to nap in, waiting for the سرد of early evening. تابستان meant long school days sweating in tightly packed, poorly ventilated classrooms learning to recite آیات from the Koran, struggling with those tongue-twisting, exotic Arabic words. It meant catching flies in خود را palm while the mullah droned on and a hot نسیم brought with it the smell of shit from the outhouse در سراسر the schoolyard, churning dust around the lone rickety basketball hoop.

But it rained the afternoon Baba took Ali and Hassan to the bus station. Thunderheads rolled in, painted the sky iron gray. در minutes, ورق of باران were sweeping in, the steady hiss of falling water swelling in my ears.

Baba had offered to رانندگی them to Bamiyan himself, but Ali refused. از طریق the blurry, rain-soaked window of my bedroom, I تماشا Ali haul the lone suitcase carrying all of their belongings to Baba’s car idling outside the gates. Hassan lugged his mattress, rolled tightly and tied with a rope, on his back. He’d left all of his اسباب بازی behind in the empty shack--I کشف them the next day, piled in a corner just like the birthday presents in my room.

Slithering beads of باران sluiced down my window. I دیدم Baba با شدت بهم زدن the trunk shut. در حال حاضر drenched, he walked to the راننده است side. Leaned in and said something to Ali in the backseat, perhaps یک last-ditch effort to change his mind. They talked that راه awhile, Baba getting soaked, stooping, یک arm on the سقف of the car. But when he straightened, I دیدم in his slumping shoulders that the زندگی I had known since I’d been born was over. Baba slid in. The headlights came on and را کاهش دهد twin funnels of light in the rain. If this were یک of the Hindi movies Hassan and I استفاده می شود to watch, this was the part where I’d run outside, my bare فوت است splashing rainwater. I’d chase the car, screaming for it to stop. I’d بکشید Hassan out of the backseat and بگویید him I was sorry, so sorry, my tears mixing with rainwater. We’d hug in the downpour. But this was no Hindi movie. I was sorry, but I didn’t cry and I didn’t chase the car. I تماشا Baba’s car بکشید away from the curb, گرفتن with it the person whose first spoken word had been my name. I caught یک final blurry نگاه اجمالی of Hassan slumped in the back seat before Baba turned left at the street corner where we’d played تیله so many times.

I stepped back and all I دیدم was باران through windowpanes that looked like melting silver.

TEN

_March 1981_

A young woman sat در سراسر from us. She was dressed in an زیتون green dress with a black shawl wrapped tightly around her face against the night chill. She burst into prayer هر time the کامیون jerked or stumbled into a pothole, her “Bismillah!” peaking with each of the truck’s shudders and jolts. Her husband, a burly man in baggy pants and sky آبی turban, cradled an infant in یک arm and thumbed prayer beads with his free hand. His lips moved in silent prayer. There were others, in all about a dozen, including Baba and me, sitting with our suitcases between our legs, cramped with these strangers in the tarpaulin-covered cab of an old Russian truck.

My innards had been roiling since we’d left Kabul just after two in the morning. Baba never said so, but I knew he دیدم my car sickness as yet another of my آرایه of weakness--I دیدم it on his embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched so badly I had moaned. When the burly guy with the beads--the دعا woman’s husband--asked if I was going to get sick, I said I might. Baba looked away. The man برداشته شده است his corner of the tarpaulin cover and rapped on the راننده است window, asked him to stop. But the driver, Karim, a scrawny dark-skinned man with hawk-boned features and a pencil-thin mustache, shook his head.

“We are بیش از حد close to Kabul,” he shot back. “Tell him to have a قوی stomach.”

Baba grumbled something under his breath. I wanted to بگویید him I was sorry, but به طور ناگهانی I was salivating, the back of my throat tasting bile. I turned around, برداشته شده است the tarpaulin, and threw up over the side of the moving truck. Behind me, Baba was پوزشخواهی to the دیگر passengers. As if car sickness was a crime. As if you weren’t قرار to get sick when you were eighteen. I threw up two more times before Karim agreed to stop, mostly so I wouldn’t stink up his vehicle, the instrument of his livelihood. Karim was a people smuggler--it was a pretty lucrative business then, driving people out of Shorawi-occupied Kabul to the relative safety of Pakistan. He was گرفتن us to Jalalabad, about 170 kilometers southeast of Kabul, where his brother, Toor, who had a bigger کامیون with a second convoy of refugees, was waiting to رانندگی us در سراسر the Khyber رمز عبور and into Peshawar.

We were a few kilometers غرب of Mahipar Falls when Karim pulled to the side of the road. ماهیپر - که means “Flying Fish”--was a high summit with a بی مهابا drop overlooking the hydro plant the آلمانی had built for Afghanistan back in 1967. Baba and I had driven over the summit countless times on our راه to Jalalabad, the city of cypress درختان and sugarcane fields where Afghans vacationed in the winter.

I پریدند down the back of the کامیون and lurched to the dusty embankment on the side of the road. My دهان filled with saliva, a sign of the retching that was yet to come. I stumbled to the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep valley that was shrouded in تاریک ness. I stooped, hands on my kneecaps, and waited for the bile. Somewhere, a branch snapped, an owl hooted. The wind, soft and cold, clicked through tree branches and stirred the bushes that sprinkled the slope. And from below, the ضعف sound of water tumbling through the valley.

Standing on the shoulder of the road, I فکر می کردم of the راه we’d left the house where I’d زندگی می کردند my entire life, as if we were going out for a bite: dishes smeared with kofta piled in the kitchen sink; لباس های شسته شده in the ترکه یا چوب کوتاه basket in

the foyer; beds unmade; Baba’s business suits hanging in the closet. Tapestries هنوز هم hung on the walls of the living room and my mother’s books هنوز هم crowded the shelves in Baba’s study. The signs of our elopement were subtle: My parents’ wedding picture was gone, as was the grainy عکس of my grandfather and King Nader شاه standing over the dead deer. A few items of clothing were missing from the closets. The leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me five years earlier was gone.

In the morning, جلال الدین - ما seventh servant in five years--would probably think we’d gone out for a stroll or a drive. We hadn’t گفت him. You couldn’t trust anyone in Kabul any more--for a fee or under threat, people گفت on each other, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent, برادر on brother, servant on master, friend on friend. I فکر می کردم of the singer Ahmad Zahir, who had played the accordion at my thirteenth birthday. He had gone for a رانندگی with some friends, and someone had بعد found his body on the side of the road, a bullet in the back of his head. The rafiqs, the comrades, were everywhere and they’d split Kabul into two groups: those who eavesdropped and those who didn’t. The tricky part was that no یک knew who belonged to which. A casual remark to the tailor while getting fitted for a suit might land you in the dungeons of Poleh-charkhi. Complain about the curfew to the butcher and next thing you knew, you were behind bars staring at the muzzle end of a Kalashnikov. Even at the dinner table, in the privacy of their home, people had to صحبت می کنند in a calculated manner--the rafiqs were in the classrooms too; they’d تدریس children to spy on their parents, چه to listen for, whom to tell.

What was I doing on this road in the middle of the night? I باید have been in bed, under my blanket, a book with دارای پرانتز pages at my side. This had to be a dream. Had to be. Tomorrow morning, I’d wake up, peek out the window: No تیره و تار رو Russian soldiers patrolling the sidewalks, no tanks rolling up and down the streets of my city, their turrets swiveling like accusing fingers, no rubble, no curfews, no Russian Army پرسنل Carriers weaving through the bazaars. Then, behind me, I heard Baba and Karim بحث در مورد the arrangement in Jalalabad over a smoke. Karim was reassuring Baba that his برادر had a big کامیون of “excellent and first-class quality,” and that the trek to Peshawar would be very routine. “He could را you there with his eyes closed,” Karim said. I overheard him telling Baba how he and his برادر knew the Russian and Afghan soldiers who worked the checkpoints, how they had set up a "دو طرف profitable” arrangement. This was no dream. As if on cue, a MiG به طور ناگهانی screamed past overhead. Karim tossed his cigarette and produced a hand gun from his waist. وی با اشاره it to the sky and making shooting gestures, he spat and cursed at the MiG.

I wondered where Hassan was. Then the inevitable. I vomited on a tangle of weeds, my retching and groaning غرق شده in the deafening roar of the MiG. WE PULLED UP to the checkpoint at Mahipar twenty minutes later. Our driver let the کامیون idle and پریدند down to greet the approaching voices. Feet خرد gravel. Words were exchanged, brief and hushed. A flick of a lighter. “Spasseba.”

Another flick of the lighter. Someone laughed, a shrill cackling sound that made me jump. Baba’s hand clamped down on my thigh. The laughing man شکست into song, a slurring, off-key rendition of an old Afghan wedding song, delivered with a ضخامت دارد Russian accent:

Ahesta boro, Mah-e-man, ahesta boro.

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

Boot heels clicked on asphalt. Someone پرت open the tarpaulin hanging over the back of the truck, and three faces peered in. One was Karim, the دیگر two were soldiers, یک Afghan, the دیگر a grinning Russian, face like a bulldog’s, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. Behind them, a bone-colored moon hung in the sky. Karim and the Afghan soldier had a brief exchange in Pashtu. I caught a little of it--something about Toor and his بد است luck. The Russian soldier تراست his face into the rear of the truck. He was humming the wedding song and ضربت زنی his انگشت on the edge of the tailgate. Even in the dim light of the moon, I دیدم the glazed look in his eyes as they skipped from passenger to passenger. Despite the cold, sweat streamed from his brow. His eyes حل و فصل on the young woman wearing the black shawl. He spoke in Russian to Karim without گرفتن his eyes off her. Karim gave a curt reply in Russian, which the soldier returned with an even curter retort. The Afghan soldier said some thing too, in a low, reasoning voice. But the Russian soldier shouted something that made the دیگر two flinch. I could feel Baba tightening up next to me. Karim cleared his throat, کاهش یافته است his head. Said the soldier wanted a نیم hour with the lady in the back of the truck.

The young woman pulled the shawl down over her face. Burst into tears. The کودک نو پا sitting in her husband’s lap started crying too. The husband’s face had become as pale as the moon hovering above. He گفت Karim to ask "آقا Soldier Sahib” to show a little mercy, maybe he had a خواهر or a mother, maybe he had a wife too. The Russian گوش to Karim and barked a سری of words.

“It’s his price for letting us pass,” Karim said. He couldn’t bring himself to look the husband in the eye.

“But ایم paid a fair price already. He’s getting پرداخت می شود good money,” the husband said.

Karim and the Russian soldier spoke. “He says... he says هر price has a tax.”

That was when Baba stood up. It was my تبدیل شود to clamp a hand on his thigh, but Baba pried it loose, snatched his پا away. When he stood, he eclipsed the moonlight. “I want you to ask this man something,” Baba said. He said it to Karim, but looked directly at the Russian officer. "بپرسید him where his shame is.”

They spoke. “He says this is war. There is no shame in war.”

“Tell him he’s wrong. War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace.”

Do you have to always be the قهرمان I thought, my heart fluttering. آیا می توانم you just let it go for once? But I knew he couldn’t--it wasn’t in his nature. The problem was, his nature was going to get us all killed.

The Russian soldier said something to Karim, a smile creasing his lips. “Agha sahib,” Karim said, “these Roussi are not like us. They understand هیچ چیز نیست about respect, honor.”

“What did he say?”

“He says او به enjoy putting a bullet in you almost as much as...” Karim trailed off, but nodded his سر toward the young woman who had caught the guard’s eye. The soldier flicked his unfinished cigarette and unholstered his handgun. So this is where Baba dies, I thought. This is how it’s going to happen. In my head, I said a prayer I had learned in school.

“Tell him من take a هزار of his bullets before I let this indecency را place,” Baba said. My mind flashed to that زمستان day six years ago. Me, peering around the corner in the alley. Kamal and Wali holding Hassan down. Assef’s buttock muscles clenching and unclenching, his hips thrusting back and forth. Some hero I had been, fretting about the kite. Sometimes, I بیش از حد wondered if I was really Baba’s son.

The bulldog-faced Russian raised his gun.

“Baba, sit down please,” I said, tugging at his sleeve. “I think he really means to shoot you.”

Baba سیلی زد my hand away. “Haven’t I تدریس you anything?” he snapped. He turned to the grinning soldier. “Tell him he’d better kill me good with that first shot. Because if I don’t go down, I’m پاره شدن him to pieces, goddamn his father!”

The Russian soldier’s پوزخند never faltered when he heard the translation. He clicked the safety on the gun. Pointed the barrel to Baba’s chest. Heart تپش in my throat, I buried my face in my hands.

The gun roared.

It’s done, then. I’m eighteen and alone. I have no یک left in the world. Baba’s dead and now I have to bury him. Where do I bury او Where do I go after that?

But the whirlwind of نیم thoughts چرخش in my سر came to a توقف when I cracked my eyelids, found Baba هنوز هم standing. I دیدم a second Russian officer with the others. It was from the muzzle of his upturned gun that smoke swirled. The soldier who had meant to shoot Baba had already holstered his weapon. He was shuffling his feet. I had never felt more like crying and laughing at the همان time.

The second Russian officer, gray-haired and heavyset, spoke to us in شکسته Farsi. He عذرخواهی کرد for his comrade’s behavior. “Russia sends them here to fight,” he said. “But they are just boys, and when they come here, they find the pleasure of drug.” He gave the younger officer the اندوهناک look of a father خشمگین with his misbehaving son. “This یک is attached to drug now. I try to stop him...” He waved us off.

Moments later, we were pulling away. I heard a laugh and then the first soldier’s voice, دوغاب and off-key, singing the old wedding song.

WE RODE IN SILENCE for about fifteen minutes before the young زن husband به طور ناگهانی stood and did something I’d seen many others do before him: He kissed Baba’s hand.

TOOR’S BAD LUCK. Hadn’t I overheard that in a snippet of conversation back at Mahipar?

We rolled into Jalalabad about an hour before sunrise. Karim ushered us به سرعت from the کامیون into a one-story house at the intersection of two dirt roads lined with flat one-story homes, acacia trees, and closed shops. I pulled the

collar of my coat against the chill as we با عجله into the house, dragging our belongings. برای some reason, I remember smelling radishes.

Once he had us inside the dimly lit, bare living room, Karim locked the front door, pulled the tattered ورق that passed for curtains. Then he took a deep نفس and gave us the بد است news:

His برادر Toor couldn’t را us to Peshawar. It seemed his truck’s engine had blown the هفته before and Toor was هنوز هم waiting for parts.

“Last week?” someone exclaimed. “If you knew this, why did you bring us here?”

I caught a flurry of movement out of the corner of my eye. Then a blur of something zipping در سراسر the room, and the next thing I دیدم was Karim slammed against the wall, his sandaled فوت است dangling two فوت است above the floor. Wrapped around his neck were Baba’s hands.

“I’ll بگویید you why,” Baba snapped. "از آنجا که he got پرداخت می شود for his پا of the trip. That’s all he cared about.” Karim was making guttural choking sounds. Spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“Put him down, Agha, you’re killing him,” یک of the passengers said.

“It’s چه I intend to do,” Baba said. What none of the others in the room knew was that Baba wasn’t joking. Karim was turning red and kicking his legs. Baba kept choking him تا the young mother, the یک the Russian officer had fancied, begged him to stop.

Karim فرو ریخت on the floor and rolled around fighting for هوا when Baba finally let go. The room fell silent. Less than two hours ago, Baba had volunteered to را a bullet for the افتخار of a woman he didn’t even know. Now he’d almost choked a man to death, would have done it خوش if not for the pleas of that همان woman.

Something thumped next door. No, not next door, below.

“What’s that?” someone asked.

“The others,” Karim panted between labored breaths. “In the basement.”

“How long have they been waiting?” Baba said, standing over Karim.

“Two weeks.”

“I فکر می کردم you said the کامیون broke down آخرین week.”

Karim rubbed his throat. “It might have been the هفته before,” he croaked.

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long for the parts?” Baba roared. Karim flinched but said nothing. I was خوشحالم for the darkness. I didn’t want to see the murderous look on Baba’s face.

THE بوی گند OF SOMETHING DANK, like mildew, bludgeoned my سوراخهای بینی the moment Karim opened the door that led down the creaky steps to the basement. We descended in single file. The steps groaned under Baba’s weight. Standing in the cold basement, I felt تماشا by eyes blinking in the dark. I دیدم shapes نشسته اند around the room, their silhouettes thrown on the walls by the dim light of a pair of kerosene lamps. A low murmur buzzed through the basement, beneath it the sound of water قطره trickling somewhere, and, something else, a scratching sound.

Baba sighed behind me and کاهش یافته است the bags.

Karim گفت us it باید be a matter of a couple of کوتاه است days before the کامیون was fixed. Then we’d be on our راه to Peshawar. On to freedom. On to safety.

The زیرزمین was our home for the next هفته and, by the third night, I کشف the source of the scratching sounds. Rats.

ONCE MY EYES ADJUSTED to the dark, I counted about thirty refugees in that basement. We sat shoulder to shoulder along the walls, ate crackers, bread with dates, apples. That first night, all the مردان prayed together. One of the refugees asked Baba why he wasn’t پیوستن them. “God is going to save us all. Why don’t you pray to him?”

Baba snorted به a خرج کردن of his snuff. Stretched his legs. “What’ll save us is eight cylinders and a good carburetor.” That silenced the استراحت of them for good about the matter of God.

It was بعد that first night when I کشف that two of the people hiding with us were Kamal and his father. That was shocking enough, دیدن Kamal sitting in the زیرزمین just a few فوت است away from me. But when he and his father came over to our side of the room and I دیدم Kamal’s face, really دیدم it...

He had پژمرده - وجود دارد was simply no دیگر word for it. His eyes gave me a hollow look and no recognition at all ثبت نام in them. His shoulders hunched and his گونه ها sagged like they were بیش از حد tired to cling to the bone beneath. His father, who’d owned a فیلم theater in Kabul, was telling Baba how, three months before, a stray bullet had struck his wife in the temple and killed her. Then he گفت Baba about Kamal. I caught only snippets of it: Should have never let him go alone... always so handsome, you know... four of them... tried to fight... God... took him... خونریزی down there... his pants... doesn’t talk any more... just stares...

THERE WOULD BE NO TRUCK, Karim گفت us after we’d به سر برد a هفته in the rat-infested basement. The کامیون was beyond repair.

“There is another option,” Karim said, his voice rising amid the groans. His cousin owned a fuel کامیون and had smuggled people with it a couple of times. He was here in Jalalabad and could probably fit us all.

Everyone except an elderly couple decided to go.

We left that night, Baba and I, Kamal and his father, the others. Karim and his cousin, a square-faced balding man named Aziz, helped us get into the fuel tank. One by one, we mounted the idling truck’s rear deck, climbed the rear access ladder, and slid down into the tank. I remember Baba climbed halfway up the

ladder, پریدند back down and fished the snuffbox from his pocket. He خالی می شود the جعبه and picked up a تعداد انگشت شماری of dirt from the middle of the unpaved road. He kissed the dirt. Poured it into the box. Stowed the جعبه in his پستان pocket, next to his heart.

PANIC.

You open خود را mouth. Open it so wide خود را jaws creak. You order خود را lungs to draw air, NOW, you need air, need it NOW But خود را airways را نادیده گرفت you. They collapse, tighten, squeeze, and به طور ناگهانی you’re breathing through a نوشیدن straw. Your دهان closes and خود را lips purse and all you می توانید manage is a strangled croak. Your hands wriggle and shake. Somewhere a dam has cracked open and a سیل of cold sweat spills, drenches خود را body. You want to scream. You would if you could. But you have to breathe to scream.

Panic.

The زیرزمین had been dark. The fuel tank was pitch-black. I looked right, left, up, down, waved my hands before my eyes, didn’t see so much as a hint of movement. I blinked, blinked again. Nothing at all. The هوا wasn’t right, it was بیش از حد thick, almost solid. Air wasn’t قرار to be solid. I wanted to reach out with my hands, crush the هوا into little pieces, stuff them down my windpipe. And the stench of gasoline. My eyes stung from the fumes, like someone had peeled my lids back and rubbed a lemon on them. My بینی caught fire with each breath. You could die in a محل like this, I thought. A scream was coming. Coming, coming...

And then a small miracle. Baba tugged at my آستین and some thing glowed green in the dark. Light! Baba’s wristwatch. I kept my eyes glued to those فلورسنت green hands. I was so afraid I’d lose them, I didn’t dare blink.

Slowly I became aware of my surroundings. I heard groans and muttered prayers. I heard a baby cry, its mother’s muted soothing. Someone retched. Someone else cursed the Shorawi. The کامیون bounced side to side, up and down. هد banged against metal.

“Think of something good,” Baba said in my ear. “Something happy.”

Something good. چیزی happy. I let my mind wander. I let it come:

Friday afternoon in Paghman. An open field of grass speckled with mulberry درختان in blossom. Hassan and I stand ankle-deep in untamed grass, I am tugging on the line, the spool چرخش in Hassan’s calloused hands, our eyes turned up to the kite in the sky. Not a word passes between us, not because we have هیچ چیز نیست to say, but because we don’t have to می گویند anything--that’s how it is between people who are each other’s first memories, people who have fed from the همان breast. A نسیم stirs the grass and Hassan lets the spool roll. The kite spins, dips, steadies. Our دوقلو shadows dance on the rippling grass. From somewhere over the low brick wall at the دیگر end of the field, we hear chatter and laughter and the chirping of a water fountain. And music, some thing old and familiar, I think it’s Ya Mowlah on rubab strings. Someone calls our names over the wall, says it’s time for tea and cake.

I didn’t remember چه month that was, or چه year even. I only knew the memory زندگی می کردند in me, a perfectly محصور شده morsel of a good past, a brushstroke of color on the gray, barren canvas that our lives had become.

THE REST OF THAT RIDE is scattered بیت and pieces of memory that come and go, most of it sounds and smells: MiGs roaring past overhead; staccatos of gunfire; a donkey braying nearby; the jingling of bells and mewling of گوسفند gravel خرد under the truck’s tires; a baby wailing in the dark; the stench of gasoline, vomit, and shit.

What I remember next is the blinding light of early morning as I climbed out of the fuel tank. I remember turning my face up to the sky, squinting, breathing like the world was running out of air.

I غیر روحانی on the side of the dirt road next to a rocky trench, looked up to the gray morning sky, thankful for air, thankful for light, thankful to be alive.

“We’re in Pakistan, Amir,” Baba said. He was standing over me. “Karim says he will call for a bus to را us to Peshawar.”

I rolled onto my chest, هنوز هم lying on the سرد dirt, and دیدم our suitcases on either side of Baba’s feet. از طریق the upside down V between his legs, I دیدم the کامیون idling on the side of the road, the دیگر refugees climbing down the rear ladder. Beyond that, the dirt road unrolled through fields that were like سرب sheets under the gray sky and disappeared behind a line of کاسه مانند hills. همراه the way, it passed a small village strung out atop a خورشید baked slope.

My eyes returned to our suitcases. They made me sad for Baba. After everything he’d built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life: یک disappointing son and two suitcases.

Someone was screaming. No, not screaming. Wailing. I دیدم the passengers نشسته اند in a circle, heard their فوری است voices. Someone said the word “fumes.” Someone else said it too. The wail turned into a گلو پاره screech.

Baba and I با عجله to the pack of تماشاچیان and pushed our راه through them. Kamal’s father was sitting cross-legged in the center of the circle, rocking back and forth, kissing his son’s ashen face.

“He won’t breathe! My boy won’t breathe!” he was crying. Kamal’s lifeless body غیر روحانی on his father’s lap. His right hand, uncurled and limp, bounced to the rhythm of his father’s sobs. “My پسر! He won’t breathe! Allah, help him breathe!”

Baba knelt beside him and curled an arm around his shoulder. But Kamal’s father shoved him دور and lunged for Karim who was standing nearby with his cousin. What اتفاق افتاده است next was بیش از حد fast and بیش از حد short to be called a scuffle. Karim uttered a surprised cry and backpedaled. I دیدم an arm swing, a پا kick. A moment later, Kamal’s father was standing with Karim’s gun in his hand.

“Don’t shoot me!” Karim cried.

But before any of us could می گویند or do a thing, Kamal’s father shoved the barrel in his own mouth. من never forget the echo of that blast. Or the flash of light and the spray of red.

I doubled over again and dry-heaved on the side of the road.

ELEVEN

Fremont, California. 1980s

Baba loved the ایده of America.

It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.

I remember the two of us walking through دریاچه Elizabeth Park in Fremont, a few streets down from our apartment, and watching boys at batting practice, little girls giggling on the swings in the playground. Baba would enlighten me with his politics during those walks with long-winded dissertations. “There are only three real مردان in this world, Amir,” he’d say. He’d count them off on his fingers: America the brash savior, Britain, and Israel. “The استراحت of آنها - " he استفاده می شود to wave his hand and make a phht sound “--they’re like gossiping old women.”

The bit about Israel استفاده می شود to draw the ire of Afghans in Fremont who accused him of being pro-Jewish and, de facto, anti Islam. Baba would meet them for tea and rowt cake at the park, رانندگی them crazy with his politics. “What they don’t understand,” he’d بگویید me later, “is that religion has هیچ چیز نیست to do with it.” In Baba’s view, Israel was an island of “real men” in a sea of Arabs بیش از حد busy getting چربی است off their oil to care for their own. “Israel does this, Israel does that,” Baba would می گویند in a mock-Arabic accent. “Then do something about it! Take action. You’re Arabs, help the Palestinians, then!”

He loathed Jimmy Carter, whom he called a “big-toothed cretin.” In 1980, when we were هنوز هم in Kabul, the U.S. اعلام کرد it would be boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. “Wah wah!” Baba exclaimed with disgust. “Brezhnev is قتل عام Afghans and all that peanut eater می توانید say is I won’t come swim in خود را pool.” Baba believed Carter had ناخواسته done more for communism than Leonid Brezhnev. “He’s not fit to run this country. It’s like putting a boy who can’t ride a دوچرخه سواری behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac.” What America and the world needed was a hard man. A man to be reckoned with, someone who took action instead of wringing his hands. That someone came in the form of Ronald Reagan. And when Reagan went on TV and called the Shorawi “the Evil Empire,” Baba went out and bought a picture of the grinning president giving a thumbs up. He framed the picture and hung it in our hallway, nailing it right next to the old black-and-white of himself in his thin necktie shaking hands with King Zahir Shah. Most of our neighbors in Fremont were bus drivers, policemen, گاز station attendants, and unwed mothers collecting welfare, exactly the sort of blue-collar people who would soon suffocate under the pillow Reganomics pressed to their faces. Baba was the lone Republican in our building.

But the Bay Area’s smog stung his eyes, the traffic noise gave him headaches, and the گرده made him cough. The fruit was never شیرین enough, the water never clean enough, and where were all the درختان and open fields? برای two years, I tried to get Baba to enroll in ESL classes to را بهبود بخشد his شکسته English. But he scoffed at the idea. "شاید I’ll spell ‘cat’ and the teacher will give me a glittery little star so I می توانید run home and show it off to you,” he’d grumble.

One یکشنبه in the بهار of 1983, I walked into a small bookstore that sold استفاده می شود paperbacks, next to the Indian فیلم theater just غرب of where Amtrak crossed Fremont Boulevard. I گفت Baba I’d be out in five minutes and he shrugged. He had been working at a گاز station in Fremont and had the روز off. I تماشا him jaywalk در سراسر Fremont Boulevard and enter Fast & Easy, a little grocery store run by an elderly ویتنامی couple, Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen. They were gray-haired, friendly people; she had Parkinson’s, he’d had his hip replaced. “He’s like Six

Million Dollar Man now,” she always said to me, laughing toothlessly. “Remember Six Million Dollar Man, Amir?” Then Mr. نگوین would scowl like Lee Majors, pretend he was running in slow motion.

I was کوه در می رم through a worn copy of a مایک Hammer mystery when I heard screaming and glass breaking. I کاهش یافته است the book and با عجله across the street. I found the Nguyens behind the counter, all the راه against the wall, faces ashen, Mr. نگوین است arms wrapped around his wife. On the floor: oranges, an overturned magazine rack, a شکسته jar of beef jerky, and shards of glass at Baba’s feet.

It turned out that Baba had had no پول نقد on him for the oranges. He’d نوشته شده است Mr. نگوین a check and Mr. نگوین had asked for an ID. “He wants to see my license,” Baba bellowed in Farsi. “Almost two years ایم bought his damn fruits and قرار داده است money in his pocket and the son of a dog wants to see my license!”

“Baba, it’s not personal,” I said, smiling at the Nguyens. "آنها supposed to ask for an ID.”

“I don’t want you here,” Mr. نگوین said, پله in front of his wife. He was pointing at Baba with his cane. He turned to me.

“You’re nice young man but خود را father, he’s crazy. Not welcome anymore.”

“Does he think I’m a thief?” Baba said, his voice rising. People had gathered outside. They were staring. “What kind of a country is this? No یک trusts anybody!”

“I call police,” Mrs. نگوین said, poking out her face. "شما get out or I call police.”

“Please, Mrs. Nguyen, don’t call the police. من take him home. Just don’t call the police, باشه؟ Please?”

“Yes, you را him home. Good idea,” Mr. نگوین said. His eyes, behind his wire-rimmed bifocals, never left Baba. I led Baba through the doors. He kicked a magazine on his راه out. After I’d made him promise he wouldn’t go back in, I returned to the store and عذرخواهی کرد to the Nguyens. گفت them my father was going through a difficult time. I gave Mrs. نگوین our telephone number and address, and گفت her to get an estimate for the damages. “Please call me as soon as you know. من pay for everything, Mrs. Nguyen. I’m so sorry.” Mrs. نگوین took the sheet of paper from me and nodded. I دیدم her hands were shaking more than usual, and that made me angry at Baba, his causing an old woman to shake like that.

“My father is هنوز هم adjusting to زندگی in America,” I said, by راه of explanation.

I wanted to بگویید them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and استفاده می شود it as a credit card. Hassan and I would را the wooden stick to the bread maker. He’d carve notches on our stick with his knife, یک notch for each loaf of _naan_ he’d بکشید for us from the tandoor’s roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father پرداخت می شود him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.

But I didn’t بگویید them. I thanked Mr. نگوین for not calling the cops. Took Baba home. He sulked and smoked on the balcony while I made rice with chicken neck

stew. A year and a نیم since we’d stepped off the Boeing from Peshawar, and Baba was هنوز هم adjusting.

We ate in silence that night. After two bites, Baba pushed دور his plate.

I glanced at him در سراسر the table, his nails chipped and black with engine oil, his knuckles scraped, the smells of the گاز station--dust, sweat, and gasoline--on his clothes. Baba was like the widower who remarries but can’t let go of his dead wife. He از دست رفته the sugarcane fields of Jalalabad and the gardens of Paghman. He از دست رفته people milling in and out of his house, از دست رفته walking down the شلوغ aisles of شور Bazaar and سلام people who knew him and his father, knew his grandfather, people who shared اجداد with him, whose pasts intertwined with his.

For me, America was a محل to bury my memories.

For Baba, a محل to mourn his.

“Maybe we باید go back to Peshawar,” I said, watching the یخ float in my glass of water. We’d به سر برد six months in Peshawar waiting for the INS to issue our visas. Our grimy one-bedroom apartment smelled like dirty socks and cat droppings, but we were احاطه شده است by people we knew--at least people Baba knew. He’d دعوت می کنند the entire راهرو of neighbors for dinner, most of them Afghans waiting for visas. Inevitably, someone would bring a set of tabla and someone else a harmonium. چای would brew, and who ever had a passing singing voice would sing تا the خورشید rose, the mosquitoes stopped buzzing, and کف زدن hands grew sore.

“You were happier there, Baba. It was more like home,” I said.

“Peshawar was good for me. Not good for you.”

“You work so hard here.”

“It’s not so بد است now,” he said, meaning since he had become the روز manager at the گاز station. But I’d seen the راه he winced and rubbed his wrists on damp days. The راه sweat erupted on his forehead as he reached for his bottle of antacids after meals. “Besides, I didn’t bring us here for me, did I?”

I reached در سراسر the جدول and قرار داده است my hand on his. My دانش آموز hand, clean and soft, on his laborer’s hand, grubby and calloused. I فکر می کردم of all the trucks, train sets, and bikes he’d bought me in Kabul. Now America. One آخرین gift for Amir.

Just یک month after we arrived in the U.S., Baba found a job off Washington Boulevard as an assistant at a گاز station owned by an Afghan acquaintance--he’d started به دنبال for work the همان week we arrived. Six days a week, Baba pulled دوازده ساعت shifts pumping gas, running the register, changing oil, and washing windshields. I’d bring him lunch sometimes and find him به دنبال for a pack of cigarettes on the shelves, a customer waiting on the دیگر side of the oil-stained counter, Baba’s face drawn and pale under the bright فلورسنت lights. The electronic bell over the door would دنگ دنگ when I walked in, and Baba would look over his shoulder, wave, and smile, his eyes آبیاری from fatigue.

The همان day he was hired, Baba and I went to our eligibility officer in San Jose, Mrs. Dobbins. She was an overweight black woman with برق زده eyes and a dimpled smile. She’d گفت me once that she sang in church, and I believed her--

she had a voice that made me think of گرم است milk and honey. Baba کاهش یافته است the stack of food stamps on her desk. "تشکر کرده اند you but I don’t want,” Baba said. “I work always. In Afghanistan I work, in America I work. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dobbins, but I don’t like it free money.”

Mrs. Dobbins blinked. Picked up the food stamps, looked from me to Baba like we were pulling a prank, or “slipping her a trick” as Hassan استفاده می شود to say. "پانزده years I been doin’ this job and nobody’s ever done this,” she said. And that was how Baba ended those تحقیر آمیز food stamp لحظات at the پول نقد register and alleviated یک of his greatest fears: that an Afghan would see him buying food with charity money. Baba walked out of the welfare office like a man درمان می شود of a tumor.

THAT SUMMER OF 1983, I graduated from high school at the age of twenty, by far the oldest senior tossing his mortarboard on the football field that day. I remember losing Baba in the ازدحام of families, flashing cameras, and آبی gowns. I found him near the twenty-yard line, hands shoved in his pockets, camera dangling on his chest. He disappeared and reappeared behind the people moving between us: squealing blue-clad girls hugging, crying, boys high-fiving their fathers, each other. Baba’s beard was graying, his hair thinning at the temples, and hadn’t he been taller in Kabul? He was wearing his brown suit--his only suit, the همان one he عینک to Afghan weddings and funerals--and the red tie I had bought for his fiftieth birthday that year. Then he دیدم me and waved. Smiled. He motioned for me to wear my mortarboard, and took a picture of me with the مدرسه clock برج in the background. I smiled for him--in a way, this was his روز more than mine. He walked to me, curled his arm around my neck, and gave my ابرو a single kiss. “I am moftakhir, Amir,” he said. Proud. His eyes gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look.

He took me to an Afghan kabob house in Hayward that night and ordered far بیش از حد much food. He گفت the مالک that his son was going to college in the fall. I had debated him briefly about that just before graduation, and گفت him I wanted to get a job. Help out, save some money, maybe go to college the following year. But he had shot me یک of his smoldering Baba looks, and the words had vaporized on my tongue.

After dinner, Baba took me to a bar در سراسر the street from the restaurant. The محل was dim, and the acrid smell of beer I’d always disliked permeated the walls. Men in baseball caps and tank tops played pool, clouds of cigarette smoke hovering over the green tables, swirling in the فلورسنت light. We به خود جلب کرد looks, Baba in his brown suit and me in pleated slacks and sports jacket. We took a seat at the bar, next to an old man, his leathery face sickly in the آبی glow of the Michelob sign overhead. Baba روشن a cigarette and ordered us beers. “Tonight I am بیش از حد much happy,” he اعلام کرد to no یک and everyone. “Tonight I نوشیدن with my son. And one, please, for my friend,” he said, patting the old man on the back. The old همکار tipped his hat and smiled. He had no upper teeth.

Baba finished his beer in three gulps and ordered another. He had three before I forced خودم to drink a quarter of mine. By then he had bought the old man a scotch and treated a بازی گلف چهار نفری of pool players to a pitcher of Budweiser. Men shook his hand and clapped him on the back. They نوشید to him. Someone روشن his cigarette. Baba loosened his tie and gave the old man a تعداد انگشت شماری of quarters. He pointed to the jukebox. “Tell him to play his favorite songs,” he said to me. The old man nodded and gave Baba a salute. Soon, country music was blaring, and, just like that, Baba had started a party.

At یک point, Baba stood, raised his beer, spilling it on the sawdust floor, and yelled, “Fuck the Russia!” The bar’s laughter, then its full-throated echo followed. Baba bought another round of pitchers for everyone.

When we left, everyone was sad to see him go. Kabul, Peshawar, Hayward. Same old Baba, I thought, smiling.

I drove us home in Baba’s old, ochre زرد Buick Century. Baba dozed off on the way, snoring like a jackhammer. I smelled tobacco on him and alcohol, شیرین and pungent. But he sat up when I stopped the car and said in a hoarse voice, “Keep driving to the end of the block.”

“Why, Baba?”

“Just go.” He had me park at the جنوب end of the street. He reached in his coat pocket and تحویل داده شد me a set of keys. “There,” he said, pointing to the car in front of us. It was an old مدل Ford, long and wide, a تاریک color I couldn’t discern in the moon light. “It needs painting, and من have یک of the guys at the station قرار داده است in new shocks, but it runs.”

I took the keys, stunned. I looked from him to the car.

“You’ll need it to go to college,” he said.

I took his hand in mine. Squeezed it. My eyes were پاره شدن over and I was خوشحالم for the shadows that مخفی شدند our faces. "تشکر کرده اند you, Baba.”

We got out and sat inside the Ford. It was a Grand Torino. Navy blue, Baba said. I drove it around the block, testing the brakes, the radio, the تبدیل شود signals. I parked it in the lot of our apartment building and shut off the engine. “Tashakor, Baba jan,” I said. I wanted to می گویند more, بگویید him how touched I was by his act of kindness, how much I appreciated all that he had done for me, all that he was هنوز هم doing. But I knew I’d embarrass him. “Tashakor,” I repeated instead.

He smiled and leaned back against the headrest, his forehead almost touching the ceiling. We didn’t می گویند anything. Just sat in the dark, گوش to the tink-tink of the engine cooling, the wail of a siren in the distance. Then Baba rolled his سر toward me. “I wish Hassan had been with us today,” he said.

A pair of فولاد است hands closed around my windpipe at the sound of Hassan’s name. I rolled down the window. Waited for the فولاد است hands to شل their grip.

I WOULD ENROLL in junior college classes in the fall, I گفت Baba the روز after graduation. He was نوشیدن cold black tea and chewing cardamom seeds, his personal trusted antidote for hang over headaches.

“I think من major in English,” I said. I winced inside, waiting for his reply.

“English?”

“Creative writing.”

He considered this. Sipped his tea. “Stories, you mean. You’ll make up stories.” I looked down at my feet.

“They pay for that, making up stories?”

“If you’re good,” I said. “And if you get discovered.”

“How likely is that, getting discovered?”

“It happens,” I said.

He nodded. “And چه will you do while you صبر کنید to get good and get discovered? How will you کسب درآمد money? If you marry, how will you support خود را khanum?”

I couldn’t lift my eyes to meet his. “I’ll... find a job.”

“Oh,” he said. “Wah wah! So, if I understand, you’ll study several years to کسب درآمد a degree, then you’ll get a chatti job like mine, یک you could just as easily land today, on the small chance that خود را degree might someday help you get... discovered.” He took a deep نفس and sipped his tea. Grunted something about medical school, law school, and “real work.”

My گونه ها burned and guilt coursed through me, the guilt of غرقه شدن myself at the expense of his ulcer, his black fingernails and aching wrists. But I would stand my ground, I decided. I didn’t want to قربانی for Baba anymore. The آخرین time I had done that, I had damned myself.

Baba sighed and, this time, tossed a whole تعداد انگشت شماری of car damom seeds in his mouth.

SOMETIMES, I است BEHIND the wheel of my Ford, rolled down the windows, and drove for hours, from the East Bay to the South Bay, up the Peninsula and back. I drove through the grids of cottonwood-lined streets in our Fremont neighborhood, where people who’d never shaken hands with kings زندگی می کردند in shabby, flat one-story houses with محروم شده است windows, where old cars like mine dripped oil on blacktop driveways. Pencil gray chain-link fences closed off the backyards in our neighborhood. Toys, bald tires, and beer bottles with peeling labels littered unkempt front lawns. I drove past tree-shaded parks that smelled like bark, past نوار malls big enough to hold five simultaneous Buzkashi tournaments. I drove the Torino up the تپه of Los Altos, idling past estates with picture windows and silver lions guarding the wrought-iron gates, homes with بچه قشنگ fountains lining the manicured walkways and no Ford Torinos in the رانندگی ways. Homes that made Baba’s house in Wazir Akbar Khan look like a servant’s hut.

I’d get up early some Saturday mornings and رانندگی south on Highway 17, push the Ford up the winding road through the mountains to Santa Cruz. I would park by the old lighthouse and صبر کنید for sunrise, sit in my car and watch the fog rolling in from the sea. In Afghanistan, I had only seen the ocean at the cinema. نشسته in the تاریک next to Hassan, I had always wondered if it was درست است what I’d read, that sea هوا smelled like salt. I استفاده می شود to بگویید Hassan that someday we’d walk on a نوار of seaweed-strewn beach, sink our فوت است in the sand, and watch the water recede from our toes. The first time I دیدم the Pacific, I almost cried. It was as vast and آبی as the oceans on the فیلم screens of my childhood.

Sometimes in the early evening, I parked the car and walked up a freeway overpass. My face pressed against the fence, I’d try to count the blinking red taillights inching along, stretching as far as my eyestould see. BMWs. Saabs.

Porsches. Cars I’d never seen in Kabul, where most people drove Russian Volgas, old Opels, or Iranian Paikans.

Almost two years had passed since we had arrived in the U.S., and I was هنوز هم marveling at the size of this country, its vastness. Beyond هر freeway غیر روحانی another freeway, beyond هر city another city تپه beyond mountains and mountains beyond hills, and, beyond those, more شهرستانها and more people.

Long before the Roussi army marched into Afghanistan, long before روستاها were burned and schools destroyed, long before mines were planted like seeds of death and children buried in سنگ انباشته شده است graves, Kabul had become a city of ghosts for me. A city of harelipped ghosts.

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could در اب راه رفتن into this river, let my گناهان drown to the bottom, let the waters ادامه می دهند me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins.

If for هیچ چیز نیست else, for that, I در آغوش گرفت America.

THE FOLLOWING SUMMER, the summer of 1984--the summer I turned twenty-one--Baba sold his Buick and bought a ویران ’71 Volkswagen bus for $550 from an old Afghan acquaintance who’d been a high-school science teacher in Kabul. The neighbors’ heads turned the afternoon the bus sputtered up the street and farted its راه across our lot. Baba killed the engine and let the bus roll silently into our designated spot. We sank in our seats, laughed تا tears rolled down our cheeks, and, more important, تا we were sure the neighbors weren’t watching anymore. The bus was a sad carcass of rusted metal, shattered windows replaced with black زباله bags, balding tires, and upholstery shredded down to the springs. But the old teacher had reassured Baba that the engine and transmission were sound and, on that account, the man hadn’t lied.

On Saturdays, Baba woke me up at dawn. As he dressed, I اسکن the classifieds in the local مقالات and circled the garage sale ads. We mapped our route--Fremont, Union City, Newark, and Hayward first, then San Jose, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, and کمپبل if time permitted. Baba drove the bus, sipping hot tea from the thermos, and I navigated. We stopped at garage sales and bought knickknacks that people no longer wanted. We haggled over old sewing machines, one-eyed باربی dolls, wooden تنیس rackets, guitars with missing strings, and old Electrolux vacuum cleaners. By midafternoon, we’d filled the back of the VW bus with استفاده می شود goods. Then early یکشنبه mornings, we drove to the San Jose flea market off Berryessa, rented a spot, and sold the junk for a small profit: a Chicago record that we’d bought for a quarter the روز before might go for $1, or $4 for a set of five; a نا پایدار Singer sewing machine purchased for $10 might, after some bargaining, bring in $25.

By that summer, Afghan families were working an entire بخش of the San Jose flea market. Afghan music played in the aisles of the Used Goods section. There was an unspoken code of behavior among Afghans at the flea market: You greeted the guy در سراسر the aisle, you invited him for a bite of potato bolani or a little qabuli, and you chatted. You offered tassali, condolences, for the death of a parent, congratulated the birth of children, and shook خود را head mournfully when the conversation turned to Afghanistan and the Roussis--which it inevitably did. But you avoided the topic of Saturday. Because it might تبدیل شود out that the همکار across the isle was the guy you’d nearly blindsided at the freeway exit دیروز in order to beat him to a promising garage sale.

The only thing that flowed more than tea in those aisles was Afghan gossip. The flea market was where you sipped green tea with almond kolchas, and learned whose daughter had شکسته off an engagement and run off with her American boyfriend, who استفاده می شود to be Parchami--a کمونیست - در Kabul, and who had bought a house with under-the-table money while هنوز هم on welfare. Tea, Politics, and Scandal, the ingredients of an Afghan یکشنبه at the flea market.

I ran the stand sometimes as Baba sauntered down the aisle, hands با احترام pressed to his chest, سلام people he knew from Kabul: مکانیک and خیاط selling hand-me-down wool coats and scraped bicycle helmets, در کنار former ambassadors, out-of-work surgeons, and university professors.

One early یکشنبه morning in July 1984, while Baba set up, I bought two cups of قهوه from the concession stand and returned to find Baba talking to an older, distinguished-looking man. I قرار داده است the cups on the rear bumper of the bus, next to the REAGAN/BUSH FOR ’84 sticker.

“Amir,” Baba said, حرکتی me over, “this is General Sahib, Mr. Iqbal Taheri. He was a تزئین شده است general in Kabul. He worked for the Ministry of Defense.”

Taheri. Why did the name sound familiar? The general laughed like a man استفاده می شود to attending formal parties where he’d laughed on cue at the minor jokes of important people. He had باریک silver-gray hair combed back from his smooth, tanned forehead, and تافتز of white in his bushy eye brows. He smelled like ادکلن and عینک an آهن خاکستری three-piece suit, shiny from بیش از حد many pressings; the gold chain of a pocket watch dangled from his vest.

“Such a lofty introduction,” he said, his voice deep and cultured. “_Salaam, bachem_.” Hello, my child.

“_Salaam_, General Sahib,” I said, shaking his hand. His thin hands belied a firm grip, as if فولاد است hid beneath the moisturized skin.

“Amir is going to be a بزرگ است writer,” Baba said. I did a double را at this. “He has finished his first year of college and earned است in all of his courses.”

“Junior college,” I corrected him.

“_Mashallah_,” General Taheri said. “Will you be writing about our country, history perhaps? Economics?”

“I write fiction,” I said, thinking of the dozen or so کوتاه است stories I had نوشته شده است in the leather-bound notebook Rahim Khan had given me, wondering why I was به طور ناگهانی embarrassed by them in this مرد presence.

“Ah, a storyteller,” the general said. “Well, people need stories to divert them at difficult times like this.” He قرار داده است his hand on Baba’s shoulder and turned to me. "صحبت کردن of stories, خود را father and I شکار pheasant together یک summer روز in Jalalabad,” he said. “It was a marvelous time. If I recall correctly, خود را father’s eye به اثبات رساند as keen in the hunt as it had in business.”

Baba kicked a wooden تنیس racket on our tarpaulin spread with the toe of his boot. "برخی از business.”

General Taheri اداره می شود a simultaneously sad and polite smile, heaved a sigh, and gently patted Baba’s shoulder. "Zendagi migzara,” he said. Life goes on. He turned his eyes to me. “We Afghans are prone to a considerable degree of exaggeration, bachem, and I have heard many مردان foolishly labeled great. But خود را father has the distinction of belonging to the minority who truly deserves the label.” This little speech sounded to me the راه his suit looked: often استفاده می شود and unnaturally shiny.

“You’re flattering me,” Baba said.

“I am not,” the general said, tilting his سر sideways and pressing his hand to his chest to convey humility. “Boys and girls باید know the legacy of their fathers.” He turned to me. “Do you appreciate خود را father, bachem? Do you really appreciate him?”

“Balay, General Sahib, I do,” I said, مایل he’d not call me “my child.”

“Then congratulations, you are already halfway to being a man,” he said with no ردیابی of humor, no irony, the compliment of the casually arrogant.

“Padar jan, you forgot خود را tea.” A young زن voice. She was standing behind us, a slim-hipped beauty with velvety ذغال سنگ است black hair, an open thermos and Styrofoam cup in her hand. I blinked, my heart quickening. She had ضخامت دارد black ابرو است that touched in the middle like the arched wings of a flying bird, and the gracefully hooked بینی of a princess from old Persia--maybe that of Tahmineh, Rostam’s wife and سهراب mother from the _Shahnamah_. Her eyes, walnut brown and shaded by fanned lashes, met mine. Held for a moment. پرواز کرد away.

“You are so kind, my dear,” General Taheri said. He took the cup from her. Before she turned to go, I دیدم she had a brown, sickle-shaped birthmark on the smooth skin just above her left jawline. She walked to a dull gray van two aisles دور and قرار داده است the thermos inside. Her hair spilled to یک side when she kneeled amid boxes of old records and paperbacks.

“My daughter, Soraya jan,” General Taheri said. He took a deep نفس like a man eager to change the subject and checked his gold pocket watch. “Well, time to go and set up.” He and Baba kissed on the cheek and he shook my hand with both of his. “Best of luck with the writing,” he said, به دنبال me in the eye. His pale آبی eyes revealed هیچ چیز نیست of the thoughts behind them.

For the استراحت of that day, I fought the urge to look toward the gray van.

IT CAME TO ME on our راه home. Taheri, I knew I’d heard that name before.

“Wasn’t there some story floating around about Taheri’s daughter?” I said to Baba, trying to sound casual.

“You know me,” Baba said, inching the bus along the صف exiting the flea market. “Talk turns to gossip and I walk away.”

“But there was, wasn’t there?” I said.

“Why do you ask?” He was به دنبال at me coyly.

I shrugged and fought back a smile. "فقط curious, Baba.”

“Really? Is that all?” he said, his eyes playful, lingering on mine. “Has she made an impression on you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, Baba.”

He smiled, and چرخش the bus out of the flea market. We به عهده دارد for Highway 680. We drove in silence for a while. “All من heard is that there was a man once and things... didn’t go well.” He said this gravely, like he’d disclosed to me that she had پستان cancer.

“I hear she is a decent girl, hardworking and kind. But no khastegars, no suitors, have knocked on the general’s door since.” Baba sighed. “It may be unfair, but چه happens in a few days, sometimes even a single day, می توانید change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir,” he said.

LYING AWAKE IN BED that night, I فکر می کردم of Soraya Taheri’s sickle-shaped birthmark, her gently hooked nose, and the راه her luminous eyes had fleetingly برگزار شد mine. My heart stuttered at the فکر می کردم of her. Soraya Taheri. My Swap Meet Princess.

TWELVE

In Afghanistan, _yelda_ is the first night of the month of _Jadi_, the first night of winter, and the longest night of the year. As was the tradition, Hassan and I استفاده می شود to stay up late, our فوت است tucked under the kursi, while Ali tossed apple skin into the stove and گفت us ancient tales of sultans and thieves to pass that longest of nights. It was from Ali that I learned the lore of _yelda_, that bedeviled moths پرت themselves at candle flames, and گرگ climbed mountains به دنبال for the sun. Ali swore that if you ate water melon the night of _yelda_, you wouldn’t get thirsty the coming summer.

When I was older, I read in my poetry books that _yelda_ was the starless night عذاب lovers kept vigil, enduring the endless dark, waiting for the خورشید to افزایش یابد and bring with it their loved one. After I met Soraya Taheri, هر night of the هفته became a _yelda_ for me. And when یکشنبه mornings came, I rose from bed, Soraya Taheri’s brown-eyed face already in my head. In Baba’s bus, I counted the miles تا I’d see her sitting barefoot, arranging cardboard boxes of yellowed encyclopedias, her heels white against the asphalt, silver bracelets jingling around her slender wrists. I’d think of the shadow her hair cast on the ground when it slid off her back and hung down like a velvet curtain. Soraya. Swap Meet Princess. The morning خورشید to my yelda.

I invented excuses to stroll down the aisle--which Baba acknowledged with a playful smirk--and pass the Taheris’ stand. I would wave at the general, perpetually dressed in his shiny overpressed gray suit, and he would wave back. گاهی اوقات he’d get up from his کارگردان chair and we’d make small talk about my writing, the war, the روز bargains. And I’d have to will my eyes not to peel away, not to wander to where Soraya sat خواندن a paperback. The general and I would می گویند our good-byes and I’d try not to slouch as I walked away.

Sometimes she sat alone, the general off to some دیگر row to socialize, and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but dying to. گاهی اوقات she was there with a portly middle-aged woman with pale skin and dyed red hair. I promised خودم that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of زمستان swept in

and wakened Baba’s joints, baby leaves جوانه زد once more, and I هنوز هم hadn’t had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye.

The بهار quarter ended in late May 1985. I aced all of my general education classes, which was a minor miracle given how I’d sit in سخنرانی and think of the soft hook of Soraya’s nose.

Then, یک sweltering یکشنبه that summer, Baba and I were at the flea market, sitting at our booth, fanning our faces with news papers. Despite the خورشید bearing down like a branding iron, the market was شلوغ است that روز and sales had been strong--it was only 12:30 but we’d already made $160. I got up, stretched, and asked Baba if he wanted a Coke. He said he’d love one.

“Be careful, Amir,” he said as I began to walk. “Of what, Baba?”

“I am not an ahmaq, so don’t play stupid with me.”

“I don’t know چه you’re talking about.”

“Remember this,” Baba said, pointing at me, “The man is a Pashtun to the root. He has nang and namoos.” Nang. Namoos. Honor and pride. The tenets of Pashtun men. به خصوص when it came to the chastity of a wife. Or a daughter.

“I’m only going to get us drinks.”

“Just don’t embarrass me, that’s all I ask.”

“I won’t. God, Baba.”

Baba روشن a cigarette and started fanning himself again.

I walked toward the concession booth initially, then turned left at the T-shirt stand--where, for $5, you could have the face of Jesus, Elvis, Jim Morrison, or all three, pressed on a white nylon T-shirt. Mariachi music played overhead, and I smelled pickles and grilled meat.

I spotted the Taheris’ gray van two rows from ours, next to a kiosk فروش mango-on-a-stick. She was alone, reading. White ankle-length summer dress today. Open-toed sandals. Hair pulled back and crowned with a ، گل لاله شکل گرفته است bun. I meant to simply walk by again and I فکر می کردم I had, except به طور ناگهانی I was standing at the edge of the Taheris’ white tablecloth, staring at Soraya در سراسر curling irons and old neckties. She looked up.

“Salaam,” I said. “I’m sorry to be mozahem, I didn’t معنی to disturb you.”

“Salaam.”

“Is General Sahib here today?” I said. My ears were burning. I couldn’t bring خودم to look her in the eye.

“He went that way,” she said. Pointed to her right. The bracelet slipped down to her elbow, silver against olive.

“Will you بگویید him I stopped by to pay my respects?” I said.

“I will.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Oh, and my name is Amir. In case you need to know. So you می توانید tell him. That I stopped by. To... pay my respects.”

“Yes.”

I shifted on my feet, cleared my throat. “I’ll go now. متأسفم to have disturbed you.”

“Nay, you didn’t,” she said.

“Oh. Good.” I tipped my سر and gave her a نیم smile. “I’ll go now.” Hadn’t I already said that? “Khoda hãfez.”

“Khoda hãfez.”

I began to walk. Stopped and turned. I said it before I had a chance to lose my nerve: “Can I ask چه you’re reading?”

She blinked.

I برگزار شد my breath. Suddenly, I felt the collective eyes of the flea market Afghans shift to us. I imagined a ساکت باش falling. Lips stop ping in midsentence. هد turning. Eyes narrowing with keen interest.

What was this?

Up to that point, our روبرو می شوند could have been interpreted as a respectful inquiry, یک man asking for the whereabouts of another man. But I’d asked her a question and if she answered, we’d be... well, we’d be chatting. Me a mojarad, a single young man, and she an unwed young woman. One with a history, no less. This was teetering dangerously on the verge of gossip material, and the best kind of it. Poison tongues would flap. And she would داشته باشد the brunt of that poison, not me--I was fully aware of the Afghan double standard that favored my gender. Not Did you see him chatting with her? but Wooooy Did you see how she wouldn’t let him go? What a lochak!

By Afghan standards, my question had been bold. With it, I had برهنه myself, and left little doubt as to my interest in her. But I was a man, and all I had risked was a bruised ego. Bruises healed. Reputations did not. Would she را my dare?

She turned the book so the cover faced me. بادگیر Heights. "داشته باشید you read آن؟ " she said.

I nodded. I could feel the pulsating beat of my heart behind my eyes. “It’s a sad story.”

“Sad stories make good books,” she said.

“They do.”

“I heard you write.”

How did she know? I wondered if her father had گفت her, maybe she had asked him. I immediately dismissed both scenarios as absurd. پدران and sons could talk freely about women. But no Afghan girl--no decent and mohtaram Afghan girl, at least--queried her father about a young man. And no father, especially a

Pashtun with nang and namoos, would بحث a mojarad with his daughter, not مگر اینکه the همکار in question was a khastegar, a suitor, who had done the honorable thing and ارسال می شود his father to knock on the door.

Incredibly, I heard خودم say, “Would you like to read یک of my stories?”

“I would like that,” she said. I sensed an unease in her now, دیدم it in the راه her eyes began to flick side to side. Maybe checking for the general. I wondered چه he would می گویند if he found me speaking for such an inappropriate length of time with his daughter.

“Maybe من bring you یک someday,” I said. I was about to می گویند more when the woman I’d seen on مناسبت with Soraya came walking up the aisle. She was carrying a plastic bag full of fruit. When she دیدم us, her eyes bounced from Soraya to me and back. She smiled.

“Amir jan, good to see you,” she said, unloading the bag on the tablecloth. Her ابرو glistened with a شین of sweat. Her red hair, coiffed like a helmet, glittered in the sunlight--I could see بیت of her scalp where the hair had thinned. She had small green eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, پوش teeth, and little fingers like sausages. A golden خدا rested on her chest, the chain burrowed under the skin tags and folds of her neck. “I am Jamila, Soraya jan’s mother.”

“Salaam, Khala jan,” I said, embarrassed, as I often was around Afghans, that she knew me and I had no ایده who she was.

“How is خود را father?” she said.

“He’s well, thank you.”

“You know, خود را grandfather, Ghazi Sahib, the judge? Now, his uncle and my grandfather were cousins,” she said. “So you see, we’re related.” She smiled a cap-toothed smile, and I noticed the right side of her دهان drooping a little. Her eyes moved between Soraya and me again.

I’d asked Baba once why General Taheri’s daughter hadn’t married yet. No suitors, Baba said. No suitable suitors, he amended. But he wouldn’t می گویند more--Baba knew how lethal idle talk could prove to a young زن prospects of ازدواج well. Afghan men, especially those from reputable families, were fickle creatures. A زمزمه here, an insinuation there, and they فرار کرد like startled birds. So weddings had come and gone and no یک had sung ahesta boro for Soraya, no یک had painted her palms with henna, no یک had برگزار شد a Koran over her headdress, and it had been General Taheri who’d danced with her at هر wedding.

And now, this woman, this mother, with her heartbreakingly eager, crooked smile and the barely veiled hope in her eyes. I cringed a little at the position of power I’d been granted, and all because I had به دست آورد at the genetic lottery that had determined my sex.

I could never read the thoughts in the general’s eyes, but I knew this much about his wife: If I was going to have an adversary in this--whatever this آن - بود would not be her.

“Sit down, Amir jan,” she said. “Soraya, get him a chair, hachem. And بشویید one of those peaches. آنها sweet and fresh.”

“Nay, thank you,” I said. “I باید get going. My father’s waiting.”

“Oh?” Khanum Taheri said, clearly impressed that I’d done the polite thing and declined the offer. “Then here, at least have this.” She threw a تعداد انگشت شماری of kiwis and a few peaches into a paper bag and insisted I را them. “Carry my Salaam to خود را father. And come back to see us again.”

“I will. Thank you, Khala jan,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I دیدم Soraya به دنبال away.

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING COKES,” Baba said, گرفتن the bag of peaches from me. He was به دنبال at me in a simultaneously serious and playful way. I began to make some thing up, but he bit into a peach and waved his hand, "آیا نمی کند bother, Amir. Just remember چه I said.”

THAT NIGHT IN BED, I فکر می کردم of the راه dappled sunlight had danced in Soraya’s eyes, and of the ظریف hollows above her collarbone. I replayed our conversation over and over in my head. Had she said I heard you write or I heard you’re a writer? Which was it? I tossed in my ورق and stared at the ceiling, dismayed at the فکر می کردم of six laborious, interminable nights of yelda تا I دیدم her again.

IT WENT ON LIKE THAT for a few weeks. I’d صبر کنید until the general went for a stroll, then I’d walk past the Taheris’ stand. If Khanum Taheri was there, she’d offer me tea and a kolcha and we’d chat about Kabul in the old days, the people we knew, her arthritis. Undoubtedly, she had noticed that my ظاهر always coincided with her husband’s absences, but she never let on. “Oh you just از دست رفته your Kaka,” she’d say. I actually liked it when Khanum Taheri was there, and not just because of her amiable ways; Soraya was more relaxed, more talkative with her mother around. As if her presence legitimized whatever was happening between us--though certainly not to the همان degree that the general’s would have. Khanum Taheri’s chaperoning made our meetings, if not gossip-proof, then less gossip-worthy, even if her borderline fawning on me clearly embarrassed Soraya.

One day, Soraya and I were alone at their booth, talking. She was telling me about school, how she بیش از حد was working on her general education classes, at Ohlone Junior College in Fremont.

“What will you major in?”

“I want to be a teacher,” she said.

“Really? Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to. When we زندگی می کردند in Virginia, I became ESL certified and now I teach at the public library یک night a week. My mother was a teacher too, she تدریس Farsi and history at Zarghoona High School for girls in Kabul.”

A potbellied man in a deerstalker hat offered three dollars for a five-dollar set of candlesticks and Soraya let him have it. She کاهش یافته است the money in a little candy جعبه by her feet. She looked at me shyly. “I want to بگویید you a story,” she said, “but I’m a little embarrassed about it.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s kind of silly.”

“Please بگویید me.”

She laughed. “Well, when I was in fourth grade in Kabul, my father hired a woman named Ziba to help around the house. She had a خواهر in Iran, in Mashad, and, since Ziba was illiterate, she’d ask me to write her خواهر letters once in a while. And when the خواهر replied, I’d read her letter to Ziba. One day, I asked her if she’d like to learn to read and write. She gave me this big smile, crinkling her eyes, and said she’d like that very much. So we’d sit at the kitchen جدول after I was done with my own schoolwork and I’d teach her Alef-beh. I remember به دنبال up sometimes in the middle of homework and دیدن Ziba in the kitchen, stirring meat in the pressure cooker, then sitting down with a pencil to do the alphabet homework I’d assigned to her the night before.

“Anyway, within a year, Ziba could read children’s books. We sat in the yard and she read me the tales of Dara and Sara--slowly but correctly. She started calling me Moalem Soraya, Teacher Soraya.” She laughed again. “I know it sounds childish, but the first time Ziba wrote her own letter, I knew there was هیچ چیز نیست else I’d ever want to be but a teacher. I was so proud of her and I felt I’d done something really worthwhile, you know?”

“Yes,” I lied. I فکر می کردم of how I had استفاده می شود my literacy to ridicule Hassan. How I had teased him about big words he didn’t know.

“My father wants me to go to law school, my mother’s always throwing نکات about medical school, but I’m going to be a teacher. Doesn’t pay much here, but it’s چه I want.”

“My mother was a teacher too,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “My mother گفت me.” Then her face red dened with a blush at چه she had blurted, at the implication of her answer, that “Amir Conversations” took محل between them when I wasn’t there. It took an بسیار زیاد است effort to stop خودم from smiling.

“I brought you something.” I fished the roll of stapled pages from my back pocket. “As promised.” I تحویل داده شد her یک of my کوتاه است stories.

“Oh, you remembered,” she said, actually beaming. "تشکر کرده اند you!” I barely had time to register that she’d addressed me with “tu” for the first time and not the formal “shoma,” because به طور ناگهانی her smile vanished. The color کاهش یافته است from her face, and her eyes fixed on something behind me. I turned around. آمد face-to-face with General Taheri.

“Amir jan. Our aspiring storyteller. What a pleasure,” he said. He was smiling thinly.

“Salaam, General Sahib,” I said through heavy lips.

He moved past me, toward the booth. “What a beautiful روز it is, nay?” he said, thumb hooked in the پستان pocket of his vest, the دیگر hand extended toward Soraya. She gave him the pages.

“They می گویند it will باران this week. Hard to believe, isn’t آن؟ " He کاهش یافته است the rolled pages in the زباله can. Turned to me and gently قرار داده است a hand on my shoulder. We took a few steps together.

“You know, bachem, I have grown rather fond of you. You are a decent boy, I really believe that, اما - " he sighed and waved a hand “--even decent boys need یادآوری sometimes. So it’s my duty to remind you that you are among peers in this flea market.” He stopped. His expressionless eyes bore into mine. "شما see, everyone here is a storyteller.” He smiled, revealing perfectly even teeth. “Do pass my respects to خود را father, Amir jan.”

He کاهش یافته است his hand. Smiled again.

“WHAT’S WRONG?” Baba said. He was گرفتن an elderly زن money for a rocking horse.

“Nothing,” I said. I sat down on an old TV set. Then I گفت him anyway.

“Akh, Amir,” he sighed.

As it turned out, I didn’t get to نوزادان too much over چه had happened.

Because بعد that week, Baba caught a cold.

IT STARTED WITH A HACKING COUGH and the sniffles. He got over the sniffles, but the cough persisted. He’d هک into his handkerchief, stow it in his pocket. I kept after him to get it checked, but he’d wave me away. He hated doctors and hospitals. To my knowledge, the only time Baba had ever gone to a doctor was the time he’d caught مالاریا in India.

Then, two هفته later, I caught him coughing a wad of blood-stained phlegm into the toilet.

“How long have you been doing that?” I said.

“What’s for dinner?” he said.

“I’m گرفتن you to the doctor.”

Even though Baba was a manager at the گاز station, the مالک hadn’t offered him سلامت insurance, and Baba, in his recklessness, hadn’t insisted. So I took him to the county hospital in San Jose. The sallow, puffy-eyed doctor who دیدم us introduced himself as a second-year resident. “He looks younger than you and sicker than me,” Baba grumbled. The resident ارسال می شود us down for a chest X-ray. When the nurse called us back in, the resident was پر کردن out a form.

“Take this to the front desk,” he said, scribbling quickly.

“What is آن؟ " I asked.

“A referral.” Scribble scribble.

“For what?”

“Pulmonary clinic.”

“What’s that?”

He gave me a quick glance. Pushed up his glasses. Began scribbling again. “He’s got a spot on his right lung. I want them to check it out.”

“A spot?” I said, the room به طور ناگهانی too small.

“Cancer?” Baba added casually.

“Possible. It’s suspicious, anyway,” the doctor muttered.

“Can’t you بگویید us more?” I asked.

“Not really. Need a CAT اسکن first, then see the lung doctor.” He تحویل داده شد me the referral form. "شما said خود را father smokes, right?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. Looked from me to Baba and back again. “They’ll call you within two weeks.”

I wanted to ask him how I was قرار to live with that word, “suspicious,” for two whole weeks. How was I قرار eat, work, study? How could he ارسال کنید me home with that word?

I took the form and turned it in. That night, I waited تا Baba fell asleep, and then خورده a blanket. I استفاده می شود it as a prayer rug. Bowing my سر to the ground, I خوانده half-forgotten verses from the Koran--verses the mullah had made us commit to memory in Kabul--and asked for مهربانی from a God I wasn’t sure existed. I envied the mullah now, envied his ایمان است and certainty.

Two هفته passed and no یک called. And when I called them, they گفت me they’d lost the referral. Was I sure I had turned it in? They said they would call in another three weeks. I raised hell and bargained the three هفته down to یک for the CAT scan, two to see the doctor.

The visit with the pulmonologist, Dr. Schneider, was going well تا Baba asked him where he was from. Dr. Schneider said Russia. Baba lost it.

“Excuse us, Doctor,” I said, pulling Baba aside. Dr. Schneider smiled and stood back, stethoscope هنوز هم in hand.

“Baba, I read Dr. Schneider’s biography in the waiting room. He was born in Michigan. Michigan! He’s American, a lot more American than you and I will ever be.”

“I don’t care where he was born, he’s Roussi,” Baba said, grimacing like it was a dirty word. “His parents were Roussi, his grandparents were Roussi. I swear on خود را mother’s face من break his arm if he tries to touch me.”

“Dr. Schneider’s parents فرار کرد from Shorawi, don’t you see? They escaped!”

But Baba would hear none of it. گاهی اوقات I think the only thing he loved as much as his late wife was Afghanistan, his late country. I almost screamed with frustration. Instead, I sighed and turned to Dr. Schneider. “I’m sorry, Doctor. This isn’t going to work out.”

The next pulmonologist, Dr. Amani, was Iranian and Baba approved. Dr. Amani, a soft-spoken man with a crooked mustache and a mane of gray hair, گفت us he had reviewed the CAT اسکن results and that he would have to perform a procedure called a برونکوسکوپی to get a piece of the lung mass for pathology. He scheduled it for the following week. I thanked him as I helped Baba out of the office, thinking that now I had to live a whole هفته with this new word, “mass,” an even more ominous word than “suspicious.” I wished Soraya were there with me.

It turned out that, like Satan, cancer had many names. Baba’s was called “Oat همراه Carcinoma.” Advanced. Inoperable. Baba asked Dr. Amani for a prognosis. Dr. Amani bit his lip, استفاده می شود the word “grave.” “There is chemotherapy, of course,” he said. “But it would only be palliative.”

“What does that mean?” Baba asked.

Dr. Amani sighed. “It means it wouldn’t change the outcome, just prolong it.”

“That’s a clear answer, Dr. Amani. Thank you for that,” Baba said. “But no chemo-medication for me.” He had the همان resolved look on his face as the روز he’d کاهش یافته است the stack of food stamps on Mrs. Dobbins’s desk.

“But Baba--”

“Don’t you به چالش بکشد me in public, Amir. Ever. Who do you think you are?”

THE RAIN General Taheri had spoken about at the flea market was a few هفته late, but when we stepped out of Dr. Amani’s office, passing cars sprayed grimy water onto the sidewalks. Baba روشن a cigarette. He smoked all the راه to the car and all the راه home.

As he was slipping the کلیدی است into the lobby door, I said, “I wish you’d give the chemo a chance, Baba.”

Baba سوراخ the keys, pulled me out of the باران and under the building’s striped awning. He kneaded me on the chest with the hand holding the cigarette. “Bas! من made my decision.”

“What about me, Baba? What am I قرار to do?” I said, my eyes welling up.

A look of disgust swept در سراسر his rain-soaked face. It was the همان look he’d give me when, as a kid, I’d fall, خراش my knees, and cry. It was the crying that brought it on then, the crying that brought it on now. “You’re twenty-two years old, Amir! A grown man! You...” he opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, reconsidered. Above us, باران drummed on the canvas awning. “What’s going to happen to you, you say? All those years, that’s چه I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question.”

He opened the door. Turned back to me. “And یک more thing. No یک finds out about this, you hear من؟ No one. I don’t want anybody’s sympathy.” Then he disappeared into the dim lobby. He chain-smoked the استراحت of that روز in front of the TV. I didn’t know چه or whom he was defying. Me? Dr. امانی Or maybe the God he had never believed in.

FOR A WHILE, even cancer couldn’t keep Baba from the flea market. We made our garage sale treks on Saturdays, Baba the driver and me the navigator, and set up

our display on Sundays. برنج lamps. Baseball gloves. Ski jackets with شکسته zippers. Baba greeted acquaintances from the old country and I haggled with buyers over a dollar or two. Like any of it mattered. Like the روز I would become an orphan wasn’t inching closer with each closing of shop.

Sometimes, General Taheri and his wife strolled by. The general, ever the diplomat, greeted me with a smile and his two-handed shake. But there was a new reticence to Khanum Taheri’s demeanor. A reticence شکسته only by her secret, droopy لبخند می زند and the furtive, apologetic looks she cast my راه when the general’s توجه was engaged elsewhere.

I remember that period as a time of many “firsts”: The first time I heard Baba moan in the bathroom. The first time I found blood on his pillow. In over three years running the گاز station, Baba had never called in sick. Another first.

By Halloween of that year, Baba was getting so خسته می شوند by mid-Saturday afternoon that he’d صبر کنید behind the wheel while I got out and bargained for junk. By Thanksgiving, he عینک out before noon. When sleighs appeared on front lawns and fake snow on Douglas firs, Baba در آنجا ماند home and I drove the VW bus alone up and down the peninsula.

Sometimes at the flea market, Afghan acquaintances made remarks about Baba’s weight loss. At first, they were complimentary. They even asked the secret to his diet. But the queries and compliments stopped when the weight از دست دادن didn’t. When the pounds kept shedding. And shedding. When his گونه ها hollowed. And his temples melted. And his eyes receded in their sockets.

Then, یک cool یکشنبه shortly after جدید Year’s Day, Baba was فروش a lampshade to a stocky Filipino man while I rummaged in the VW for a پتو to cover his legs with.

“Hey, man, this guy needs help!” the Filipino man said with alarm. I turned around and found Baba on the ground. His arms and legs were jerking.

“Komak!” I cried. “Somebody help!” I ran to Baba. He was frothing at the mouth, the foamy اب دهان soaking his beard. His upturned eyes showed هیچ چیز نیست but white.

People were rushing to us. I heard someone می گویند seizure. Some یک else yelling, "تماس بگیرید 911!” I heard running footsteps. The sky darkened as a crowd gathered around us.

Baba’s اب دهان turned red. He was biting his tongue. I kneeled beside him and برداشت his arms and said I’m here Baba, I’m here, you’ll be all right, I’m right here. As if I could رفته باشد the تشنج out of him. Talk them into leaving my Baba alone. I felt a wetness on my knees. Saw Baba’s bladder had let go. Shhh, Baba jan, I’m here. Your son is right here.

THE DOCTOR, white-bearded and perfectly bald, pulled me out of the room. “I want to go over خود را father’s CAT scans with you,” he said. He قرار داده است the films up on a viewing جعبه in the hallway and pointed with the eraser end of his pencil to the pictures of Baba’s cancer, like a cop showing لیوان shots of the قاتل to the قربانی family. Baba’s مغز on those pictures looked like cross sections of a big walnut, سرند with تنیس ball-shaped gray things.

“As you می توانید see, the cancer’s metastasized,” he said. “He’ll have to را steroids to reduce the swelling in his مغز and antiseizure medications. And I’d recommend palliative radiation. Do you know چه that means?”

I said I did. I’d become conversant in cancer talk.

“All right, then,” he said. He checked his beeper. “I have to go, but you می توانید have me paged if you have any questions.”

“Thank you.”

I به سر برد the night sitting on a chair next to Baba’s bed.

THE NEXT MORNING, the waiting room down the hall was jammed with Afghans. The butcher from Newark. An مهندس who’d worked with Baba on his orphanage. They ب in and پرداخت می شود Baba their respects in مسکوت tones. Wished him a swift recovery. Baba was بیدار then, groggy and tired, but awake.

Midmorning, General Taheri and his wife came. Soraya followed. We glanced at each other, looked دور at the همان time. “How are you, my friend?” General Taheri said, گرفتن Baba’s hand.

Baba motioned to the IV hanging from his arm. Smiled thinly. The general smiled back.

“You shouldn’t have burdened yourselves. All of you,” Baba croaked.

“It’s no burden,” Khanum Taheri said.

“No burden at all. بیشتر importantly, do you need anything?” General Taheri said. “Anything at all? Ask me like you’d ask a brother.”

I remembered something Baba had said about Pashtuns once. We may be hardheaded and I know we’re far بیش از حد proud, but, in the hour of need, believe me that there’s no یک you’d rather have at خود را side than a Pashtun.

Baba shook his سر on the pillow. “Your coming here has brightened my eyes.” The general smiled and squeezed Baba’s hand. “How are you, Amir jan? Do you need anything?”

The راه he was به دنبال at me, the مهربانی in his eyes... “Nay thank you, General Sahib. I’m...“ A lump shot up in my throat and my eyes teared over. I bolted out of the room.

I wept in the hallway, by the viewing جعبه where, the night before, I’d seen the قاتل است face.

Baba’s door opened and Soraya walked out of his room. She stood near me. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans. Her hair was down. I wanted to find comfort in her arms.

“I’m so sorry, Amir,” she said. “We all knew something was wrong, but we had no ایده it was this.”

I blotted my eyes with my sleeve. “He didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.” I tried to smile. She قرار داده است her hand on mine. Our first touch. I took it. Brought it to my face. My eyes. I let it go. “You’d better go back inside. Or خود را father will come after me.”

She smiled and nodded. “I should.” She turned to go. “Soraya?”

“Yes?”

“I’m خوشحال you came, It means... the world to me.”

THEY DISCHARGED BABA two days later. They brought in a specialist called a radiation oncologist to talk Baba into getting radiation treatment. Baba refused. They tried to talk me into talking him into it. But I’d seen the look on Baba’s face. I thanked them, امضا their forms, and took Baba home in my Ford Torino.

That night, Baba was lying on the couch, a wool پتو covering him. I brought him hot tea and roasted almonds. Wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him up much بیش از حد easily. His shoulder blade felt like a bird’s wing under my fingers. I pulled the پتو back up to his chest where ribs stretched his thin, sallow skin.

“Can I do anything else for you, Baba?”

“Nay, bachem. Thank you.”

I sat beside him. “Then I wonder if you’ll do something for me. If you’re not بیش از حد exhausted.”

“What?”

“I want you to go khastegari. I want you to ask General Taheri for his daughter’s hand.”

Baba’s dry lips stretched into a smile. A spot of green on a wilted leaf. “Are you sure?”

“More sure than من ever been about anything.”

“You’ve فکر می کردم it over?”

“Balay, Baba.”

“Then give me the phone. And my little notebook.”

I blinked. “Now?”

“Then when?”

I smiled. “Okay.” I gave him the تلفن and the little black notebook where Baba had scribbled his Afghan friends’ numbers.

He looked up the Taheris. Dialed. Brought the receiver to his ear. My heart was doing pirouettes in my chest.

“Jamila jan? Salaam alaykum,” he said. He introduced himself. Paused. “Much better, thank you. It was so gracious of you to come.” He گوش for a while. Nodded. “I’ll remember that, thank you. Is General Sahib home?” Pause. "تشکر کرده اند you.”

His eyes flicked to me. I wanted to laugh for some reason. Or scream. I brought the ball of my hand to my دهان and bit on it. Baba laughed آرام through his nose.

“General Sahib, Salaam alaykum... Yes, much much better... Balay... You’re so kind. General Sahib, I’m calling to ask if I may pay you and Khanum Taheri a visit tomorrow morning. It’s an honorable matter... Yes... Eleven o’clock is just fine. Until then. Khoda hãfez.”

He hung up. We looked at each other. I burst into giggles. Baba پیوست in.

BABA WET HIS HAIR and combed it back. I helped him into a clean white shirt and knotted his tie for him, noting the two اینچ of empty space between the collar button and Baba’s neck. I فکر می کردم of all the empty spaces Baba would leave behind when he was gone, and I made خودم think of something else. He wasn’t gone. Not yet. And this was a روز for good thoughts. The jacket of his brown suit, the یک he’d worn to my graduation, hung over him--too much of Baba had melted دور to fill it anymore. I had to roll up the sleeves. I stooped and tied his shoelaces for him.

The Taheris زندگی می کردند in a flat, one-story house in یک of the residential مناطق in Fremont known for مسکن a large number of Afghans. It had سرخ مایل به قرمز windows, a pitched roof, and an enclosed front porch on which I دیدم potted geraniums. The general’s gray van was parked in the driveway.

I helped Baba out of the Ford and slipped back behind the wheel. He leaned in the passenger window. “Be home, من call you in an hour.”

“Okay, Baba,” I said. “Good luck.”

He smiled.

I drove away. In the rearview mirror, Baba was hobbling up the Taheris’ driveway for یک last fatherly duty.

I PACED THE LIVING ROOM of our apartment waiting for Baba’s call. Fifteen paces long. ده and a نیم paces wide. What if the general said no? What if he hated من؟ I kept going to the kitchen, checking the oven clock.

The تلفن rang just before noon. It was Baba.

“Well?”

“The general accepted.”

I let out a burst of air. Sat down. My hands were shaking. “He did?”

“Yes, but Soraya jan is upstairs in her room. She wants to talk to you first.”

“Okay.”

Baba said something to someone and there was a double کلیک کنید as he hung up.

“Amir?” Soraya’s voice. “Salaam.”

“My father said yes.”

“I know,” I said. I switched hands. I was smiling. “I’m so خوشحال I don’t know چه to say.”

“I’m خوشحال too, Amir. I... can’t believe this is happening.”

I laughed. “I know.”

“Listen,” she said, “I want to بگویید you something. چیزی you have to know before...”

“I don’t care چه it is.”

“You need to know. I don’t want us to start with secrets. And I’d rather you hear it from me.”

“If it will make you feel better, بگویید me. But it won’t change anything.”

There was a long pause at the دیگر end. "هنگامی که we زندگی می کردند in Virginia, I ran دور with an Afghan man. I was eighteen at the time... rebellious... stupid, and... he was into drugs... We زندگی می کردند together for almost a month. All the Afghans in Virginia were talking about it.

“Padar eventually found us. He showed up at the door and... made me come home. I was hysterical. Yelling. Screaming. Saying I hated him...

“Anyway, I came home and--” She was crying. “Excuse me.” I heard her قرار داده است the تلفن down. Blow her nose. “Sorry,” she came back on, sounding hoarse. "هنگامی که I came home, I دیدم my mother had had a stroke, the right side of her face was paralyzed and... I felt so guilty. She didn’t deserve that.

“Padar moved us to California shortly after.” A silence followed.

“How are you and خود را father now?” I said.

“We’ve always had our differences, we هنوز هم do, but I’m grateful he came for me that day. I really believe he saved me.” She paused. “So, does چه I گفت you زحمت you?”

“A little,” I said. I بدهکار her the truth on this one. I couldn’t lie to her and می گویند that my pride, my iftikhar, wasn’t stung at all that she had been with a man, whereas I had never taken a woman to bed. It did زحمت me a bit, but I had pondered this quite a lot in the هفته before I asked Baba to go khastegari. And in the end the question that always came back to me was this: How could I, of all people, chastise someone for their past?

“Does it زحمت you enough to change خود را mind?”

“No, Soraya. Not even close,” I said. “Nothing you said changes anything. I want us to marry.”

She شکست into fresh tears.

I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my دهان and almost گفت her how I’d betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a چهل سال است relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn’t. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just یک of them.

THIRTEEN

When we arrived at the Taheris’ home the next evening--for lafz, the ceremony of “giving word”--I had to park the Ford در سراسر the street. Their driveway was already jammed with cars. I عینک a navy آبی suit I had bought the previous day, after I had brought Baba home from _khastegari_. I checked my tie in the rearview mirror.

“You look khoshteep,” Baba said. Handsome.

“Thank you, Baba. Are you all right? Do you feel up to this?”

“Up to this? It’s the شاد ترین day of my life, Amir,” he said, smiling tiredly.

I COULD بشنو CHATTER from the دیگر side of the door, laughter, and Afghan music playing softly--it sounded like a classical ghazal by Ustad Sarahang. I rang the bell. A face peeked through the curtains of the foyer window and disappeared. "آنها here!” I heard a زن voice say. The chatter stopped. Someone turned off the music.

Khanum Taheri opened the door. "_Salaam alaykum_,” she said, beaming. She’d permed her hair, I saw, and عینک an elegant, ankle-length black dress. When I stepped into the foyer, her eyes moistened. “You’re barely in the house and I’m crying already, Amir jan,” she said. I planted a kiss on her hand, just as Baba had instructed me to do the night before.

She led us through a به روشنی lit hallway to the living room. On the wood-paneled walls, I دیدم pictures of the people who would become my new family: A young پف کرده با موهای Khanum Taheri and the general--Niagara Falls in the پس زمینه Khanum Taheri in a seamless dress, the general in a باریک lapelled jacket and thin tie, his hair full and black; Soraya, about to board a wooden roller coaster, waving and smiling, the خورشید glinting off the silver wires in her teeth. A photo of the general, بی باک in full military outfit, shaking hands with King Hussein of Jordan. A portrait of Zahir Shah.

The living room was packed with about two dozen guests seated on chairs placed along the walls. When Baba entered, همه stood up. We went around the room, Baba leading slowly, me behind him, shaking hands and سلام the guests. The general--still in his gray suit--and Baba embraced, gently tapping each دیگر on the back. They said their Salaams in respectful مسکوت tones.

The general برگزار شد me at arm’s length and smiled knowingly, as if saying, “Now, this is the right way--the Afghan way--to do it, _bachem_.” We kissed three times on the cheek.

We sat in the شلوغ است room, Baba and I next to each other, در سراسر from the general and his wife. Baba’s breathing had grown a little ragged, and he kept

wiping sweat off his forehead and scalp with his handkerchief. He دیدم me به دنبال at him and اداره می شود a strained grin. I’m all right,” he mouthed.

In keeping with tradition, Soraya was not present.

A few لحظات of small talk and idle chatter followed تا the general cleared his throat. The room became quiet and everyone looked down at their hands in respect. The general nodded toward Baba.

Baba cleared his own throat. When he began, he couldn’t صحبت می کنند in کامل است sentences without stopping to breathe. “General Sahib, Khanum Jamila jan... it’s with بزرگ است humility that my son and I... have come to خود را home today. You are... honorable people... from distinguished and reputable families and... proud lineage. I come with هیچ چیز نیست but the utmost ihtiram... and the highest regards for you, خود را family names, and the memory... of خود را ancestors.” He stopped. سرگردان his breath. Wiped his brow. “Amirjan is my only son... my only child, and he has been a good son to me. I hope he proves... worthy of خود را kindness. I ask that you افتخار Amir jan and me... and accept my son into خود را family.”

The general nodded politely.

“We are honored to welcome the son of a man such as خودتان into our family,” he said. “Your reputation precedes you. I was خود را humble تحسین in Kabul and remain so today. We are honored that خود را family and ما will be joined.

“Amirjan, as for you, I welcome you to my home as a son, as the husband of my daughter who is the noor of my eye. Your pain will be our pain, خود را joy our joy. I hope that you will come to see خود را Khala Jamila and me as a second set of parents, and I pray for خود را and our lovely Soraya jan’s happiness. You both have our blessings.”

Everyone applauded, and with that signal, heads turned toward the hallway. The moment I’d waited for.

Soraya appeared at the end. Dressed in a stunning winecolored traditional Afghan dress with long آستین and gold trimmings. Baba’s hand took mine and tightened. Khanum Taheri burst into fresh tears. Slowly, Soraya caine to us, tailed by a procession of young زن relatives.

She kissed my father’s hands. Sat beside me at last, her eyes downcast.

The applause swelled.

ACCORDING TO TRADITION, Soraya’s family would have thrown the engagement party the Shirini-khori---or “Eating of the Sweets” ceremony. Then an engagement period would have followed which would have lasted a few months. Then the wedding, which would be پرداخت می شود for by Baba.

We all agreed that Soraya and I would forgo the Shirini-khori. Everyone knew the reason, so no یک had to actually می گویند it: that Baba didn’t have months to live.

Soraya and I never went out alone together while preparations for the wedding proceeded--since we weren’t married yet, hadn’t even had a Shirini-khori, it was considered improper. So I had to make do with going over to the Taheris with Baba for dinner. بنشینید across from Soraya at the dinner table. Imagine چه it

would be like to feel her سر on my chest, smell her hair. Kiss her. Make love to her.

Baba به سر برد $35,000, nearly the تعادل می باشد of his زندگی savings, on the awroussi, the wedding ceremony. He rented a large Afghan ضیافت hail in Fremont--the man who owned it knew him from Kabul and gave him a substantial discount. Baba پرداخت می شود for the ؟؟ چی las, our matching wedding bands, and for the diamond ring I picked out. He bought my tuxedo, and my traditional green suit for the nika--the swearing ceremony. برای all the frenzied preparations that went into the wedding night--most of it, blessedly, by Khanum Taheri and her friends-- I remember only a تعداد انگشت شماری of لحظات from it.

I remember our nika. We were seated around a table, Soraya and I dressed in green--the color of Islam, but همچنین the color of بهار and new beginnings. I عینک a suit, Soraya (the only woman at the table) a veiled long-sleeved dress. Baba, General Taheri (in a tuxedo this time), and several of Soraya’s uncles were همچنین present at the table. Soraya and I looked down, solemnly respectful, ریخته گری only جانبی glances at each other. The mullah questioned the witnesses and read from the Koran. We said our oaths. Signed the certificates. One of Soraya’s uncles from Virginia, Sharif jan, Khanum Taheri’s brother, stood up and cleared his throat. Soraya had گفت me that he had زندگی می کردند in the U.S. for more than twenty years. He worked for the INS and had an American wife. He was همچنین a poet. A small man with a birdlike face and fluffy hair, he read a lengthy شعر dedicated to Soraya, jotted down on hotel stationery paper. “Wah wah, Sharifjan! " everyone exclaimed when he finished.

I remember walking toward the stage, now in my tuxedo, Soraya a veiled pan in white, our hands locked. Baba hobbled next to me, the general and his wife beside their daughter. A procession of uncles, aunts, and cousins followed as we made our راه through the hail, parting a sea of applauding guests, blinking at flashing cameras. One of Soraya’s cousins, Sharif jan’s son, برگزار شد a Koran over our heads as we inched along. The wedding song, ahesta boro, blared from the speakers, the همان song the Russian soldier at the Mahipar checkpoint had sung the night Baba and I left Kabul:

Make morning into a کلیدی است and throw it into the well,

Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. اجازه دهید the morning خورشید forget to افزایش یابد in the east, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

I remember sitting on the sofa, set on the مرحله like a throne, Soraya’s hand in mine, as three hundred or so faces looked on. We did Ayena Masshaf, where they gave us a mirror and threw a veil over our heads, so we’d be alone to gaze at each other’s reflection. Looking at Soraya’s smiling face in that mirror, in the momentary privacy of the veil, I whispered to her for the first time that I loved her. A blush, red like henna, bloomed on her cheeks.

I picture colorful platters of chopan kabob, sholeh-goshti, and wild-orange rice. I see Baba between us on the sofa, smiling. I remember sweat-drenched مردان dancing the traditional attan in a circle, bouncing, چرخش faster and سریع تر with the feverish tempo of the tabla, تا all but a few کاهش یافته است out of the ring with exhaustion. I remember مایل Rahim Khan were there.

And I remember wondering if Hassan بیش از حد had married. And if so, whose face he had seen in the mirror under the حجاب؟ Whose henna-painted hands had he held?

AROUND t A.M., the party moved from the ضیافت hall to Baba’s apartment. چای flowed once more and music played تا the neighbors called the cops. بعدها that night, the خورشید less than an hour from rising and the guests finally gone, Soraya and I غیر روحانی together for the first time. All my life, I’d been around men. That night, I کشف the tenderness of a woman.

IT WAS SORAYA who suggested that she move in with Baba and me.

“I فکر می کردم you might want us to have our own place,” I said.

“With Kaka jan as sick as he is?” she replied. Her eyes گفت me that was no راه to start a marriage. I kissed her. "تشکر کرده اند you.”

Soraya اختصاص یافته است herself to گرفتن care of my father. She made his toast and tea in the morning, and helped him in and out of bed. She gave him his pain pills, washed his clothes, read him the international بخش of the روزنامه every afternoon, She cooked his favorite dish, potato shorwa, though he could scarcely خوردن more than a few spoonfuls, and took him out هر day for a brief walk around the block. And when he became bedridden, she turned him on his side هر hour so he wouldn’t get a bedsore.

One day, I came home from the pharmacy with Baba’s morphine pills. Just as I shut the door, I caught a نگاه اجمالی of Soraya به سرعت sliding something under Baba’s blanket. “Hey, I دیدم that! What were you two doing?” I said.

“Nothing,” Soraya said, smiling.

“Liar.” I برداشته شده است Baba’s blanket. “What’s this?” I said, though as soon as I picked up the leather-bound book, I knew. I traced my fingers along the طلا دوخته شده است borders. I remembered the fire works the night Rahim Khan had given it to me, the night of my thirteenth birthday, flares بسیار گرم and exploding into bouquets of red, green, and yellow.

“I can’t believe you می توانید write like this,” Soraya said.

Baba کشیده میشوند his سر off the pillow. “I قرار داده است her up to it. I hope you don’t mind.”

I gave the notebook back to Soraya and left the room. Baba hated it when I cried.

A MONTH بعد از THE WEDDING, the Taheris, Sharif, his wife Suzy, and several of Soraya’s خاله came over to our apartment for dinner. Soraya made سبزی challow--white rice with spinach and lamb. After dinner, we all had green tea and played cards in groups of four. Soraya and I played with Sharif and Suzy on the قهوه table, next to the couch where Baba غیر روحانی under a wool blanket. He تماشا me joking with Sharif, تماشا Soraya and me lacing our fingers together, تماشا me push back a loose curl of her hair. I could see his internal smile, as wide as the skies of Kabul on nights when the poplars shivered and the sound of crickets swelled in the gardens.

Just before midnight, Baba asked us to help him into bed. Soraya and I placed his arms on our shoulders and wrapped ما around his back. When we lowered him, he had Soraya تبدیل شود off the bedside lamp. He asked us to lean in, gave us each a kiss.

“I’ll come back with خود را morphine and a glass of water, Kaka jan,” Soraya said.

“Not tonight,” he said. “There is no pain tonight.”

“Okay,” she said. She pulled up his blanket. We closed the door. Baba never woke up.

THEY FILLED THE پارکینگ SPOTS at the mosque in Hayward. On the balding grass field behind the building, cars and suv ها parked in شلوغ است makeshift rows. People had to رانندگی three or four بلوک north of the mosque to find a spot.

The men’s بخش of the mosque was a large square room, covered with Afghan rugs and thin mattresses placed in parallel lines. Men ب into the room, leaving their shoes at the entrance, and sat cross-legged on the mattresses. A mullah chanted surrahs from the Koran into a microphone. I sat by the door, the customary position for the family of the deceased. General Taheri was seated next to me.

Through the open door, I could see lines of cars pulling in, sunlight winking in their windshields. They کاهش یافته است off passengers, مردان dressed in تاریک suits, women clad in black dresses, their heads covered with traditional white hijabs.

As words from the Koran reverberated through the room, I فکر می کردم of the old story of Baba wrestling a black داشته باشد in Baluchistan. Baba had wrestled bears his whole life. Losing his young wife. Raising a son by himself. Leaving his beloved homeland, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end, a داشته باشد had come that he couldn’t best. But even then, he had lost on his own terms.

After each round of prayers, groups of عزاداران lined up and greeted me on their راه out. Dutifully, I shook their hands. Many of them I barely knew I smiled politely, thanked them for their wishes, گوش to whatever they had to می گویند about Baba.

??helped me build the house in Taimani...“ برکت دهد him...

??no یک else to تبدیل شود to and he lent me...”

“...found me a job... barely knew me...”

“...like a برادر to me...”

Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, چه I was, had been defined by Baba and the علائم he had left on people’s lives. My whole life, I had been “Baba’s son.” Now he was gone. Baba couldn’t show me the راه anymore; I’d have to find it on my own.

The فکر می کردم of it terrified me.

Earlier, at the gravesite in the small Muslim بخش of the cemetery, I had تماشا them lower Baba into the hole. The ??mul Iah and another man got into an argument over which was the correct ayat of the Koran to recite at the gravesite. It might have turned ugly had General Taheri not intervened. The mullah chose an ayat and خوانده it, ریخته گری the دیگر fellow nasty glances. I تماشا them بازی شیر یا خط the first بقدر یک بیلچه of dirt into the grave. Then I left. راه می رفت to the دیگر side of the cemetery. Sat in the shade of a red maple.

Now the آخرین of the عزاداران had پرداخت می شود their respects and the mosque was empty, save for the mullah unplugging the microphone and wrapping his Koran in green cloth. The general and I stepped out into a late-afternoon sun. We walked down the steps, past مردان smoking in clusters. I heard snippets of their conversations, a soccer game in Union City next weekend, a new Afghan restaurant in Santa Clara. Life moving on already, leaving Baba behind.

“How are you, bachem?” General Taheri said.

I gritted my teeth. بیت back the tears that had threatened all day. “I’m going to find Soraya,” I said.

“Okay.”

I walked to the women’s side of the mosque. Soraya was standing on the steps with her mother and a couple of ladies I recognized vaguely from the wedding. I motioned to Soraya. She said something to her mother and came to me.

“Can we walk?” I said.

“Sure.” She took my hand.

We walked in silence down a winding gravel path lined by a ردیف of low hedges. We sat on a bench and تماشا an elderly couple kneeling beside a grave a few rows دور and placing a bouquet of بابونه by the headstone. “Soraya?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to miss him.”

She قرار داده است her hand on my lap. Baba’s چیلا glinted on her ring finger. Behind her, I could see Baba’s عزاداران driving دور on Mission Boulevard. Soon we’d leave too, and for the first time ever, Baba would be all alone.

Soraya pulled me to her and the tears finally came.

BECAUSE SORAYA AND I never had an engagement period, much of چه I learned about the Taheris I learned after I married into their family. برای example, I learned that, once a month, the general suffered from blinding migraines that lasted almost a week. When the headaches struck, the general went to his room, undressed, turned off the light, locked the door, and didn’t come out تا the pain subsided. No یک was allowed to go in, no یک was allowed to knock. Eventually, he would emerge, dressed in his gray suit once more, smelling of خواب and bedsheets, his eyes puffy and bloodshot. I learned from Soraya that he and Khanum Taheri had خواب in separate rooms for as long as she could remember. I learned that he could be petty, such as when he’d را a bite of the _qurma_ his wife placed before him, sigh, and push it away. “I’ll make you something else,” Khanum Taheri would say, but he’d را نادیده گرفت her, sulk, and خوردن bread and onion. This made Soraya angry and her mother cry. Soraya گفت me he took antide pressants. I learned that he had kept his family on welfare and had never برگزار شد a job in the U.S., ترجیح می دهند to پول نقد government-issued checks than degrading himself with work unsuitable for a man of his stature--he دیدم the flea market only as a hobby, a راه to معاشرت with his همکار Afghans. The general believed that, دیر or later, Afghanistan would be freed, the monarchy restored, and his services would once again be called upon. So هر day, he donned his gray suit, wound his pocket watch, and waited.

I learned that Khanum Taheri--whom I called Khala Jamila now--had once been famous in Kabul for her enchanting singing voice. Though she had never sung professionally, she had had the talent to--I learned she could sing folk songs, ghazals, even raga, which was usually a مرد domain. But as much as the general appreciated listening to music--he owned, in fact, a considerable collection of classical ghazal tapes by Afghan and Hindi خوانندگان - او believed the performing of it best left to those with کمتر reputations. That she never sing in public had been یک of the general’s شرایط when they had married. Soraya گفت me that her mother had wanted to sing at our wedding, only یک song, but the general gave her یک of his looks and the matter was buried. Khala Jamila played the lotto once a هفته and تماشا Johnny Carson هر night. She به سر برد her days in the garden, رسیدگی to her roses, geraniums, potato vines, and orchids.

When I married Soraya, the flowers and Johnny Carson took a backseat. I was the new لذت in Khala Jamila’s life. Unlike the general’s محافظت and diplomatic رفتار - او didn’t correct me when I continued to call him “General Sahib”--Khala Jamila made no secret of how much she adored me. برای one thing, I گوش to her impressive list of maladies, something the general had long turned a deaf ear to. Soraya گفت me that, ever since her mother’s stroke, هر flutter in her chest was a heart attack, هر aching joint the onset of روماتوئید arthritis, and هر twitch of the eye another stroke. I remember the first time Khala Jamila mentioned a lump in her neck to me. “I’ll skip school tomorrow and را you to the doctor,” I said, to which the general smiled and said, “Then you might as well تبدیل شود in خود را books for good, bachem. Your khala’s medical charts are like the works of Rumi: They come in volumes.”

But it wasn’t just that she’d found an مخاطبان for her monologues of illness. I firmly believed that if I had picked up a rifle and gone on a murdering rampage, I would have هنوز هم had the benefit of her unblinking love. Because I had rid her heart of its gravest malady. I had رها شوند her of the greatest ترس of هر Afghan mother: that no honorable khastegar would ask for her daughter’s hand. That her daughter would age alone, husbandless, childless. Every woman needed a husband. Even if he did silence the song in her.

And, from Soraya, I learned the details of چه had اتفاق افتاده است in Virginia.

We were at a wedding. Soraya’s uncle, Sharif, the یک who worked for the INS, was ازدواج his son to an Afghan girl from Newark. The wedding was at the همان hall where, six months prior, Soraya and I had had our awroussi. We were standing in a crowd of guests, watching the bride accept rings from the groom’s family, when we overheard two middle-aged women talking, their backs to us.

“What a lovely bride,” یک of them said, "فقط look at her. So maghbool, like the moon.”

“Yes,” the دیگر said. “And خالص است too. Virtuous. No boyfriends.”

“I know. I بگویید you that boy did well not to marry his cousin.”

Soraya شکست down on the راه home. I pulled the Ford off to the curb, parked under a streetlight on Fremont Boulevard.

“It’s all right,” I said, pushing back her hair. “Who cares?”

“It’s so fucking unfair,” she barked.

“Just forget it.”

“Their sons go out to nightclubs به دنبال for meat and get their girlfriends pregnant, they have بچه ها out of wedlock and no یک says a goddamn thing. Oh, they’re just مردان having سرگرم کننده I make یک mistake and به طور ناگهانی everyone is talking nang and namoos, and I have to have my face rubbed in it for the استراحت of my life.”

I wiped a tear from her jawline, just above her birthmark, with the pad of my thumb.

“I didn’t بگویید you,” Soraya said, dabbing at her eyes, “but my father showed up with a gun that night. He told... him... that he had two bullets in the chamber, یک for him and یک for himself if I didn’t come home. I was screaming, calling my father all kinds of names, saying he couldn’t keep me locked up forever, that I wished he were dead.” Fresh tears squeezed out between her lids. “I actually said that to him, that I wished he were dead.

“When he brought me home, my mother threw her arms around me and she was crying too. She was saying things but I couldn’t understand any of it because she was slurring her words so badly. So my father took me up to my bedroom and sat me in front of the dresser mirror. He تحویل داده شد me a pair of scissors and calmly گفت me to را کاهش دهد off all my hair. He تماشا while I did it.

“I didn’t step out of the house for weeks. And when I did, I heard whispers or imagined them everywhere I went. That was four years ago and three هزار miles دور and I’m هنوز هم hearing them.”

“Fuck ‘em,” I said.

She made a sound that was نیم sob, نیم laugh. "هنگامی که I گفت you about this on the تلفن the night of khastegari, I was sure you’d change خود را mind.”

“No chance of that, Soraya.”

She smiled and took my hand. “I’m so lucky to have found you. You’re so different from هر Afghan guy من met.”

“Let’s never talk about this again, okay?”

“Okay.”

I kissed her cheek and pulled دور from the curb. As I drove, I wondered why I was different. Maybe it was because I had been raised by men; I hadn’t grown up around women and had never been exposed firsthand to the double standard with which Afghan جامعه sometimes treated them. Maybe it was because Baba had been such an unusual Afghan father, a liberal who had زندگی می کردند by his own rules, a maverick who had disregarded or در آغوش گرفت societal customs as he had seen fit.

But I think a big part of the reason I didn’t care about Soraya’s past was that I had یک of my own. I knew all about regret.

SHORTLY بعد از BABA’S DEATH, Soraya and I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Fremont, just a few بلوک away from the general and Khala Jamila’s house. Soraya’s parents bought us a brown leather couch and a set of Mikasa dishes as

housewarming presents. The general gave me an additional present, a brand new IBM typewriter. In the box, he had slipped a note نوشته شده است in Farsi:

Amir jan,

I hope you کشف many tales on these keys.

General Iqbal Taheri

I sold Baba’s VW bus and, to this day, I have not gone back to the flea market. I would رانندگی to his gravesite هر Friday, and, sometimes, I’d find a fresh bouquet of freesias by the سنگ قبر and know Soraya had been there too.

Soraya and I حل و فصل into the routines--and minor wonders-- of married life. We shared toothbrushes and socks, passed each دیگر the morning paper. She خواب on the right side of the bed, I preferred the left. She liked fluffy pillows, I liked the hard ones. She ate her cereal dry, like a snack, and chased it with milk.

I got my acceptance at San Jose State that summer and declared an English major. I took on a security job, swing shift at a مبلمان warehouse in Sunnyvale. The job was dreadfully boring, but its saving grace was a considerable one: When everyone left at : P.M. and shadows began to crawl between aisles of plastic-covered sofas piled to the ceiling, I took out my books and studied. It was in the Pine-Sol-scented office of that مبلمان warehouse that I began my first novel.

Soraya پیوست me at San Jose State the following year and enrolled, to her father’s chagrin, in the teaching track.

“I don’t know why you’re wasting خود را talents like this,” the general said یک night over dinner. “Did you know, Amir jan, that she earned هیچ چیز نیست but است in high school?” He turned to her. “An هوشمند است girl like you could become a lawyer, a political scientist. And, _Inshallah_, when Afghanistan is free, you could help write the new constitution. There would be a need for young talented Afghans like you. They might even offer you a ministry position, given خود را family name.”

I could see Soraya holding back, her face tightening. “I’m not a girl, Padar. I’m a married woman. Besides, they’d need teachers too.”

“Anyone می توانید teach.”

“Is there any more rice, مادر؟ " Soraya said.

After the general excused himself to meet some friends in Hayward, Khala Jamila tried to console Soraya. “He means well,” she said. “He just wants you to be successful.”

“So he می توانید boast about his وکیل daughter to his friends. Another medal for the general,” Soraya said.

“Such nonsense you speak!”

“Successful,” Soraya hissed. “At least I’m not like him, sitting around while دیگر people fight the Shorawi, waiting for when the dust حل و فصل so he می توانید move in and reclaim his posh little government position. Teaching may not pay much, but it’s چه I want to do! It’s چه I love, and it’s a whole lot better than collecting welfare, by the way.”

Khala Jamila bit her tongue. “If he ever hears you saying that, he will never صحبت می کنند to you again.”

“Don’t worry,” Soraya snapped, tossing her napkin on the plate. “I won’t bruise his precious ego.”

IN THE SUMMER of 1988, about six months before the Soviets پس گرفتند from Afghanistan, I finished my first novel, a father-son story set in Kabul, نوشته شده است mostly with the typewriter the general had given me. I ارسال می شود query letters to a dozen agencies and was stunned یک August روز when I opened our صندوق پستی and found a request from a جدید York agency for the completed manuscript. I mailed it the next day. Soraya kissed the carefully wrapped manuscript and Khala Jamila insisted we pass it under the Koran. She گفت me that she was going to do nazr for me, a نذر to have a گوسفند slaughtered and the meat given to the ضعیف است if my book was accepted.

“Please, no nazn, Khala jan,” I said, kissing her face. "فقط do _zakat_, give the money to someone in need, باشه؟ No گوسفند killing.”

Six هفته later, a man named Martin Greenwalt called from جدید York and offered to represent me. I only گفت Soraya about it. “But just because I have an عامل doesn’t معنی I’ll get published. If Martin sells the novel, then we’ll celebrate.”

A month later, Martin called and informed me I was going to be a published novelist. When I گفت Soraya, she screamed.

We had a celebration dinner with Soraya’s parents that night. Khala Jamila made kofta--meatballs and white rice--and white ferni. The general, a شین of moisture in his eyes, said that he was proud of me. After General Taheri and his wife left, Soraya and I celebrated with an expensive bottle of Merlot I had bought on the راه home--the general did not approve of women نوشیدن alcohol, and Soraya didn’t drink in his presence.

“I am so proud of you,” she said, raising her glass to mine. “Kaka would have been proud too.”

“I know,” I said, thinking of Baba, مایل he could have seen me.

Later that night, after Soraya fell خواب - شراب always made her sleepy--I stood on the balcony and breathed in the سرد summer air. I فکر می کردم of Rahim Khan and the little note of support he had نوشته شده است me after he’d read my first story. And I فکر می کردم of Hassan. Some day, _Inshallah_, you will be a بزرگ است writer, he had said once, and people all over the world will read خود را stories. There was so much خوبی in my life. So much happiness. I wondered whether I deserved any of it.

The novel was released in the summer of that following year, 1989, and the publisher ارسال می شود me on a five-city book tour. I became a minor celebrity in the Afghan community. That was the year that the Shorawi completed their withdrawal

from Afghanistan. It باید have been a time of glory for Afghans. Instead, the war raged on, this time between Afghans, the Mujahedin, against the Soviet puppet government of Najibullah, and Afghan refugees kept هجوم آوردند to Pakistan. That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was the year of میدان تیان آن من Square. In the midst of it all, Afghanistan was forgotten. And General Taheri, whose hopes had stirred بیدار after the Soviets pulled out, went back to winding his pocket watch.

That was همچنین the year that Soraya and I began trying to have a child.

THE IDEA OF FATHERHOOD انداخته a swirl of احساسات in me. I found it frightening, invigorating, daunting, and exhilarating all at the همان time. What sort of father would I make, I wondered. I wanted to be just like Baba and I wanted to be هیچ چیز نیست like him.

But a year passed and هیچ چیز نیست happened. With each cycle of blood, Soraya grew more frustrated, more impatient, more irritable. By then, Khala Jamila’s initially subtle نکات had become overt, as in “Kho dega!” So! "هنگامی که am I going to sing alahoo for my little nawasa?” The general, ever the Pashtun, never made any queries--doing so meant alluding to a sexual act between his daughter and a man, even if the man in question had been married to her for over four years. But his eyes perked up when Khala Jamila teased us about a baby.

“Sometimes, it takes a while,” I گفت Soraya یک night.

“A year isn’t a while, Amir!” she said, in a terse voice so unlike her. "چیزی است wrong, I know it.”

“Then let’s see a doctor.”

DR. ROSEN, a دور شکم man with a plump face and small, even teeth, spoke with a ضعف Eastern European accent, some thing remotely Slavic. He had a passion for trains--his office was littered with books about the history of railroads, مدل locomotives, paintings of trains trundling on tracks through green تپه and over bridges. A sign above his desk read, LIFE IS A TRAIN. GET ON BOARD.

He laid out the plan for us. I’d get checked first. “Men are easy,” he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. “A مرد plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the دیگر hand... well, God قرار داده است a lot of فکر می کردم into making you.” I wondered if he fed that bit about the لوله کشی to all of his couples.

“Lucky us,” Soraya said.

Dr. Rosen laughed. It fell a few notches کوتاه است of genuine. He gave me a lab slip and a plastic jar, تحویل داده شد Soraya a request for some routine blood tests. We shook hands. “Welcome aboard,” he said, as he showed us out.

I PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS.

The next few months were a blur of tests on Soraya: Basal body temperatures, blood tests for هر conceivable hormone, urine tests, something called a “Cervical Mucus Test,” ultrasounds, more blood tests, and more urine tests. Soraya underwent a procedure called a hysteroscopy--Dr. Rosen inserted a

telescope into Soraya’s uterus and took a look around. He found nothing. “The plumbing’s clear,” he announced, snapping off his latex gloves. I wished he’d stop calling it that--we weren’t bathrooms. When the tests were over, he explained that he couldn’t explain why we couldn’t have kids. And, apparently, that wasn’t so unusual. It was called “Unexplained Infertility.”

Then came the treatment phase. We tried a drug called Clomiphene, and hMG, a سری of shots which Soraya gave to herself. When these failed, Dr. Rosen advised in آزمایشگاهی fertilization. We دریافت کرد a polite letter from our HMO, مایل us the best of luck, regretting they couldn’t cover the cost.

We استفاده می شود the advance I had دریافت کرد for my novel to pay for it. IVF به اثبات رساند lengthy, meticulous, frustrating, and در نهایت unsuccessful. After months of sitting in waiting rooms خواندن magazines like Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest, after endless paper gowns and cold, sterile exam rooms روشن by فلورسنت lights, the repeated humiliation of بحث در مورد every detail of our رابطه جنسی life with a total stranger, the injections and probes and specimen collections, we went back to Dr. Rosen and his trains.

He sat در سراسر from us, شنود گذاشته باشند his desk with his fingers, and استفاده می شود the word “adoption” for the first time. Soraya cried all the راه home.

Soraya شکست the news to her parents the weekend after our آخرین visit with Dr. Rosen. We were sitting on picnic chairs in the Taheris’ backyard, grilling trout and sipping yogurt dogh. It was an early evening in March 1991. Khala Jamila had watered the roses and her new honeysuckles, and their fragrance mixed with the smell of cooking fish. Twice already, she had reached در سراسر her chair to caress Soraya’s hair and say, “God می داند best, bachem. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”

Soraya kept به دنبال down at her hands. She was tired, I knew, خسته می شوند of it all. “The doctor said we could adopt,” she murmured.

General Taheri’s سر snapped up at this. He closed the barbecue lid. “He did?”

“He said it was an option,” Soraya said.

We’d talked at home about adoption. Soraya was ambivalent at best. “I know it’s احمقانه است and maybe vain,” she said to me on the راه to her parents’ house, “but I can’t help it. من always dreamed that I’d hold it in my arms and know my blood had fed it for nine months, that I’d look in its eyes یک day and be startled to see you or me, that the baby would grow up and have خود را smile or mine. Without that... Is that wrong?”

“No,” I had said.

“Am I being selfish?”

“No, Soraya.”

“Because if you really want to do it...”

“No,” I said. “If we’re going to do it, we shouldn’t have any doubts at all about it, and we باید both be in agreement. It wouldn’t be fair to the baby otherwise.”

She rested her سر on the window and said هیچ چیز نیست else the استراحت of the way.

Now the general sat beside her. “Bachem, this adoption... thing, I’m not so sure it’s for us Afghans.” Soraya looked at me باخستگی and sighed.

“For یک thing, they grow up and want to know who their natural parents are,” he said. “Nor می توانید you blame them. Sometimes, they leave the home in which you labored for years to provide for them so they می توانید find the people who gave them life. Blood is a powerful thing, bachem, never forget that.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Soraya said.

“I’ll می گویند one more thing,” he said. I could بگویید he was getting revved تا we were about to get یک of the general’s little speeches. “Take Amir jan, here. We all knew his father, I know who his grandfather was in Kabul and his great-grandfather before him, I could sit here and ردیابی generations of his اجداد for you if you asked. That’s why when his father--God give him peace--came khastegari, I didn’t hesitate. And believe me, his father wouldn’t have agreed to ask for خود را hand if he didn’t know whose descendant you were. Blood is a powerful thing, bachem, and when you adopt, you don’t know whose blood you’re bringing into خود را house.

“Now, if you were American, it wouldn’t matter. People here marry for love, family name and اصل و نسب never even come into the equation. They adopt that راه too, as long as the baby is healthy, everyone is happy. But we are Afghans, bachem.”

“Is the fish almost ready?” Soraya said. General Taheri’s eyes lingered on her. He patted her knee. "فقط be خوشحال you have خود را health and a good husband.”

“What do you think, Amir jan?” Khala Jamila said.

I قرار داده است my glass on the ledge, where a ردیف of her potted geraniums were dripping water. “I think I agree with General Sahib.”

Reassured, the general nodded and went back to the grill.

We all had our دلایل for not adopting. Soraya had hers, the general his, and I had this: that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to انکار کند me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. It wasn’t meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.

A چند MONTHS LATER, we استفاده می شود the advance for my second novel and placed a down payment on a pretty, two-bedroom Victorian house in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights. It had a peaked roof, hardwood floors, and a tiny backyard which ended in a خورشید deck and a fire pit. The general helped me refinish the deck and paint the walls. Khala Jamila bemoaned us moving almost an hour away, especially since she فکر می کردم Soraya needed all the love and support she could get--oblivious to the fact that her well-intended but overbearing sympathy was precisely چه was driving Soraya to move.

SOMETIMES, SORAYA SLEEPING NEXT TO ME, I غیر روحانی in bed and گوش to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the پوچی in Soraya’s womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the تاریکی of our room,

I’d feel it rising from Soraya and settling between us. Sleeping between us. Like a نوزاد child.

FOURTEEN

_June 2001_

I lowered the تلفن into the cradle and stared at it for a long time. It wasn’t تا Aflatoon startled me with a پوست that I realized how quiet the room had become. Soraya had muted the television.

“You look pale, Amir,” she said from the couch, the همان one her parents had given us as a housewarming gift for our first apartment. She’d been tying on it with Aflatoon’s سر nestled on her chest, her legs buried under the worn pillows. She was halfwatching a PBS special on the plight of گرگ in Minnesota, half-correcting essays from her summer-school class--she’d been teaching at the همان school now for six years. She sat up, and Aflatoon leapt down from the couch. It was the general who had given our پاکوتاه spaniel his name, Farsi for “Plato,” because, he said, if you looked hard enough and long enough into the dog’s filmy black eyes, you’d swear he was thinking wise thoughts.

There was a sliver of fat, just a hint of it, beneath Soraya’s chin now The past ten years had padded the curves of her hips some, and combed into her ذغال سنگ است black hair a few رگه of cinder gray. But she هنوز هم had the face of a Grand Ball princess, with her bird-in-flight ابرو است and nose, elegantly curved like a letter from ancient Arabic writings.

“You took pale,” Soraya repeated, placing the stack of مقالات on the table.

“I have to go to Pakistan.”

She stood up now. “Pakistan?”

“Rahim Khan is very sick.” A مشت clenched inside me with those words.

“Kaka’s old business partner?” She’d never met Rahim Khan, but I had گفت her about him. I nodded.

“Oh,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Amir.”

“We استفاده می شود to be close,” I said. "هنگامی که I was a kid, he was the first grown-up I ever فکر می کردم of as a friend.” I pictured him and Baba نوشیدن tea in Baba’s study, then smoking near the window, a sweetbrier-scented نسیم blowing from the garden and bending the دوقلو columns of smoke.

“I remember you telling me that,” Soraya said. She paused. “How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know. He wants to see me.”

“Is it...”

“Yes, it’s safe. من be all right, Soraya.” It was the question she’d wanted to ask all along--fifteen years of marriage had turned us into mind readers. “I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Should I go with you?”

“Nay, I’d rather be alone.”

I DROVE TO GOLDEN GATE PARK and walked along Spreckels دریاچه on the northern edge of the park. It was a beautiful یکشنبه afternoon; the خورشید sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp San Francisco breeze. I sat on a park bench, تماشا a man بازی شیر یا خط a football to his son, telling him to not sidearm the ball, to throw over the shoulder. I glanced up and دیدم a pair of kites, red with long آبی tails. They floated high above the درختان on the غرب end of the park, over the windmills.

I فکر می کردم about a comment Rahim Khan had made just before we hung up. ساخته شده است it in passing, almost as an afterthought. I closed my eyes and دیدم him at the دیگر end of the scratchy longdistance line, دیدم him with his lips slightly parted, سر tilted to یک side. And again, something in his bottomless black eyes hinted at an unspoken secret between us. به جز now I knew he knew. My suspicions had been right all those years. He knew about Assef, the kite, the money, the watch with the رعد و برق bolt hands. He had always known.

Come. There is a راه to be good again, Rahim Khan had said on the تلفن just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as an afterthought.

A راه to be good again.

WHEN I CAME HOME, Soraya was on the تلفن with her mother. “Won’t be long, Madarjan. A week, maybe two... Yes, you and PADAR can stay with me.”

Two years earlier, the general had شکسته his right hip. He’d had یک of his migraines again, and emerging from his room, bleary-eyed and dazed, he had tripped on a loose carpet edge. His scream had brought Khala Jamila running from the kitchen. “It sounded like a jaroo, a broomstick, snapping in half,” she was always fond of saying, though the doctor had said it was unlikely she’d heard anything of the sort. The general’s shattered hip--and all of the ensuing complications, the pneumonia, blood poisoning, the طولانی stay at the nursing خانه - به پایان رسید Khala Jamila’s long-running soliloquies about her own health. And started new آنهایی که about the general’s. She’d بگویید anyone who would listen that the doctors had گفت them his kidneys were failing. “But then they had never seen Afghan kidneys, had they?” she’d می گویند proudly. What I remember most about the general’s hospital stay is how Khala Jamila would صبر کنید until he fell asleep, and then sing to him, songs I remembered from Kabul, playing on Baba’s scratchy old ترانزیستور radio.

The general’s frailty--and time--had softened things between him and Soraya too. They took walks together, went to lunch on Saturdays, and, sometimes, the general sat in on some of her classes. He’d sit in the back of the room, dressed in his shiny old gray suit, wooden cane در سراسر his lap, smiling. گاهی اوقات he even took notes.

THAT NIGHT, Soraya and I غیر روحانی in bed, her back pressed to my chest, my face buried in her hair. I remembered when we استفاده می شود to غیر روحانی forehead to forehead, sharing afterglow kisses and whispering تا our eyes drifted closed, whispering about tiny, curled toes, first smiles, first words, first steps. We هنوز هم did sometimes, but the whispers were about school, my new book, a giggle

over someone’s ridiculous dress at a party. Our lovemaking was هنوز هم good, at times better than good, but some nights all I’d feel was a امداد to be done with it, to be free to drift دور and forget, at least for a while, about the futility of چه we’d just done. She never said so, but I knew sometimes Soraya felt it too. On those nights, we’d each roll to our side of the bed and let our own savior را us away. Soraya’s was sleep. Mine, as always, was a book.

I غیر روحانی in the تاریک the night Rahim Khan called and traced with my eyes the parallel silver lines on the wall made by moonlight pouring through the blinds. At some point, maybe just before dawn, I drifted to sleep. And dreamed of Hassan running in the snow, the hem of his green chapan dragging behind him, snow crunching under his black rubber boots. He was yelling over his shoulder: برای you, a هزار times over!

A WEEK LATER, I sat on a window seat aboard a Pakistani International Airlines flight, watching a pair of لباس airline workers حذف شده است the wheel chocks. The plane taxied out of the terminal and, soon, we were airborne, cutting through the clouds. I rested my سر against the window. Waited, in vain, for sleep.

FIFTEEN

Three hours after my flight landed in Peshawar, I was sitting on shredded upholstery in the backseat of a دود پر شده است taxicab. My driver, a chain-smoking, sweaty little man who introduced himself as Gholam, drove nonchalantly and recklessly, averting collisions by the thinnest of margins, all without so much as a pause in the incessant جریان of words spewing from his mouth:

??terrible چه is happening in خود را country, yar. Afghani people and Pakistani people they are like brothers, I بگویید you. Muslims have to help Muslims so...”

I تنظیم شده است him out, switched to a polite nodding mode. I remembered Peshawar pretty well from the few months Baba and I had به سر برد there in 1981. We were heading غرب now on Jamrud road, past the Cantonment and its lavish, high-walled homes. The bustle of the city blurring past me reminded me of a busier, more شلوغ است version of the Kabul I knew, particularly of the KochehMorgha, or Chicken Bazaar, where Hassan and I استفاده می شود to buy chutney-dipped سیب زمینی and cherry water. The streets were clogged with bicycle riders, milling pedestrians, and rickshaws popping آبی smoke, all weaving through a maze of narrow lanes and alleys. Bearded vendors draped in thin blankets sold animalskin lampshades, carpets, دوزی shawls, and copper goods from rows of small, tightly jammed stalls. The city was bursting with برای تلفن های موبایل the shouts of vendors rang in my ears mingled with the blare of Hindi music, the sputtering of rickshaws, and the jingling bells of horse-drawn carts. Rich scents, both pleasant and not so pleasant, drifted to me through the passenger window, the spicy aroma of pakora and the nihari Baba had loved so much blended with the sting of دیزل fumes, the stench of rot, garbage, and feces.

A little past the redbrick ساختمان of Peshawar University, we entered an area my garrulous driver referred to as “Afghan Town.” I دیدم sweetshops and carpet vendors, kabob stalls, بچه ها with dirtcaked hands فروش cigarettes, tiny restaurants--maps of Afghanistan painted on their windows--all interlaced with backstreet aid agencies. “Many of خود را brothers in this area, yar. They are opening businesses, but most of them are very poor.” He tsk’ed his tongue and sighed. “Anyway, we’re getting close now.”

I فکر می کردم about the آخرین time I had seen Rahim Khan, in 1981. He had come to می گویند good-bye the night Baba and I had فرار کرد Kabul. I remember Baba and him در آغوش in the foyer, crying softly. When Baba and I arrived in the U.S., he and Rahim Khan kept in touch. They would صحبت می کنند four or five times a year and, sometimes, Baba would pass me the receiver. The آخرین time I had spoken to Rahim Khan had been shortly after Baba’s death. The news had reached Kabul and he had called. We’d only spoken for a few minutes and lost the connection.

The driver pulled up to a narrow building at a busy corner where two winding streets intersected. I پرداخت می شود the driver, took my lone suitcase, and walked up to the intricately carved door. The building had wooden balconies with open shutters--from many of them, لباس های شسته شده was hanging to dry in the sun. I walked up the creaky stairs to the second floor, down a dim hallway to the آخرین door on the right. Checked the address on the piece of stationery paper in my palm. Knocked.

Then, a thing made of skin and bones pretending to be Rahim Khan opened the door.

A CREATIVE WRITING TEACHER at San Jose State استفاده می شود to می گویند about clichés: “Avoid them like the plague.” Then he’d laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always فکر می کردم clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they’re dead-on. But the احتمال of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché. برای example, the “elephant in the room” saying. Nothing could more correctly توصیف the initial لحظات of my reunion with Rahim Khan.

We sat on a باریک mattress set along the wall, در سراسر the window overlooking the پر سر و صدا street below. Sunlight slanted in and cast a سه گوش wedge of light onto the Afghan rug on the floor. Two folding chairs rested against یک wall and a small copper samovar sat in the opposite corner. I poured us tea from it.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“It’s not difficult to find people in America. I bought a نقشه of the U.S., and called up information for شهرستانها in Northern California,” he said. “It’s wonderfully strange to see you as a grown man.”

I smiled and کاهش یافته است three sugar cubes in my tea. He liked his black and bitter, I remembered. “Baba didn’t get the chance to بگویید you but I got married fifteen years ago.” The truth was, by then, the cancer in Baba’s مغز had made him forgetful, negligent.

“You are married? To whom?”

“Her name is Soraya Taheri.” I فکر می کردم of her back home, worrying about me. I was خوشحالم she wasn’t alone.

“Taheri... whose daughter is she?”

I گفت him. His eyes brightened. “Oh, yes, I remember now. آیا نیست General Taheri married to Sharif jan’s sister? What was her name...”

“Jamila jan.”

“Balay!” he said, smiling. “I knew Sharif jan in Kabul, long time ago, before he moved to America.”

“He’s been working for the INS for years, handles a lot of Afghan cases.”

“Haiiii,” he sighed. “Do you and Soraya jan have children?”

“Nay.”

“Oh.” He slurped his tea and didn’t ask more; Rahim Khan had always been یک of the most غریزی people I’d ever met.

I گفت him a lot about Baba, his job, the flea market, and how, at the end, he’d died happy. I گفت him about my schooling, my کتاب - چهار published رمان to my credit now. He smiled at this, said he had never had any doubt. I گفت him I had نوشته شده است short stories in the leather-bound notebook he’d given me, but he didn’t remember the notebook.

The conversation inevitably turned to the Taliban.

“Is it as بد است as I hear?” I said.

“Nay, it’s worse. Much worse,” he said. “They don’t let you be human.” He pointed to a scar above his right eye cutting a crooked path through his bushy eyebrow. “I was at a soccer game in Ghazi Stadium in 1998. Kabul against Mazar-i-Sharif, I think, and by the راه the players weren’t allowed to wear shorts. Indecent exposure, I guess.” He gave a خسته می شوند laugh. “Anyway, Kabul scored a goal and the man next to me تشویق loudly. ناگهان this young bearded همکار who was patrolling the aisles, eighteen years old at most by the look of him, he walked up to me and struck me on the forehead with the butt of his Kalashnikov. ‘Do that again and من cut out خود را tongue, you old donkey!’ he said.” Rahim Khan rubbed the scar with a gnarled finger. “I was old enough to be his grandfather and I was sitting there, blood gushing down my face, پوزشخواهی to that son of a dog.”

I poured him more tea. Rahim Khan talked some more. Much of it I knew already, some not. He گفت me that, as arranged between Baba and him, he had زندگی می کردند in Baba’s house since 1981--this I knew about. Baba had “sold” the house to Rahim Khan shortly before he and I فرار کرد Kabul. The راه Baba had seen it those days, Afghanistan’s troubles were only a temporary interruption of our راه of life--the days of parties at the Wazir Akbar Khan house and picnics in پغمان would surely return. So he’d given the house to Rahim Khan to keep watch over تا that day.

Rahim Khan گفت me how, when the Northern اتحاد took over Kabul between 1992 and 1996, different factions claimed different بخش است of Kabul. “If you went from the Shar-e-Nau بخش to Kerteh-Parwan to buy a carpet, you risked getting shot by a sniper or getting blown up by a rocket--if you got past all the checkpoints, that was. You practically needed a visa to go from یک neighborhood to the other. So people just در آنجا ماند put, prayed the next rocket wouldn’t hit their home.” He گفت me how people knocked holes in the walls of their homes so they could bypass the dangerous streets and would move down the block from سوراخ to hole. In دیگر parts, people moved about in underground tunnels.

“Why didn’t you leave?” I said.

“Kabul was my home. It هنوز هم is.” He snickered. “Remember the street that went from خود را house to the Qishla, the military bar racks next to Istiqial School?”

“Yes.” It was the shortcut to school. I remembered the روز Hassan and I crossed it and the soldiers had teased Hassan about his mother. Hassan had cried in the cinema later, and I’d قرار داده است an arm around him.

“When the Taliban rolled in and kicked the اتحاد out of Kabul, I actually danced on that street,” Rahim Khan said. “And, believe me, I wasn’t alone. People were celebrating at _Chaman_, at Deh-Mazang, سلام the Taliban in the streets, climbing their tanks and نما for pictures with them. People were so خسته می شوند of the constant fighting, خسته می شوند of the rockets, the gunfire, the explosions, خسته می شوند of watching گلبدین and his cohorts firing on any thing that moved. The اتحاد did more damage to Kabul than the Shorawi. They destroyed خود را father’s orphanage, did you know that?”

“Why?” I said. “Why would they destroy an orphanage?” I remembered sitting behind Baba the روز they opened the orphanage. The باد had knocked off his caracul hat and everyone had laughed, then stood and clapped when he’d delivered his speech. And now it was just another pile of rubble. All the money Baba had spent, all those nights he’d عرق over the blueprints, all the بازدیدکننده داشته است to the construction site to make sure هر brick, هر beam, and هر block was laid just right...

“Collateral damage,” Rahim Khan said. "شما don’t want to know, Amir jan, چه it was like sifting through the rubble of that orphanage. There were body بخش است of children...”

“So when the Taliban came...”

“They were heroes,” Rahim Khan said. “Peace at last.”

“Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at چه price?” A violent coughing fit gripped Rahim Khan and rocked his gaunt body back and forth. When he spat into his handkerchief, it immediately stained red. I فکر می کردم that was as good a time as any to address the elephant sweating with us in the tiny room.

“How are you?” I asked. “I معنی really, how are you?”

“Dying, actually,” he said in a gurgling voice. Another round of coughing. بیشتر blood on the handkerchief. He wiped his mouth, blotted his sweaty ابرو from یک wasted temple to the دیگر with his sleeve, and gave me a quick glance. When he nodded, I knew he had read the next question on my face. “Not long,” he breathed.

“How long?”

He shrugged. Coughed again. “I don’t think من see the end of this summer,” he said.

“Let me را you home with me. I می توانید find you a good doctor. آنها coming up with new treatments all the time. There are new drugs and experimental treatments, we could enroll you in one...” I was rambling and I knew it. But it was better than crying, which I was probably going to do anyway.

He let out a chuff of laughter, revealed missing lower incisors. It was the most خسته می شوند laughter I’d ever heard. “I see America has تزریق you with the خوش بینی that has made her so great. That’s very good. ما هستیم a melancholic people, we Afghans, aren’t we? Often, we wallow بیش از حد much in ghamkhori and self-pity. We give in to loss, to suffering, accept it as a fact of life, even see it as

necessary. Zendagi migzara, we say, زندگی goes on. But I am not تسلیم شدن to fate here, I am being pragmatic. I have seen several good doctors here and they have given the همان answer. I trust them and believe them. There is such a thing as خدا will.”

“There is only چه you do and چه you don’t do,” I said.

Rahim Khan laughed. "شما sounded like خود را father just now. I miss him so much. But it is خدا will, Amir jan. It really is.” He paused. “Besides, there’s another reason I asked you to come here. I wanted to see you before I go, yes, but something else too.”

“Anything.”

“You know all those years I زندگی می کردند in خود را father’s house after you left?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t alone for all of them. Hassan زندگی می کردند there with me.”

“Hassan,” I said. When was the آخرین time I had spoken his name? Those thorny old barbs of guilt bore into me once more, as if speaking his name had شکسته a spell, set them free to torment me anew. ناگهان the هوا in Rahim Khan’s little flat was بیش از حد thick, بیش از حد hot, بیش از حد rich with the smell of the street.

“I فکر می کردم about writing you and telling you before, but I wasn’t sure you wanted to know. Was I wrong?”

The truth was no. The lie was yes. I حل و فصل for something in between. “I don’t know.”

He coughed another patch of blood into the handkerchief. When he bent his سر to spit, I دیدم honey-crusted sores on his scalp. “I brought you here because I am going to ask something of you. I’m going to ask you to do something for me. But before I do, I want to بگویید you about Hassan. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I murmured.

“I want to بگویید you about him. I want to بگویید you everything. You will listen?”

I nodded.

Then Rahim Khan sipped some more tea. Rested his سر against the wall and spoke.

SIXTEEN

There were a lot of دلایل why I went to Hazarajat to find Hassan in 1986. The بزرگترین one, خدا forgive me, was that I was lonely. By then, most of my friends and relatives had either been killed or had escaped the country to پاکستان or Iran. I barely knew anyone in Kabul anymore, the city where I had زندگی می کردند my entire life. Everybody had fled. I would را a walk in the Karteh Parwan section--where the melon vendors استفاده می شود to hang out in the old days, you remember that spot?--and I wouldn’t recognize anyone there. No یک to greet, no یک to sit down with for chai, no یک to share stories with, just Roussi soldiers patrolling the streets. So eventually, I stopped going out to the city. I would spend my days in خود را father’s house, up in the study, خواندن your

mother’s old books, listening to the news, watching the کمونیست propaganda on television. Then I would pray natnaz, آشپز something, eat, read some more, pray again, and go to bed. I would افزایش یابد in the morning, pray, do it all over again.

And with my arthritis, it was getting سخت تر for me to maintain the house. My knees and back were always aching--I would get up in the morning and it would را me at least an hour to shake the stiffness from my joints, especially in the wintertime. I did not want to let خود را father’s house go to rot; we had all had many good times in that house, so many memories, Amir jan. It was not right--your father had designed that house himself; it had meant so much to him, and besides, I had promised him I would care for it when he and you left for Pakistan. Now it was just me and the house and... I did my best. I tried to water the درختان every few days, را کاهش دهد the lawn, tend to the flowers, fix things that needed fixing, but, even then, I was not a young man anymore.

But even so, I might have been able to manage. At least for a while longer. But when news of خود را father’s death reached me... for the first time, I felt a terrible loneliness in that house. An unbearable emptiness.

So یک day, I fueled up the Buick and drove up to Hazarajat. I remembered that, after Ali dismissed himself from the house, خود را father گفت me he and Hassan had moved to a small village just outside Bamiyan. Ali had a cousin there as I recalled. I had no ایده if Hassan would هنوز هم be there, if anyone would even know of him or his whereabouts. After all, it had been ten years since Ali and Hassan had left خود را father’s house. Hassan would have been a grown man in 1986, twenty-two, twenty-three years old. If he was even alive, that is--the Shorawi, may they rot in hell for چه they did to our watan, killed so many of our young men. I don’t have to بگویید you that.

But, with the grace of God, I found him there. It took very little searching--all I had to do was ask a few questions in Bamiyan and people pointed me to his village. I do not even recall its name, or whether it even had one. But I remember it was a scorching summer روز and I was driving up a rutted dirt road, هیچ چیز نیست on either side but sunbaked bushes, gnarled, spiny tree trunks, and dried grass like pale straw. I passed a dead donkey rotting on the side of the road. And then I turned a corner and, right in the middle of that barren land, I دیدم a cluster of mud houses, beyond them هیچ چیز نیست but broad sky and mountains like jagged teeth.

The people in Bamiyan had گفت me I would find him به راحتی - او lived in the only house in the village that had a walled garden. The mud wall, کوتاه است and pocked with holes, enclosed the tiny house--which was really not much more than a glorified hut. Barefoot children were playing on the street, kicking a ragged تنیس ball with a stick, and they stared when I pulled up and killed the engine. I knocked on the wooden door and stepped through into a yard that had very little in it save for a parched strawberry patch and a bare lemon tree. There was a tandoor in the corner in the shadow of an acacia tree and I دیدم a man چمباتمه beside it. He was placing dough on a large wooden spatula and slapping it against the walls of the _tandoor_. He کاهش یافته است the dough when he دیدم me. I had to make him stop kissing my hands.

“Let me look at you,” I said. He stepped away. He was so tall now--I stood on my toes and هنوز هم just came up to his chin. The Bamiyan خورشید had toughened his skin, and turned it several shades darker than I remembered, and he had lost a few of his front teeth. There were sparse strands of hair on his chin. Other than that, he had those همان narrow green eyes, that scar on his upper lip, that round

face, that affable smile. You would have recognized him, Amir jan. I am sure of it.

We went inside. There was a young light-skinned هزاره woman, sewing a shawl in a corner of the room. She was visibly expecting. “This is my wife, Rahim Khan,” Hassan said proudly. “Her name is فرزانه jan.” She was a shy woman, so با ادب she spoke in a voice barely higher than a زمزمه and she would not raise her pretty hazel eyes to meet my gaze. But the راه she was به دنبال at Hassan, he might as well have been sitting on the throne at the _Arg_.

“When is the baby coming?” I said after we all حل و فصل around the ادوبی room. There was هیچ چیز نیست in the room, just a frayed rug, a few dishes, a pair of mattresses, and a lantern.

“_Inshallah_, this winter,” Hassan said. “I am دعا for a boy to ادامه می دهند on my father’s name.”

“Speaking of Ali, where is he?”

Hassan کاهش یافته است his gaze. He گفت me that Ali and his cousin--who had owned the house--had been killed by a land mine two years before, just outside of Bamiyan. A land mine. Is there a more Afghan راه of dying, Amir jan? And for some crazy reason, I became absolutely certain that it had been Ali’s right leg--his twisted polio leg--that had finally betrayed him and stepped on that land mine. I was deeply غمگین to hear Ali had died. Your father and I grew up together, as you know, and Ali had been with him as long as I could remember. I remember when we were all little, the year Ali got polio and almost died. Your father would walk around the house all روز crying.

Farzana made us shorwa with beans, turnips, and potatoes. We washed our hands and dipped fresh _naan_ from the tandoor into the shorwa - آن was the best غذا I had had in months. It was then that I asked Hassan to move to Kabul with me. I گفت him about the house, how I could not care for it by خودم anymore. I گفت him I would pay him well, that he and his _khanum_ would be comfortable. They looked to each دیگر and did not می گویند anything. Later, after we had washed our hands and فرزانه had served us grapes, Hassan said the village was his home now; he and فرزانه had made a زندگی for themselves there.