KITE RUNNER 9 страница

gravely, like he’d disclosed to me that she had breast 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 what happens in a few days, sometimes

even a single day, can change the course of a whole lifetime, Amir, ” he said.

LYING AWAKE IN BED that night, I thought of Soraya Taheri’s sickle-shaped birthmark, her gently hooked nose, and the way her luminous eyes had fleetingly held mine. My heart stuttered at the thought

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 used to stay up late, our feet tucked under the

kursi, while Ali tossed apple skin into the stove and told 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 flung

themselves at candle flames, and wolves climbed mountains looking 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 tormented lovers kept vigil, enduring the endless dark, waiting for the sun to rise and bring with it their loved one. After I met

Soraya Taheri, every night of the week became a ‘yelda’ for me. And when Sunday mornings came, I rose from bed, Soraya Taheri’s brown-eyed face already in my head. In Baba’s bus, I counted the

miles until 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 sun 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. Sometimes he’d get up from his director’s chair and we’d make small talk about my writing, the war, the day’s bargains. And I’d have to will my eyes not to peel away, not to

wander to where Soraya sat reading a paperback. The general and I would say our good-byes and I’d try not to slouch as I walked away.

Sometimes she sat alone, the general off to some other row to socialize, and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but dying to. Sometimes she was there with a portly middle-aged woman with

pale skin and dyed red hair. I promised myself that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter swept in and wakened

Baba’s joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and I still hadn’t had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye.

The spring 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 lectures and think of the soft hook of Soraya’s nose.

Then, one sweltering Sunday that summer, Baba and I were at the flea market, sitting at our booth, fanning our faces with news papers. Despite the sun bearing down like a branding iron, the market

was crowded that day 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 what 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. Especially 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 lit 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 selling mango-on-a-stick. She was alone, reading. White ankle-length summer dress today. Open-toed sandals. Hair pulled back and

crowned with a tulip-shaped bun. I meant to simply walk by again and I thought I had, except suddenly I was standing at the edge of the Taheris’ white tablecloth, staring at Soraya across curling irons and

old neckties. She looked up.

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

“Salaam. ”

“Is General Sahib here today? ” I said. My ears were burning. I couldn’t bring myself 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 tell 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 can tell him. That I stopped by. To... pay my respects. ”

“Yes. ”

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

“Nay, you didn’t, ” she said.

“Oh. Good. ” I tipped my head and gave her a half smile. “I’ll go now. ” Hadn’t I already said that? “Khoda hã fez. ”

“Khoda hã fez. ”

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

She blinked.

I held my breath. Suddenly, I felt the collective eyes of the flea market Afghans shift to us. I imagined a hush falling. Lips stop ping in midsentence. Heads turning. Eyes narrowing with keen interest.

What was this?

Up to that point, our encounter could have been interpreted as a respectful inquiry, one 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 bear 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 bared 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 take my dare?

She turned the book so the cover faced me. Wuthering Heights. “Have you read it? ” 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 told her, maybe she had asked him. I immediately dismissed both scenarios as absurd. Fathers 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 discuss a mojarad with his daughter, not unless

the fellow in question was a khastegar, a suitor, who had done the honorable thing and sent his father to knock on the door.

Incredibly, I heard myself say, “Would you like to read one of my stories? ”

“I would like that, ” she said. I sensed an unease in her now, saw it in the way her eyes began to flick side to side. Maybe checking for the general. I wondered what he would say if he found me speaking

for such an inappropriate length of time with his daughter.

“Maybe I’ll bring you one someday, ” I said. I was about to say more when the woman I’d seen on occasion with Soraya came walking up the aisle. She was carrying a plastic bag full of fruit. When she

saw 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 brow glistened with a sheen of sweat. Her red hair, coiffed like a helmet, glittered in the sunlight--I could see bits of her

scalp where the hair had thinned. She had small green eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, capped teeth, and little fingers like sausages. A golden Allah 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 idea who she was.

“How is your father? ” she said.

“He’s well, thank you. ”

“You know, your 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 mouth 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 say more--Baba knew how lethal idle talk could prove to

a young woman’s prospects of marrying well. Afghan men, especially those from reputable families, were fickle creatures. A whisper here, an insinuation there, and they fled like startled birds. So

weddings had come and gone and no one had sung ahesta boro for Soraya, no one had painted her palms with henna, no one had held a Koran over her headdress, and it had been General Taheri

who’d danced with her at every 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

won 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 was--it would not be her.

“Sit down, Amir jan, ” she said. “Soraya, get him a chair, hachem. And wash one of those peaches. They’re sweet and fresh. ”

“Nay, thank you, ” I said. “I should 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 handful of kiwis and a few peaches into a paper bag and

insisted I take them. “Carry my Salaam to your father. And come back to see us again. ”

“I will. Thank you, Khala jan, ” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Soraya looking away.

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING COKES, ” Baba said, taking the bag of peaches from me. He was looking 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, “Don’t bother, Amir. Just remember what I said. ”

THAT NIGHT IN BED, I thought of the way dappled sunlight had danced in Soraya’s eyes, and of the delicate 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 sheets and stared at the ceiling, dismayed at the thought of six laborious, interminable nights of yelda until I saw her again.

IT WENT ON LIKE THAT for a few weeks. I’d wait 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 appearances always coincided with her husband’s absences, but she never let on. “Oh you just missed 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 same 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 too 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 lived in Virginia, I became ESL certified and now I teach at the public library one night a week. My mother was a teacher too, she taught 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 dropped the money in a little candy box by her feet. She looked at me shyly.

“I want to tell you a story, ” she said, “but I’m a little embarrassed about it. ”

“Tell me. ”

“It’s kind of silly. ”

“Please tell 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 sister in Iran, in Mashad, and, since Ziba was illiterate, she’d ask me

to write her sister letters once in a while. And when the sister 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 table after I was done with my own schoolwork and I’d teach her Alef-beh. I remember looking up sometimes in the middle of homework and

seeing 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 nothing 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 thought of how I had used 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 hints about medical school, but I’m going to be a teacher. Doesn’t pay much here, but it’s what I want. ”

“My mother was a teacher too, ” I said.

“I know, ” she said. “My mother told me. ” Then her face red dened with a blush at what she had blurted, at the implication of her answer, that “Amir Conversations” took place between them when I wasn’t

there. It took an enormous effort to stop myself from smiling.

“I brought you something. ” I fished the roll of stapled pages from my back pocket. “As promised. ” I handed her one of my short stories.

“Oh, you remembered, ” she said, actually beaming. “Thank you! ” I barely had time to register that she’d addressed me with “tu” for the first time and not the formal “shoma, ” because suddenly her smile

vanished. The color dropped from her face, and her eyes fixed on something behind me. I turned around. Came 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 day it is, nay? ” he said, thumb hooked in the breast pocket of his vest, the other hand extended toward Soraya. She gave him the pages.

“They say it will rain this week. Hard to believe, isn’t it? ” He dropped the rolled pages in the garbage can. Turned to me and gently put 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, but--” he sighed and waved a hand “--even decent boys need reminding 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. “You see, everyone here is a storyteller. ” He smiled, revealing perfectly even teeth. “Do pass

my respects to your father, Amir jan. ”

He dropped his hand. Smiled again.

“WHAT’S WRONG? ” Baba said. He was taking an elderly woman’s money for a rocking horse.

“Nothing, ” I said. I sat down on an old TV set. Then I told him anyway.

“Akh, Amir, ” he sighed.

As it turned out, I didn’t get to brood too much over what had happened.

Because later 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 hack 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 malaria in India.

Then, two weeks 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 taking you to the doctor. ”

Even though Baba was a manager at the gas station, the owner hadn’t offered him health 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 saw us introduced himself as a second-year resident. “He looks younger than you and sicker than me, ” Baba grumbled. The resident sent us down for a chest X-ray. When

the nurse called us back in, the resident was filling out a form.

“Take this to the front desk, ” he said, scribbling quickly.

“What is it? ” 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 suddenly too small.

“Cancer? ” Baba added casually.

“Possible. It’s suspicious, anyway, ” the doctor muttered.

“Can’t you tell us more? ” I asked.

“Not really. Need a CAT scan first, then see the lung doctor. ” He handed me the referral form. “You said your 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 supposed to live with that word, “suspicious, ” for two whole weeks. How was I supposed eat, work, study? How could he send me home with that word?

I took the form and turned it in. That night, I waited until Baba fell asleep, and then folded a blanket. I used it as a prayer rug. Bowing my head to the ground, I recited half-forgotten verses from the Koran--

verses the mullah had made us commit to memory in Kabul--and asked for kindness from a God I wasn’t sure existed. I envied the mullah now, envied his faith and certainty.

Two weeks passed and no one called. And when I called them, they told 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 weeks down to one for the CAT scan, two to see the doctor.

The visit with the pulmonologist, Dr. Schneider, was going well until 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 still 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 your mother’s face I’ll break his arm if

he tries to touch me. ”

“Dr. Schneider’s parents fled from Shorawi, don’t you see? They escaped! ”

But Baba would hear none of it. Sometimes 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, told us he had reviewed the CAT scan results and

that he would have to perform a procedure called a bronchoscopy 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 week 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 Cell Carcinoma. ” Advanced. Inoperable. Baba asked Dr. Amani for a prognosis. Dr. Amani bit his lip, used 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 same resolved look on his face as the day he’d dropped the stack of food stamps on

Mrs. Dobbins’s desk.

“But Baba--”

“Don’t you challenge 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 weeks late, but when we stepped out of Dr. Amani’s office, passing cars sprayed grimy water onto the sidewalks. Baba lit a

cigarette. He smoked all the way to the car and all the way home.

As he was slipping the key into the lobby door, I said, “I wish you’d give the chemo a chance, Baba. ”

Baba pocketed the keys, pulled me out of the rain and under the building’s striped awning. He kneaded me on the chest with the hand holding the cigarette. “Bas! I’ve made my decision. ”

“What about me, Baba? What am I supposed to do? ” I said, my eyes welling up.

A look of disgust swept across his rain-soaked face. It was the same look he’d give me when, as a kid, I’d fall, scrape 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, rain drummed on the canvas awning. “What’s going to happen

to you, you say? All those years, that’s what I was trying to teach you, how to never have to ask that question. ”

He opened the door. Turned back to me. “And one more thing. No one finds out about this, you hear me? No one. I don’t want anybody’s sympathy. ” Then he disappeared into the dim lobby. He chainsmoked

the rest of that day in front of the TV. I didn’t know what or whom he was defying. Me? Dr. Amani? 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. Brass

lamps. Baseball gloves. Ski jackets with broken 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 day 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 broken only by her secret, droopy smiles and the furtive, apologetic looks she cast my way when the general’s attention 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 gas station, Baba had never

called in sick. Another first.

By Halloween of that year, Baba was getting so tired by mid-Saturday afternoon that he’d wait behind the wheel while I got out and bargained for junk. By Thanksgiving, he wore out before noon. When

sleighs appeared on front lawns and fake snow on Douglas firs, Baba stayed 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 loss didn’t. When the pounds kept shedding. And shedding. When his cheeks hollowed. And his temples melted. And his eyes receded in their sockets.

Then, one cool Sunday shortly after New Year’s Day, Baba was selling a lampshade to a stocky Filipino man while I rummaged in the VW for a blanket 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 spittle soaking his beard. His upturned eyes showed nothing but white.

People were rushing to us. I heard someone say seizure. Some one else yelling, “Call 911! ” I heard running footsteps. The sky darkened as a crowd gathered around us.

Baba’s spittle turned red. He was biting his tongue. I kneeled beside him and grabbed his arms and said I’m here Baba, I’m here, you’ll be all right, I’m right here. As if I could soothe the convulsions 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 your father’s CAT scans with you, ” he said. He put the films up on a viewing box in the hallway and pointed

with the eraser end of his pencil to the pictures of Baba’s cancer, like a cop showing mug shots of the killer to the victim’s family. Baba’s brain on those pictures looked like cross sections of a big walnut,

riddled with tennis ball-shaped gray things.

“As you can see, the cancer’s metastasized, ” he said. “He’ll have to take steroids to reduce the swelling in his brain and antiseizure medications. And I’d recommend palliative radiation. Do you know

what 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 can have me paged if you have any questions. ”

“Thank you. ”

I spent 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 engineer who’d worked with Baba on his orphanage. They filed in and paid Baba their

respects in hushed tones. Wished him a swift recovery. Baba was awake then, groggy and tired, but awake.

Midmorning, General Taheri and his wife came. Soraya followed. We glanced at each other, looked away at the same time. “How are you, my friend? ” General Taheri said, taking 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. More 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 too proud, but, in the hour of need, believe me that there’s no one you’d rather have at your

side than a Pashtun.

Baba shook his head 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 way he was looking at me, the kindness 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 box where, the night before, I’d seen the killer’s face.

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