The Kite Runner (14 page)

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

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

I shrugged and fought back a smile. “Just 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 swung the bus out of the flea market. We headed for Highway 680. We drove in silence for a while. “All I’ve
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 breast cancer.

“Oh.”

“I hear she is a decent girl, hardworking and kind. But no
khastegar
s, 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 watermelon 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
newspapers.

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
hafez.”

“
Khoda
hafez.”

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 stopping in mid-sentence. 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,
bachem.
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 something 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
collar bone. 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.