The Kite Runner (24 page)

“For the boy.”

Farid shifted on the ground. “It’s hard to believe.”

“Sometimes I myself can hardly believe I’m here.”

“No . . . What I mean to ask is why
that
boy? You come all the way from America for . . . a Shi’a?”

That killed all the laughter in me. And the sleep. “I am tired,” I said. “Let’s just get some sleep.”

Farid’s snoring soon echoed through the empty room. I stayed awake, hands crossed on my chest, staring into the starlit night
through the broken window, and thinking that maybe what people said about Afghanistan was true. Maybe it
was
a hopeless place.

A BUSTLING CROWD was filling Ghazi Stadium when we walked through the entrance tunnels. Thousands of people milled about the
tightly packed concrete terraces. Children played in the aisles and chased each other up and down the steps. The scent of
garbanzo beans in spicy sauce hung in the air, mixed with the smell of dung and sweat. Farid and I walked past street peddlers
selling cigarettes, pine nuts, and biscuits.

A scrawny boy in a tweed jacket grabbed my elbow and spoke into my ear. Asked me if I wanted to buy some “sexy pictures.”

“Very sexy, Agha,” he said, his alert eyes darting side to side—reminding me of a girl who, a few years earlier, had tried
to sell me crack in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco. The kid peeled one side of his jacket open and gave me a fleeting
glance of his sexy pictures: postcards of Hindi movies showing doe-eyed sultry actresses, fully dressed, in the arms of their
leading men. “So sexy,” he repeated.

“Nay, thanks,” I said, pushing past him.

“He gets caught, they’ll give him a flogging that will waken his father in the grave,” Farid muttered.

There was no assigned seating, of course. No one to show us politely to our section, aisle, row, and seat. There never had
been, even in the old days of the monarchy. We found a decent spot to sit, just left of midfield, though it took some shoving
and elbowing on Farid’s part.

I remembered how green the playing field grass had been in the ’70s when Baba used to bring me to soccer games here. Now the
pitch was a mess. There were holes and craters everywhere, most notably a pair of deep holes in the ground behind the south-end
goalposts. And there was no grass at all, just dirt. When the two teams finally took the field—all wearing long pants despite
the heat—and play began, it became difficult to follow the ball in the clouds of dust kicked up by the players. Young, whip-toting
Talibs roamed the aisles, striking anyone who cheered too loudly.

They brought them out shortly after the halftime whistle blew. A pair of dusty red pickup trucks, like the ones I’d seen around
town since I’d arrived, rode into the stadium through the gates. The crowd rose to its feet. A woman dressed in a green
burqa
sat in the cab of one truck, a blindfolded man in the other. The trucks drove around the track, slowly, as if to let the crowd
get a long look. It had the desired effect: People craned their necks, pointed, stood on tiptoes. Next to me, Farid’s Adam’s
apple bobbed up and down as he mumbled a prayer under his breath.

The red trucks entered the playing field, rode toward one end in twin clouds of dust, sunlight reflecting off their hubcaps.
A third truck met them at the end of the field. This one’s cab was filled with something and I suddenly understood the purpose
of those two holes behind the goalposts. They unloaded the third truck. The crowd murmured in anticipation.

“Do you want to stay?” Farid said gravely.

“No,” I said. I had never in my life wanted to be away from a place as badly as I did now. “But we have to stay.”

Two Talibs with Kalashnikovs slung across their shoulders helped the blindfolded man from the first truck and two others helped
the
burqa
-clad woman. The woman’s knees buckled under her and she slumped to the ground. The soldiers pulled her up and she slumped
again. When they tried to lift her again, she screamed and kicked. I will never, as long as I draw breath, forget the sound
of that scream. It was the cry of a wild animal trying to pry its mangled leg free from the bear trap. Two more Talibs joined
in and helped force her into one of the chest-deep holes. The blindfolded man, on the other hand, quietly allowed them to
lower him into the hole dug for him. Now only the accused pair’s torsos protruded from the ground.

A chubby, white-bearded cleric dressed in gray garments stood near the goalposts and cleared his throat into a handheld microphone.
Behind him the woman in the hole was still screaming. He recited a lengthy prayer from the Koran, his nasal voice undulating
through the sudden hush of the stadium’s crowd. I remembered something Baba had said to me a long time ago:
Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous
monkeys. They do nothing but thumb their rosaries and recite a book
written in a tongue they
don’t
even understand. God help us all if
Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.

When the prayer was done, the cleric cleared his throat. “Brothers and sisters!” he called, speaking in Farsi, his voice booming
through the stadium. “We are here today to carry out
Shari’a.
We are here today to carry out justice. We are here today because the will of Allah and the word of the Prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, are alive and well here in Afghanistan, our beloved homeland. We listen to what God says and we obey because
we are nothing but humble, powerless creatures before God’s greatness. And what does God say? I ask you! WHAT DOES GOD SAY?
God says that every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin. Those are not my words, nor the words of my brothers.
Those are the words of GOD!” He pointed with his free hand to the sky. My head was pounding and the sun felt much too hot.

“Every sinner must be punished in a manner befitting his sin!” the cleric repeated into the mike, lowering his voice, enunciating
each word slowly, dramatically. “And what manner of punishment, brothers and sisters, befits the adulterer? How shall we punish
those who dishonor the sanctity of marriage? How shall we deal with those who spit in the face of God? How shall we answer
those who throw stones at the windows of God’s house? WE SHALL THROW THE STONES BACK!” He shut off the microphone. A low-pitched
murmur spread through the crowd.

Next to me, Farid was shaking his head. “And they call themselves Muslims,” he whispered.

Then a tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out of the pickup truck. The sight of him drew cheers from a few spectators. This
time, no one was struck with a whip for cheering too loudly. The tall man’s sparkling white garment glimmered in the afternoon
sun. The hem of his loose shirt fluttered in the breeze, his arms spread like those of Jesus on the cross. He greeted the
crowd by turning slowly in a full circle. When he faced our section, I saw he was wearing dark round sunglasses like the ones
John Lennon wore.

“That must be our man,” Farid said.

The tall Talib with the black sunglasses walked to the pile of stones they had unloaded from the third truck. He picked up
a rock and showed it to the crowd. The noise fell, replaced by a buzzing sound that rippled through the stadium. I looked
around me and saw that everyone was
tsk
’ing. The Talib, looking absurdly like a baseball pitcher on the mound, hurled the stone at the blindfolded man in the hole.
It struck the side of his head. The woman screamed again. The crowd made a startled “OH!” sound. I closed my eyes and covered
my face with my hands. The spectators’ “OH!” rhymed with each flinging of the stone, and that went on for a while. When they
stopped, I asked Farid if it was over. He said no. I guessed the people’s throats had tired. I don’t know how much longer
I sat with my face in my hands. I know that I reopened my eyes when I heard people around me asking,
“
Mord? Mord?
Is he
dead?”

The man in the hole was now a mangled mess of blood and shredded rags. His head slumped forward, chin on chest. The Talib
in the John Lennon sunglasses was looking down at another man squatting next to the hole, tossing a rock up and down in his
hand. The squatting man had one end of a stethoscope to his ears and the other pressed on the chest of the man in the hole.
He removed the stethoscope from his ears and shook his head no at the Talib in the sunglasses. The crowd moaned.

John Lennon walked back to the mound.

When it was all over, when the bloodied corpses had been unceremoniously tossed into the backs of red pickup trucks—separate
ones—a few men with shovels hurriedly filled the holes. One of them made a passing attempt at covering up the large bloodstains
by kicking dirt over them. A few minutes later, the teams took the field. Second half was under way.

Our meeting was arranged for three o’clock that afternoon. The swiftness with which the appointment was set surprised me.
I’d expected delays, a round of questioning at least, perhaps a check of our papers. But I was reminded of how unofficial
even official matters still were in Afghanistan: all Farid had to do was tell one of the whip-carrying Talibs that we had
personal business to discuss with the man in white. Farid and he exchanged words. The guy with the whip then nodded and shouted
something in Pashtu to a young man on the field, who ran to the south-end goalposts where the Talib in the sunglasses was
chatting with the plump cleric who’d given the sermon. The three spoke. I saw the guy in the sunglasses look up. He nodded.
Said something in the messenger’s ear. The young man relayed the message back to us.

It was set, then. Three o’clock.

TWENTY-TWO

Farid eased the Land Cruiser up the driveway of a big house in Wazir Akbar Khan. He parked in the shadows of willow trees
that spilled over the walls of the compound located on Street 15, Sarak-e-Mehmana, Street of the Guests. He killed the engine
and we sat for a minute, listening to the
tink-tink
of the engine cooling off, neither one of us saying anything. Farid shifted on his seat and toyed with the keys still hanging
from the ignition switch. I could tell he was readying himself to tell me something.

“I guess I’ll wait in the car for you,” he said finally, his tone a little apologetic. He wouldn’t look at me. “This is your
business now. I—”

I patted his arm. “You’ve done much more than I’ve paid you for. I don’t expect you to go with me.” But I wished I didn’t
have to go in alone. Despite what I had learned about Baba, I wished he were standing alongside me now. Baba would have busted
through the front doors and demanded to be taken to the man in charge, piss on the beard of anyone who stood in his way. But
Baba was long dead, buried in the Afghan section of a little cemetery in Hayward. Just last month, Soraya and I had placed
a bouquet of daisies and freesias beside his headstone. I was on my own.

I stepped out of the car and walked to the tall, wooden front gates of the house. I rang the bell but no buzz came—still no
electricity—and I had to pound on the doors. A moment later, I heard terse voices from the other side and a pair of men toting
Kalashnikovs answered the door.

I glanced at Farid sitting in the car and mouthed,
I’ll
be back,
not so sure at all that I would be.

The armed men frisked me head to toe, patted my legs, felt my crotch. One of them said something in Pashtu and they both chuckled.
We stepped through the front gates. The two guards escorted me across a well-manicured lawn, past a row of geraniums and stubby
bushes lined along the wall. An old hand-pump water well stood at the far end of the yard. I remembered how Kaka Homayoun’s
house in Jalalabad had had a water well like that—the twins, Fazila and Karima, and I used to drop pebbles in it, listen for
the
plink.

We climbed a few steps and entered a large, sparsely decorated house. We crossed the foyer—a large Afghan flag draped one
of the walls—and the men took me upstairs to a room with twin mint green sofas and a big-screen TV in the far corner. A prayer
rug showing a slightly oblong Mecca was nailed to one of the walls. The older of the two men motioned toward the sofa with
the barrel of his weapon. I sat down. They left the room.

I crossed my legs. Uncrossed them. Sat with my sweaty hands on my knees. Did that make me look nervous? I clasped them together,
decided that was worse and just crossed my arms on my chest. Blood thudded in my temples. I felt utterly alone. Thoughts were
flying around in my head, but I didn’t want to think at all, because a sober part of me knew that what I had managed to get
myself into was insanity. I was thousands of miles from my wife, sitting in a room that felt like a holding cell, waiting
for a man I had seen murder two people that same day. It
was
insanity. Worse yet, it was irresponsible. There was a very realistic chance that I was going to render Soraya a
biwa,
a widow, at the age of thirty-six.
This
isn’t
you, Amir,
part of me said.
You’re
gutless.
It’s
how you
were made. And
that’s
not such a bad thing because your saving grace is
that
you’ve
never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong
with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward
stops remembering who he is . . . God help him.

There was a coffee table by the sofa. The base was
X
-shaped, walnut-sized brass balls studding the ring where the metallic legs crossed. I’d seen a table like that before. Where?
And then it came to me: at the crowded tea shop in Peshawar, that night I’d gone for a walk. On the table sat a bowl of red
grapes. I plucked one and tossed it in my mouth. I had to preoccupy myself with something, anything, to silence the voice
in my head. The grape was sweet. I popped another one in, unaware that it would be the last bit of solid food I would eat
for a long time.

The door opened and the two armed men returned, between them the tall Talib in white, still wearing his dark John Lennon glasses,
looking like some broad-shouldered, New Age mystic guru.

He took a seat across from me and lowered his hands on the armrests. For a long time, he said nothing. Just sat there, watching
me, one hand drumming the upholstery, the other twirling turquoise blue prayer beads. He wore a black vest over the white
shirt now, and a gold watch. I saw a splotch of dried blood on his left sleeve. I found it morbidly fascinating that he hadn’t
changed clothes after the executions earlier that day.

Periodically, his free hand floated up and his thick fingers batted at something in the air. They made slow stroking motions,
up and down, side to side, as if he were caressing an invisible pet. One of his sleeves retracted and I saw marks on his forearm—I’d
seen those same tracks on homeless people living in grimy alleys in San Francisco.

His skin was much paler than the other two men’s, almost sallow, and a crop of tiny sweat beads gleamed on his forehead just
below the edge of his black turban. His beard, chest-length like the others, was lighter in color too.

“
Salaam
alaykum,”
he said.

“
Salaam.”

“You can do away with that now, you know,” he said.

“Pardon?”

He turned his palm to one of the armed men and motioned.
Rrrriiiip.
Suddenly my cheeks were stinging and the guard was tossing my beard up and down in his hand, giggling. The Talib grinned.
“One of the better ones I’ve seen in a while. But it really is so much better this way, I think. Don’t you?” He twirled his
fingers, snapped them, fist opening and closing. “So,
Inshallah,
you enjoyed the show today?”

“Was that what it was?” I said, rubbing my cheeks, hoping my voice didn’t betray the explosion of terror I felt inside.

“Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And, best of all, education en masse.” He snapped
his fingers. he younger of the two guards lit him a cigarette. The Talib laughed. Mumbled to himself. His hands were shaking
and he almost dropped the cigarette. “But you want a real show, you should have been with me in Mazar. August 1998, that was.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We left them out for the dogs, you know.”

I saw what he was getting at.

He stood up, paced around the sofa once, twice. Sat down again. He spoke rapidly. “Door to door we went, calling for the men
and the boys. We’d shoot them right there in front of their families. Let them see. Let them remember who they were, where
they belonged.” He was almost panting now. “Sometimes, we broke down their doors and went inside their homes. And . . . I’d
. . . I’d sweep the barrel of my machine gun around the room and fire and fire until the smoke blinded me.” He leaned toward
me, like a man about to share a great secret. “You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘liberating’ until you’ve done that,
stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent.
Knowing you’re doing God’s work. It’s breathtaking.” He kissed the prayer beads, tilted his head. “You remember that, Javid?”

“Yes, Agha sahib,” the younger of the guards replied. “How could I forget?”

I had read about the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif in the papers. It had happened just after the Taliban took over Mazar,
one of the last cities to fall. I remembered Soraya handing me the article over breakfast, her face bloodless.

“Door-to-door. We only rested for food and prayer,” the Talib said. He said it fondly, like a man telling of a great party
he’d attended. “We left the bodies in the streets, and if their families tried to sneak out to drag them back into their homes,
we’d shoot them too. We left them in the streets for days. We left them for the dogs. Dog meat for dogs.” He crushed his cigarette.
Rubbed his eyes with tremulous hands. “You come from America?”

“Yes.”

“How is that whore these days?”

I had a sudden urge to urinate. I prayed it would pass. “I’m looking for a boy.”

“Isn’t everyone?” he said. The men with the Kalashnikovs laughed. Their teeth were stained green with
naswar.

“I understand he is here, with you,” I said. “His name is Sohrab.”

“I’ll ask you something: What are you doing with that whore? Why aren’t you here, with your Muslim brothers, serving your
country?”

“I’ve been away a long time,” was all I could think of saying. My head felt so hot. I pressed my knees together, held my bladder.
The Talib turned to the two men standing by the door. “That’s an answer?” he asked them.

“Nay, Agha sahib,” they said in unison, smiling.

He turned his eyes to me. Shrugged. “Not an answer, they say.” He took a drag of his cigarette. “There are those in my circle
who believe that abandoning
watan
when it needs you the most is the same as treason. I could have you arrested for treason, have you shot for it even. Does
that frighten you?”

“I’m only here for the boy.”

“Does that frighten you?”

“Yes.”

“It should,” he said. He leaned back in the sofa. Crushed the cigarette.

I thought about Soraya. It calmed me. I thought of her sickle-shaped birthmark, the elegant curve of her neck, her luminous
eyes. I thought of our wedding night, gazing at each other’s reflection in the mirror under the green veil, and how her cheeks
blushed when I whispered that I loved her. I remembered the two of us dancing to an old Afghan song, round and round, everyone
watching and clapping, the world a blur of flowers, dresses, tuxedos, and smiling faces.

The Talib was saying something.

“Pardon?”

“I said would you like to see him? Would you like to see my boy?” His upper lip curled up in a sneer when he said those last
two words.

“Yes.”

The guard left the room. I heard the creak of a door swinging open. Heard the guard say something in Pashtu, in a hard voice.
Then, footfalls, and the jingle of bells with each step. It reminded me of the Monkey Man Hassan and I used to chase down
in Shar-e-Nau. We used to pay him a
rupia
of our allowance for a dance. The bell around his monkey’s neck had made that same jingling sound.

Then the door opened and the guard walked in. He carried a stereo—a boom box—on his shoulder. Behind him, a boy dressed in
a loose, sapphire blue
pirhan-tumban
followed.

The resemblance was breathtaking. Disorienting. Rahim Khan’s Polaroid hadn’t done justice to it.

The boy had his father’s round moon face, his pointy stub of a chin, his twisted, seashell ears, and the same slight frame.
It was the Chinese doll face of my childhood, the face peering above fanned-out playing cards all those winter days, the face
behind the mosquito net when we slept on the roof of my father’s house in the summer. His head was shaved, his eyes darkened
with mascara, and his cheeks glowed with an unnatural red. When he stopped in the middle of the room, the bells strapped around
his anklets stopped jingling.

His eyes fell on me. Lingered. Then he looked away. Looked down at his naked feet.

One of the guards pressed a button and Pashtu music filled the room. Tabla, harmonium, the whine of a
dil-roba.
I guessed music wasn’t sinful as long as it played to Taliban ears. The three men began to clap.

“
Wah wah!
Mashallah!”
they cheered.

Sohrab raised his arms and turned slowly. He stood on tiptoes, spun gracefully, dipped to his knees, straightened, and spun
again. His little hands swiveled at the wrists, his fingers snapped, and his head swung side to side like a pendulum. His
feet pounded the floor, the bells jingling in perfect harmony with the beat of the tabla. He kept his eyes closed.

“
Mashallah!”
they cheered. “
Shahbas!
Bravo!” The two guards whistled and laughed. The Talib in white was tilting his head back and forth with the music, his mouth
half-open in a leer.

Sohrab danced in a circle, eyes closed, danced until the music stopped. The bells jingled one final time when he stomped his
foot with the song’s last note. He froze in midspin.

“
Bia, bia,
my boy,” the Talib said, calling Sohrab to him. Sohrab went to him, head down, stood between his thighs. The Talib wrapped
his arms around the boy. “How talented he is, nay, my Hazara boy!” he said. His hands slid down the child’s back, then up,
felt under his armpits. One of the guards elbowed the other and snickered. The Talib told them to leave us alone.

“Yes, Agha sahib,” they said as they exited.

The Talib spun the boy around so he faced me. He locked his arms around Sohrab’s belly, rested his chin on the boy’s shoulder.
Sohrab looked down at his feet, but kept stealing shy, furtive glances at me. The man’s hand slid up and down the boy’s belly.
Up and down, slowly, gently.

“I’ve been wondering,” the Talib said, his bloodshot eyes peering at me over Sohrab’s shoulder. “Whatever happened to old
Babalu,
anyway?”

The question hit me like a hammer between the eyes. I felt the color drain from my face. My legs went cold. Numb.

He laughed. “What did you think? That you’d put on a fake beard and I wouldn’t recognize you? Here’s something I’ll bet you
never knew about me: I never forget a face. Not ever.” He brushed his lips against Sohrab’s ear, kept his eye on me. “I heard
your father died.
Tsk-tsk.
I always did want to take him on. Looks like I’ll have to settle for his weakling of a son.” Then he took off his sunglasses
and locked his bloodshot blue eyes on mine.