The Kite Runner (27 page)

I know that in the end, God will forgive. He will forgive your father, me, and you too. I hope you can do the same. Forgive
your father if you can. Forgive me if you wish. But, most important, forgive yourself.

I have left you some money, most of what I have left, in fact. I think you may have some expenses when you return here, and
the money should be enough to cover them. There is a bank in Peshawar; Farid knows the location. The money is in a safe-deposit
box. I have given you the key.

As for me, it is time to go. I have little time left and I wish to spend it alone. Please do not look for me. That is my final
request of you.

I leave you in the hands of God.

Your friend always,

Rahim

I dragged the hospital gown sleeve across my eyes. I folded the letter and put it under my mattress.

Amir, the socially legitimate half, the half that represented the riches
he had inherited and the sin-with-impunity privileges that came with
them.
Maybe that was why Baba and I had been on such better terms in the U.S., I wondered. Selling junk for petty cash, our menial
jobs, our grimy apartment—the American version of a hut; maybe in America, when Baba looked at me, he saw a little bit of
Hassan.

Your father, like you, was a tortured soul,
Rahim Khan had written. Maybe so. We had both sinned and betrayed. But Baba had found a way to create good out of his remorse.
What had I done, other than take my guilt out on the very same people I had betrayed, and then try to forget it all? What
had I done, other than become an insomniac?

What had I ever done to right things?

When the nurse—not Aisha but a red-haired woman whose name escapes me—walked in with a syringe in hand and asked me if I needed
a morphine injection, I said yes.

THEY REMOVED THE CHEST TUBE early the next morning, and Armand gave the staff the go-ahead to let me sip apple juice. I asked
Aisha for a mirror when she placed the cup of juice on the dresser next to my bed. She lifted her bifocals to her forehead
as she pulled the curtain open and let the morning sun flood the room. “Remember, now,” she said over her shoulder, “it will
look better in a few days. My son-in-law was in a moped accident last year. His handsome face was dragged on the asphalt and
became purple like an eggplant. Now he is beautiful again, like a Lollywood movie star.”

Despite her reassurances, looking in the mirror and seeing the thing that insisted it was my face left me a little breathless.
It looked like someone had stuck an air pump nozzle under my skin and had pumped away. My eyes were puffy and blue. The worst
of it was my mouth, a grotesque blob of purple and red, all bruise and stitches. I tried to smile and a bolt of pain ripped
through my lips. I wouldn’t be doing that for a while. There were stitches across my left cheek, just under the chin, on the
forehead just below the hairline.

The old guy with the leg cast said something in Urdu. I gave him a shrug and shook my head. He pointed to his face, patted
it, and grinned a wide, toothless grin. “Very good,” he said in English.
“
Inshallah.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Farid and Sohrab came in just as I put the mirror away. Sohrab took his seat on the stool, rested his head on the bed’s side
rail.

“You know, the sooner we get you out of here the better,” Farid said.

“Dr. Faruqi says—”

“I don’t mean the hospital. I mean Peshawar.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think you’ll be safe here for long,” Farid said. He lowered his voice. “The Taliban have friends here. They will
start looking for you.”

“I think they already may have,” I murmured. I thought suddenly of the bearded man who’d wandered into the room and just stood
there staring at me.

Farid leaned in. “As soon as you can walk, I’ll take you to Islamabad. Not entirely safe there either, no place in Pakistan
is, but it’s better than here. At least it will buy you some time.”

“Farid jan, this can’t be safe for you either. Maybe you shouldn’t be seen with me. You have a family to take care of.”

Farid made a waving gesture. “My boys are young, but they are very shrewd. They know how to take care of their mothers and
sisters.” He smiled. “Besides, I didn’t say I’d do it for free.”

“I wouldn’t let you if you offered,” I said. I forgot I couldn’t smile and tried. A tiny streak of blood trickled down my
chin. “Can I ask you for one more favor?”

“For you a thousand times over,” Farid said.

And, just like that, I was crying. I hitched gusts of air, tears gushing down my cheeks, stinging the raw flesh of my lips.

“What’s the matter?” Farid said, alarmed.

I buried my face in one hand and held up the other. I knew the whole room was watching me. After, I felt tired, hollow. “I’m
sorry,” I said. Sohrab was looking at me with a frown creasing his brow.

When I could talk again, I told Farid what I needed. “Rahim Khan said they live here in Peshawar.”

“Maybe you should write down their names,” Farid said, eyeing me cautiously, as if wondering what might set me off next. I
scribbled their names on a scrap of paper towel. “John and Betty Caldwell.”

Farid pocketed the folded piece of paper. “I will look for them as soon as I can,” he said. He turned to Sohrab. “As for you,
I’ll pick you up this evening. Don’t tire Amir agha too much.”

But Sohrab had wandered to the window, where a half-dozen pigeons strutted back and forth on the sill, pecking at wood and
scraps of old bread.

IN THE MIDDLE DRAWER of the dresser beside my bed, I had found an old
National Geographic
magazine, a chewed-up pencil, a comb with missing teeth, and what I was reaching for now, sweat pouring down my face from
the effort: a deck of cards. I had counted them earlier and, surprisingly, found the deck complete. I asked Sohrab if he wanted
to play. I didn’t expect him to answer, let alone play. He’d been quiet since we had fled Kabul. But he turned from the window
and said, “The only game I know is panjpar.”

“I feel sorry for you already, because I am a grand master at panjpar. World renowned.”

He took his seat on the stool next to me. I dealt him his five cards. “When your father and I were your age, we used to play
this game. Especially in the winter, when it snowed and we couldn’t go outside. We used to play until the sun went down.”

He played me a card and picked one up from the pile. I stole looks at him as he pondered his cards. He was his father in so
many ways: the way he fanned out his cards with both hands, the way he squinted while reading them, the way he rarely looked
a person in the eye.

We played in silence. I won the first game, let him win the next one, and lost the next five fair and square. “You’re as good
as your father, maybe even better,” I said, after my last loss. “I used to beat him sometimes, but I think he let me win.”
I paused before saying, “Your father and I were nursed by the same woman.”

“I know.”

“What . . . what did he tell you about us?”

“That you were the best friend he ever had,” he said.

I twirled the jack of diamonds in my fingers, flipped it back and forth. “I wasn’t such a good friend, I’m afraid,” I said.
“But I’d like to be your friend. I think I could be a good friend to you. Would that be all right? Would you like that?” I
put my hand on his arm, gingerly, but he flinched. He dropped his cards and pushed away on the stool. He walked back to the
window. The sky was awash with streaks of red and purple as the sun set on Peshawar. From the street below came a succession
of honks and the braying of a donkey, the whistle of a policeman. Sohrab stood in that crimson light, forehead pressed to
the glass, fists buried in his armpits.

AISHA HAD A MALE ASSISTANT help me take my first steps that night. I only walked around the room once, one hand clutching
the wheeled IV stand, the other clasping the assistant’s forearm. It took me ten minutes to make it back to bed, and, by then,
the incision on my stomach throbbed and I’d broken out in a drenching sweat. I lay in bed, gasping, my heart hammering in
my ears, thinking how much I missed my wife.

Sohrab and I played panjpar most of the next day, again in silence. And the day after that. We hardly spoke, just played panjpar,
me propped in bed, he on the three-legged stool, our routine broken only by my taking a walk around the room, or going to
the bathroom down the hall. I had a dream later that night. I dreamed Assef was standing in the doorway of my hospital room,
brass ball still in his eye socket. “We’re the same, you and I,” he was saying. “You nursed with him, but you’re
my
twin.”

I TOLD ARMAND early that next day that I was leaving.

“It’s still early for discharge,” Armand protested. He wasn’t dressed in surgical scrubs that day, instead in a button-down
navy blue suit and yellow tie. The gel was back in the hair. “You are still in intravenous antibiotics and—”

“I have to go,” I said. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, all of you. Really. But I have to leave.”

“Where will you go?” Armand said.

“I’d rather not say.”

“You can hardly walk.”

“I can walk to the end of the hall and back,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” The plan was this: Leave the hospital. Get the money
from the safe-deposit box and pay my medical bills. Drive to the orphanage and drop Sohrab off with John and Betty Caldwell.
Then get a ride to Islamabad and change travel plans. Give myself a few more days to get better. Fly home.

That was the plan, anyway. Until Farid and Sohrab arrived that morning. “Your friends, this John and Betty Caldwell, they
aren’t in Peshawar,” Farid said.

It had taken me ten minutes just to slip into my
pirhan-tumban.
My chest, where they’d cut me to insert the chest tube, hurt when I raised my arm, and my stomach throbbed every time I leaned
over. I was drawing ragged breaths just from the effort of packing a few of my belongings into a brown paper bag. But I’d
managed to get ready and was sitting on the edge of the bed when Farid came in with the news. Sohrab sat on the bed next to
me.

“Where did they go?” I asked.

Farid shook his head. “You don’t understand—”

“Because Rahim Khan said—”

“I went to the U.S. consulate,” Farid said, picking up my bag. “There never was a John and Betty Caldwell in Peshawar. According
to the people at the consulate, they never existed. Not here in Peshawar, anyhow.”

Next to me, Sohrab was flipping through the pages of the old
National Geographic.

WE GOT THE MONEY from the bank. The manager, a paunchy man with sweat patches under his arms, kept flashing smiles and telling
me that no one in the bank had touched the money. “Absolutely nobody,” he said gravely, swinging his index finger the same
way Armand had.

Driving through Peshawar with so much money in a paper bag was a slightly frightening experience. Plus, I suspected every
bearded man who stared at me to be a Talib killer, sent by Assef. Two things compounded my fears: There are a lot of bearded
men in Peshawar, and everybody stares.

“What do we do with him?” Farid said, walking me slowly from the hospital accounting office back to the car. Sohrab was in
the backseat of the Land Cruiser, looking at traffic through the rolled-down window, chin resting on his palms.

“He can’t stay in Peshawar,” I said, panting.

“Nay, Amir agha, he can’t,” Farid said. He’d read the question in my words. “I’m sorry. I wish I—”

“That’s all right, Farid,” I said. I managed a tired smile. “You have mouths to feed.” A dog was standing next to the truck
now, propped on its rear legs, paws on the truck’s door, tail wagging. Sohrab was petting the dog. “I guess he goes to Islamabad
for now,” I said.

I SLEPT THROUGH almost the entire four-hour ride to Islamabad. I dreamed a lot, and most of it I only remember as a hodgepodge
of images, snippets of visual memory flashing in my head like cards in a Rolodex: Baba marinating lamb for my thirteenth birthday
party. Soraya and I making love for the first time, the sun rising in the east, our ears still ringing from the wedding music,
her henna-painted hands laced in mine. The time Baba had taken Hassan and me to a strawberry field in Jalalabad—the owner
had told us we could eat as much as we wanted to as long as we bought at least four kilos—and how we’d both ended up with
bellyaches. How dark, almost black, Hassan’s blood had looked on the snow, dropping from the seat of his pants.
Blood is a powerful thing,
bachem. Khala Jamila patting Soraya’s knee and saying,
God knows best,
maybe it
wasn’t
meant to be.
Sleeping on the roof of my father’s house. Baba saying that the only sin that mattered was theft.
When you tell a
lie, you steal a
man’s
right to the truth.
Rahim Khan on the phone, telling me there was a way to be good again.
A way to be good again . . .

TWENTY-FOUR

If Peshawar was the city that reminded me of what Kabul used to be, then Islamabad was the city Kabul could have become someday.
The streets were wider than Peshawar’s, cleaner, and lined with rows of hibiscus and flame trees. The bazaars were more organized
and not nearly as clogged with rickshaws and pedestrians. The architecture was more elegant too, more modern, and I saw parks
where roses and jasmine bloomed in the shadows of trees.

Farid found a small hotel on a side street running along the foot of the Margalla Hills. We passed the famous Shah Faisal
Mosque on the way there, reputedly the biggest mosque in the world, with its giant concrete girders and soaring minarets.
Sohrab perked up at the sight of the mosque, leaned out of the window and looked at it until Farid turned a corner.

THE HOTEL ROOM was a vast improvement over the one in Kabul where Farid and I had stayed. The sheets were clean, the carpet
vacuumed, and the bathroom spotless. There was shampoo, soap, razors for shaving, a bathtub, and towels that smelled like
lemon. And no bloodstains on the walls. One other thing: a television set sat on the dresser across from the two single beds.

“Look!” I said to Sohrab. I turned it on manually—no remote—and turned the dial. I found a children’s show with two fluffy
sheep puppets singing in Urdu. Sohrab sat on one of the beds and drew his knees to his chest. Images from the TV reflected
in his green eyes as he watched, stone-faced, rocking back and forth. I remembered the time I’d promised Hassan I’d buy his
family a color TV when we both grew up.

“I’ll get going, Amir agha,” Farid said.

“Stay the night,” I said. “It’s a long drive. Leave tomorrow.”

“
Tashakor,”
he said. “But I want to get back tonight. I miss my children.” On his way out of the room, he paused in the doorway. “Goodbye,
Sohrab jan,” he said. He waited for a reply, but Sohrab paid him no attention. Just rocked back and forth, his face lit by
the silver glow of the images flickering across the screen.

Outside, I gave him an envelope. When he tore it, his mouth opened.

“I didn’t know how to thank you,” I said. “You’ve done so much for me.”

“How much is in here?” Farid said, slightly dazed.

“A little over two thousand dollars.”

“Two thou—” he began. His lower lip was quivering a little. Later, when he pulled away from the curb, he honked twice and
waved. I waved back. I never saw him again.

I returned to the hotel room and found Sohrab lying on the bed, curled up in a big
C.
His eyes were closed but I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping. He had shut off the television. I sat on my bed and grimaced
with pain, wiped the cool sweat off my brow. I wondered how much longer it would hurt to get up, sit down, roll over in bed.
I wondered when I’d be able to eat solid food. I wondered what I’d do with the wounded little boy lying on the bed, though
a part of me already knew.

There was a carafe of water on the dresser. I poured a glass and took two of Armand’s pain pills. The water was warm and bitter.
I pulled the curtains, eased myself back on the bed, and lay down. I thought my chest would rip open. When the pain dropped
a notch and I could breathe again, I pulled the blanket to my chest and waited for Armand’s pills to work.

WHEN I WOKE UP, the room was darker. The slice of sky peeking between the curtains was the purple of twilight turning into
night. The sheets were soaked and my head pounded. I’d been dreaming again, but I couldn’t remember what it had been about.

My heart gave a sick lurch when I looked to Sohrab’s bed and found it empty. I called his name. The sound of my voice startled
me. It was disorienting, sitting in a dark hotel room, thousands of miles from home, my body broken, calling the name of a
boy I’d only met a few days ago. I called his name again and heard nothing. I struggled out of bed, checked the bathroom,
looked in the narrow hallway outside the room. He was gone.

I locked the door and hobbled to the manager’s office in the lobby, one hand clutching the rail along the walkway for support.
There was a fake, dusty palm tree in the corner of the lobby and flying pink flamingos on the wallpaper. I found the hotel
manager reading a newspaper behind the Formica-topped check-in counter. I described Sohrab to him, asked if he’d seen him.
He put down his paper and took off his reading glasses. He had greasy hair and a square-shaped little mustache speckled with
gray. He smelled vaguely of some tropical fruit I couldn’t quite recognize.

“Boys, they like to run around,” he said, sighing. “I have three of them. All day they are running around, troubling their
mother.” He fanned his face with the newspaper, staring at my jaws.

“I don’t think he’s out running around,” I said. “And we’re not from here. I’m afraid he might get lost.”

He bobbed his head from side to side. “Then you should have kept an eye on the boy, mister.”

“I know,” I said. “But I fell asleep and when I woke up, he was gone.”

“Boys must be tended to, you know.”

“Yes,” I said, my pulse quickening. How could he be so oblivious to my apprehension? He shifted the newspaper to his other
hand, resumed the fanning. “They want bicycles now.”

“Who?”

“My boys,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘Daddy, Daddy, please buy us bicycles and we’ll not trouble you. Please, Daddy!’” He
gave a short laugh through his nose. “Bicycles. Their mother will kill me, I swear to you.”

I imagined Sohrab lying in a ditch. Or in the trunk of some car, bound and gagged. I didn’t want his blood on my hands. Not
his too. “Please . . .” I said. I squinted. Read his name tag on the lapel of his short-sleeve blue cotton shirt. “Mr. Fayyaz,
have you seen him?”

“The boy?”

I bit down. “Yes, the boy! The boy who came with me. Have you seen him or not, for God’s sake?”

The fanning stopped. His eyes narrowed. “No getting smart with me, my friend. I am not the one who lost him.”

That he had a point did not stop the blood from rushing to my face. “You’re right. I’m wrong. My fault. Now, have you seen
him?”

“Sorry,” he said curtly. He put his glasses back on. Snapped his newspaper open. “I have seen no such boy.”

I stood at the counter for a minute, trying not to scream. As I was exiting the lobby, he said, “Any idea where he might have
wandered to?”

“No,” I said. I felt tired. Tired and scared.

“Does he have any interests?” he said. I saw he had folded the paper. “My boys, for example, they will do anything for American
action films, especially with that Arnold Whatsanegger—”

“The mosque!” I said. “The big mosque.” I remembered the way the mosque had jolted Sohrab from his stupor when we’d driven
by it, how he’d leaned out of the window looking at it.

“Shah Faisal?”

“Yes. Can you take me there?”

“Did you know it’s the biggest mosque in the world?” he asked.

“No, but—”

“The courtyard alone can fit forty thousand people.”

“Can you take me there?”

“It’s only a kilometer from here,” he said. But he was already pushing away from the counter.

“I’ll pay you for the ride,” I said.

He sighed and shook his head. “Wait here.” He disappeared into the back room, returned wearing another pair of eyeglasses,
a set of keys in hand, and with a short, chubby woman in an orange sari trailing him. She took his seat behind the counter.
“I don’t take your money,” he said, blowing by me. “I will drive you because I am a father like you.”

I THOUGHT WE’D END UP DRIVING around the city until night fell. I saw myself calling the police, describing Sohrab to them
under Fayyaz’s reproachful glare. I heard the officer, his voice tired and uninterested, asking his obligatory questions.
And beneath the official questions, an unofficial one: Who the hell cared about another dead Afghan kid?

But we found him about a hundred yards from the mosque, sitting in the half-full parking lot, on an island of grass. Fayyaz
pulled up to the island and let me out. “I have to get back,” he said.

“That’s fine. We’ll walk back,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Fayyaz. Really.”

He leaned across the front seat when I got out. “Can I say something to you?”

“Sure.”

In the dark of twilight, his face was just a pair of eyeglasses reflecting the fading light. “The thing about you Afghanis
is that . . . well, you people are a little reckless.”

I was tired and in pain. My jaws throbbed. And those damn wounds on my chest and stomach felt like barbed wire under my skin.
But I started to laugh anyway.

“What . . . what did I . . .” Fayyaz was saying, but I was cackling by then, full-throated bursts of laughter spilling through
my wired mouth.

“Crazy people,” he said. His tires screeched when he peeled away, his taillights blinking red in the dimming light.

“YOU GAVE ME A GOOD SCARE,” I said. I sat beside him, wincing with pain as I bent.

He was looking at the mosque. Shah Faisal Mosque was shaped like a giant tent. Cars came and went; worshipers dressed in white
streamed in and out. We sat in silence, me leaning against the tree, Sohrab next to me, knees to his chest. We listened to
the call to prayer, watched the building’s hundreds of lights come on as daylight faded. The mosque sparkled like a diamond
in the dark. It lit up the sky, Sohrab’s face.

“Have you ever been to Mazar-i-Sharif?” Sohrab said, his chin resting on his kneecaps.

“A long time ago. I don’t remember it much.”

“Father took me there when I was little. Mother and Sasa came along too. Father bought me a monkey from the bazaar. Not a
real one but the kind you have to blow up. It was brown and had a bow tie.”

“I might have had one of those when I was a kid.”

“Father took me to the Blue Mosque,” Sohrab said. “I remember there were so many pigeons outside the
masjid,
and they weren’t afraid of people. They came right up to us. Sasa gave me little pieces of
naan
and I fed the birds. Soon, there were pigeons cooing all around me. That was fun.”

“You must miss your parents very much,” I said. I wondered if he’d seen the Taliban drag his parents out into the street.
I hoped he hadn’t.

“Do you miss your parents?” he aked, resting his cheek on his knees, looking up at me.

“Do I miss my parents? Well, I never met my mother. My father died a few years ago, and, yes, I do miss him. Sometimes a lot.”

“Do you remember what he looked like?”

I thought of Baba’s thick neck, his black eyes, his unruly brown hair. Sitting on his lap had been like sitting on a pair
of tree trunks. “I remember what he looked like,” I said. “What he smelled like too.”

“I’m starting to forget their faces,” Sohrab said. “Is that bad?”

“No,” I said. “Time does that.” I thought of something. I looked in the front pocket of my coat. Found the Polaroid snapshot
of Hassan and Sohrab. “Here,” I said.

He brought the photo to within an inch of his face, turned it so the light from the mosque fell on it. He looked at it for
a long time. I thought he might cry, but he didn’t. He just held it in both hands, traced his thumb over its surface. I thought
of a line I’d read somewhere, or maybe I’d heard someone say it: There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.
He stretched his hand to give it back to me.

“Keep it,” I said. “It’s yours.”

“Thank you.” He looked at the photo again and stowed it in the pocket of his vest. A horse-drawn cart
clip-clopped
by in the parking lot. Little bells dangled from the horse’s neck and jingled with each step.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about mosques lately,” Sohrab said.

“You have? What about them?”

He shrugged. “Just thinking about them.” He lifted his face, looked straight at me. Now he was crying, softly, silently. “Can
I ask you something, Amir agha?”

“Of course.”

“Will God . . .” he began, and choked a little. “Will God put me in hell for what I did to that man?”

I reached for him and he flinched. I pulled back. “Nay. Of course not,” I said. I wanted to pull him close, hold him, tell
him the world had been unkind to
him,
not the other way around.

His face twisted and strained to stay composed. “Father used to say it’s wrong to hurt even bad people. Because they don’t
know any better, and because bad people sometimes become good.”

“Not always, Sohrab.”

He looked at me questioningly.

“The man who hurt you, I knew him from many years ago,” I said. “I guess you figured that out that from the conversation he
and I had. He . . . he tried to hurt me once when I was your age, but your father saved me. Your father was very brave and
he was always rescuing me from trouble, standing up for me. So one day the bad man hurt your father instead. He hurt him in
a very bad way, and I . . . I couldn’t save your father the way he had saved me.”

“Why did people want to hurt my father?” Sohrab said in a wheezy little voice. “He was never mean to anyone.”

“You’re right. Your father was a good man. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sohrab jan. That there are bad people in
this world, and sometimes bad people stay bad. Sometimes you have to stand up to them. What you did to that man is what I
should have done to him all those years ago. You gave him what he deserved, and he deserved even more.”

“Do you think Father is disappointed in me?”

“I know he’s not,” I said. “You saved my life in Kabul. I know he is very proud of you for that.”

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. It burst a bubble of spittle that had formed on his lips. He buried his face
in his hands and wept a long time before he spoke again. “I miss Father, and Mother too,” he croaked. “And I miss Sasa and
Rahim Khan sahib. But sometimes I’m glad they’re not . . . they’re not here anymore.”

“Why?” I touched his arm. He drew back.

“Because—” he said, gasping and hitching between sobs, “because I don’t want them to see me . . . I’m so dirty.” He sucked
in his breath and let it out in a long, wheezy cry. “I’m so dirty and full of sin.”