Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner

“No,” I breathed.

“-and order him to kneel-”

“No. God, no.”

“-and shot him in the back of the head.”

“No.”

“-Farzana came screaming and attacked them-”

“No.”

“-shot her too. Self-defense, they claimed later-”

But all I could manage was to whisper “No. No. No” over and over again.

I KEPT THINKING OF THAT DAY in 1974, in the hospital room, just after Hassan’s harelip surgery. Baba, Rahim Khan, Ali, and I had huddled around Hassan’s bed, watched him examine his new lip in a handheld mirror. Now everyone in that room was either dead or dying. Except for me.

Then I saw something else: a man dressed in a herringbone vest pressing the muzzle of his Kalashnikov to the back of Hassan’s head. The blast echoes through the street of my father’s house. Hassan slumps to the asphalt, his life of unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase.

“The Taliban moved into the house,” Rahim Khan said. “The pretext was that they had evicted a trespasser. Hassan’s and Farzana’s murders were dismissed as a case of self-defense. No one said a word about it. Most of it was fear of the Taliban, I think. But no one was going to risk anything for a pair of Hazara servants.”

“What did they do with Sohrab?” I asked. I felt tired, drained. A coughing fit gripped Rahim Khan and went on for a long time. When he finally looked up, his face was flushed and his eyes bloodshot. “I heard he’s in an orphanage somewhere in Karteh-Seh. Amir jan-” then he was coughing again. When he stopped, he looked older than a few moments before, like he was aging with each coughing fit. “Amir jan, I summoned you here because I wanted to see you before I die, but that’s not all.”

I said nothing. I think I already knew what he was going to say.

“I want you to go to Kabul. I want you to bring Sohrab here,” he said.

I struggled to find the right words. I’d barely had time to deal with the fact that Hassan was dead.

“Please hear me. I know an American pair here in Peshawar, a husband and wife named Thomas and Betty Caldwell. They are Christians and they run a small charity organization that they manage with private donations. Mostly they house and feed Afghan children who have lost their parents. I have seen the place. It’s clean and safe, the children are well cared for, and Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell are kind people. They have already told me that Sohrab would be welcome to their home and-”

“Rahim Khan, you can’t be serious.”

“Children are fragile, Amir jan. Kabul is already full of broken children and I don’t want Sohrab to become another.”

“Rahim Khan, I don’t want to go to Kabul. I can’t!” I said.

“Sohrab is a gifted little boy. We can give him a new life here, new hope, with people who would love him. Thomas agha is a good man and Betty khanum is so kind, you should see how she treats those orphans.”

“Why me? Why can’t you pay someone here to go? I’ll pay for it if it’s a matter of money.”

“It isn’t about money, Amir!” Rahim Khan roared. “I’m a dying man and I will not be insulted! It has never been about money with me, you know that. And why you? I think we both know why it has to be you, don’t we?”

I didn’t want to understand that comment, but I did. I understood it all too well. “I have a wife in America, a home, a career, and a family. Kabul is a dangerous place, you know that, and you’d have me risk everything for…” I stopped.

“You know,” Rahim Khan said, “one time, when you weren’t around, your father and I were talking. And you know how he always worried about you in those days. I remember he said to me, ‘Rahim, a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who can’t stand up to anything.’ I wonder, is that what you’ve become?”

I dropped my eyes.

“What I’m asking from you is to grant an old man his dying wish,” he said gravely.

He had gambled with that comment. Played his best card. Or so I thought then. His words hung in limbo between us, but at least he’d known what to say. I was still searching for the right words, and I was the writer in the room. Finally, I settled for this: “Maybe Baba was right.”

“I’m sorry you think that, Amir.”

I couldn’t look at him. “And you don’t?”

“If I did, I would not have asked you to come here.”

I toyed with my wedding ring. “You’ve always thought too highly of me, Rahim Khan.”

“And you’ve always been far too hard on yourself.” He hesitated. “But there’s something else. Something you don’t know.”

“Please, Rahim Khan-”

“Sanaubar wasn’t Ali’s first wife.”

Now I looked up.

“He was married once before, to a Hazara woman from the Jaghori area. This was long before you were born. They were married for three years.”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“She left him childless after three years and married a man in Khost. She bore him three daughters. That’s what I am trying to tell you.”

I began to see where he was going. But I didn’t want to hear the rest of it. I had a good life in California, pretty Victorian home with a peaked roof, a good marriage, a promising writing career, in-laws who loved me. I didn’t need any of this shit.

“Ali was sterile,” Rahim Khan said.

“No he wasn’t. He and Sanaubar had Hassan, didn’t they? They had Hassan-”

“No they didn’t,” Rahim Khan said.

“Yes they did!”

“No they didn’t, Amir.”

“Then who-”

“I think you know who.”

I felt like a man sliding down a steep cliff, clutching at shrubs and tangles of brambles and coming up empty-handed. The room was swooping up and down, swaying side to side. “Did Hassan know?” I said through lips that didn’t feel like my own. Rahim Khan closed his eyes. Shook his head.

“You bastards,” I muttered. Stood up. “You goddamn bastards!” I screamed. “All of you, you bunch of lying goddamn bastards!”

“Please sit down,” Rahim Khan said.

“How could you hide this from me? From him ?” I bellowed.

“Please think, Amir jan. It was a shameful situation. People would talk. All that a man had back then, all that he was, was his honor, his name, and if people talked… We couldn’t tell anyone, surely you can see that.” He reached for me, but I shed his hand. Headed for the door.

“Amir jan, please don’t leave.”

I opened the door and turned to him. “Why? What can you possibly say to me? I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve just found out my whole life is one big fucking lie! What can you possibly say to make things better? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing!”

And with that, I stormed out of the apartment.

The sun had almost set and left the sky swathed in smothers of purple and red. I walked down the busy, narrow street that led away from Rahim Khan’s building. The street was a noisy lane in a maze of alleyways choked with pedestrians, bicycles, and rickshaws. Billboards hung at its corners, advertising Coca-Cola and cigarettes; Lollywood movie posters displayed sultry actresses dancing with handsome, brown-skinned men in fields of marigolds.

I walked into a smoky little samovar house and ordered a cup of tea. I tilted back on the folding chair’s rear legs and rubbed my face. That feeling of sliding toward a fall was fading. But in its stead, I felt like a man who awakens in his own house and finds all the furniture rearranged, so that every familiar nook and cranny looks foreign now. Disoriented, he has to reevaluate his surroundings, reorient himself.

How could I have been so blind? The signs had been there for me to see all along; they came flying back at me now: Baba hiring Dr. Kumar to fix Hassan’s harelip. Baba never missing Hassan’s birthday. I remembered the day we were planting tulips, when I had asked Baba if he’d ever consider getting new servants. Hassan’s not going anywhere , he’d barked. He’s staying right here with us, where he belongs. This is his home and we’re his family . He had wept, wept , when Ali announced he and Hassan were leaving us.