The Kite Runner

One day last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come see him

When we were children, Hassan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the driveway of my father's house and annoy our neighbors by reflecting sunlight into their homes with a shard of mirror.

Sometimes, up in those trees, I talked Hassan into firing walnuts with his slingshot at the neighbor's one-­‐eyed German shepherd. Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, really asked, he wouldn't deny me. Hassan never denied me anything.

Hassan's father, Ali

Hassan would mumble, looking down at his feet. But he never told on me.

Here was Baba and his best friend and business partner, Rahim Khan

On the south end of the garden, in the shadows of a loquat tree, was the servants' home, a modest little mud hut where Hassan lived with his father.

The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi'a.

Hassan and I fed from the same breasts. We took our first steps on the same lawn in the same yard. And, under the same roof, we spoke our first words. Mine was Baba. His was Amir. My name

In the late 1960s, when I was five or six, Baba decided to build an orphanage.

He asked me to fetch Hassan too, but I lied and told him Hassan had the runs. I wanted Baba all to myself.

When Baba ended his speech, people stood up and cheered. They clapped for a long time. Afterward, people shook his hand. Some of them tousled my hair and shook my hand too. I was so proud of Baba, of us.

Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can't love a person who lives that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.

I mean to speak to you man to man. Do you think you can handle that for once?

When you kill a man, you steal a life," Baba said. "You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?

fathering a son who preferred burying his face in poetry books to hunting... well, that wasn't how Baba had envisioned it, I suppose

And where is he headed?" Baba said. "A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything."

Most days I worshiped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body

Baba's car peeled into the driveway. His door slammed shut and his running footsteps pounded the stairs. Then he appeared in the doorway and I saw something on his face. Something I didn't recognize right away because I'd never seen it before: fear. "Amir! Hassan!

His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood." He made a sweeping, grandiose gesture with his hands. "Afghanistan for Pashtuns, I say. That's my vision."

Winter to me was the end of long division and naming the capital of Bulgaria, and the start of three months of playing cards by the stove with Hassan

If I changed my mind and asked for a bigger and fancier kite, Baba would buy it for me-­‐-­‐but then he'd buy it for Hassan too. Sometimes I wished he wouldn't do that. Wished he'd let me be the favorite.

Maybe he'd call me Amir jan like Rahim Khan did. And maybe, just maybe, I would finally be pardoned for killing my mother.

Then he stepped toward me and, in a low voice, said something that scared me a little. "Remember, Amir agha. There's no monster, just a beautiful day." How could I be such an open book to him when, half the time, I had no idea what was milling around in his head? I was the one who went to school, the one who could read, write. I was the smart one. Hassan couldn't read a first grade textbook but he'd read me plenty.

We won! We won!" was all I could say. This wasn't happening. In a moment, I'd blink and rouse from this beautiful dream, get out of bed, march down to the kitchen to eat breakfast with no one to talk to but Hassan. Get dressed. Wait for Baba. Give up. Back to my old life. Then I saw Baba on our roof. He was standing on the edge, pumping both of his fists. Hollering and clapping. And that right there was the single greatest moment of my twelve years of life, seeing Baba on that roof, proud of me at last

Then he charged. Hassan hurled the rock. It struck Assef in the forehead. Assef yelped as he flung himself at Hassan, knocking him to the ground. Wali and Kamal followed.

One was the blue kite resting against the wall, close to the cast-­‐iron stove; the other was Hassan's brown corduroy pants thrown on a heap of eroded bricks

In the end, I ran. I ran because I was a coward. I was afraid of Assef and what he would do to me. I was afraid of getting hurt. That's what I told myself as I turned my back to the alley, to Hassan.

Nothing was free in this world. Maybe Hassan was the price I had to pay, the lamb I had to slay, to win Baba. Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn't he?

I put the kite down and walked into his thick hairy arms. I buried my face in the warmth of his chest and wept. Baba held me close to him, rocking me back and forth. In his arms, I forgot what I'd done.

I finally had what I'd wanted all those years. Except now that I had it, I felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

I want you to stop harassing me. I want you to go away," I snapped. I wished he would give it right back to me, break the door open and tell me off-­‐-­‐it would have made things easier, better.

Life here is impossible for us now, Agha sahib. We're leaving." Ali drew Hassan to him, curled his arm around his son's shoulder. It was a protective gesture and I knew whom Ali was protecting him from. Ali glanced my way and in his cold, unforgiving look, I saw that Hassan had told him.

Do you have to always be the hero? I thought, my heart fluttering. Can't you just let it go for once? But I knew he couldn't-­‐-­‐it wasn't in his nature. The problem was, his nature was going to get us all killed.

WE RODE IN SILENCE for about fifteen minutes before the young woman's husband suddenly stood and did something I'd seen many others do before him: He kissed Baba's hand.

Karim told us it should be a matter of a couple of short days before the truck was fixed. Then we'd be on our way to Peshawar. On to freedom. On to safety

Something good. Something happy. I let my mind wander. I let it come: Friday afternoon in Paghman. An open field of grass speckled with mulberry trees in blossom. Hassan and I stand ankle-­‐deep in untamed grass, I am tugging on the line, the spool spinning in Hassan's calloused hands, our eyes turned up to the kite in the sky.

My eyes returned to our suitcases. They made me sad for Baba. After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life: one disappointing son and two suitcases.

There are only three real men in this world, Amir," he'd say. He'd count them off on his fingers: America the brash savior, Britain, and Israel. "The rest of them-­‐-­‐" he used to wave his hand and make a phht sound "-­‐-­‐they're like gossiping old women."

Baba exclaimed with disgust. "Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won't come swim in your pool." Baba believed Carter had unwittingly done more for communism than Leonid Brezhnev. "He's not fit to run this country. It's like putting a boy who can't ride a bike behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac."

He sulked and smoked on the balcony while I made rice with chicken neck stew. A year and a half since we'd stepped off the Boeing from Peshawar, and Baba was still adjusting

THAT SUMMER OF 1983, I graduated from high school at the age of twenty, by far the oldest senior tossing his mortarboard on the football field that day.

When we left, everyone was sad to see him go. Kabul, Peshawar, Hayward. Same old Baba, I thought, smiling.

America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins

By that summer, Afghan families were working an entire section of the San Jose flea market. Afghan music played in the aisles of the Used Goods section. There was an unspoken code of behavior among Afghans at the flea market: You greeted the guy across the aisle, you invited him for a bite of potato bolani or a little qabuli, and you chatted.

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.

Afghan men, especially those from reputable families, were fickle creatures. A whisper here, an insinuation there, and they fled like startled birds.

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."

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."

"As you can see, the cancer's metastasized," he said. "He'll have to take steroids to reduce the swelling in his brain and anti-­‐seizure medications. And I'd recommend palliative radiation. Do you know what that means?"

I want you to go khastegari. I want you to ask General Taheri for his daughter's hand."

General Sahib, I'm calling to ask if I may pay you and Khanum Taheri a visit tomorrow morning. It's an honorable matter... Yes... Eleven o'clock is just fine. Until then. Khoda hafez."

I envied her. Her secret was out. Spoken. Dealt with. I opened my mouth and almost told her how I'd betrayed Hassan, lied, driven him out, and destroyed a forty-­‐year relationship between Baba and Ali. But I didn't. I suspected there were many ways in which Soraya Taheri was a better person than me. Courage was just one of them

Baba cleared his own throat. When he began, he couldn't speak in complete sentences without stopping to breathe. "General Sahib, Khanum Jamila jan... it's with great humility that my son and I... have come to your home today. You are... honorable people... from distinguished and reputable families and... proud lineage. I come with nothing but the utmost ihtiram... and the highest regards for you, your family names, and the memory... of your ancestors." He stopped. Caught his breath. Wiped his brow. "Amir jan is my only son... my only child, and he has been a good son to me. I hope he proves... worthy of your kindness. I ask that you honor Amir jan and me... and accept my son into your family."

He rented a large Afghan banquet hall in Fremont-­‐-­‐the man who owned it knew him from Kabul and gave him a substantial discount. Baba paid for the chilas, our matching wedding bands, and for the diamond ring I picked out. He bought my tuxedo, and my traditional green suit for the nika-­‐-­‐the swearing ceremony.

The wedding song, ahesta boro, blared from the speakers, the same song the Russian soldier at the Mahipar checkpoint had sung the night Baba and I left Kabul: Make morning into a key and throw it into the well, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. Let the morning sun forget to rise in the east, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.

Soraya dedicated herself to taking care of my father. She made his toast and tea in the morning, and helped him in and out of bed. She gave him his pain pills, washed his clothes, read him the international section of the newspaper every afternoon, She cooked his favorite dish, potato shorwa, though he could scarcely eat more than a few spoonfuls, and took him out every day for a brief walk around the block

Not tonight," he said. "There is no pain tonight."

After each round of prayers, groups of mourners lined up and greeted me on their way out. Dutifully, I shook their hands. Many of them I barely knew. I smiled politely, thanked them for their wishes, listened to whatever they had to say about Baba

Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I was, had been defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people's lives. My whole life, I had been "Baba's son." Now he was gone. Baba couldn't show me the way anymore; I'd have to find it on my own

I learned that he had kept his family on welfare and had never held a job in the U.S., preferring to cash government-­‐issued checks than degrading himself with work unsuitable for a man of his stature-­‐-­‐he saw the flea market only as a hobby, a way to socialize with his fellow Afghans. The general believed that, sooner or later, Afghanistan would be freed, the monarchy restored, and his services would once again be called upon.

But I think a big part of the reason I didn't care about Soraya's past was that I had one of my own. I knew all about regret

It was in the Pine-­‐Sol-­‐scented office of that furniture warehouse that I began my first novel

I sent query letters to a dozen agencies and was stunned one August day when I opened our mailbox and found a request from a New York agency for the completed manuscript.

t should have been a time of glory for Afghans. Instead, the war raged on, this time between Afghans, the Mujahedin, against the Soviet puppet government of Najibullah, and Afghan refugees kept flocking to Pakistan. That was the year that the cold war ended, the year the Berlin Wall came down. It was the year of Tiananmen Square. In the midst of it all, Afghanistan was forgotten.

He sat across from us, tapped his desk with his fingers, and used the word "adoption" for the first time. Soraya cried all the way home.

We all had our reasons for not adopting. Soraya had hers, the general his, and I had this: that perhaps something, someone, somewhere, had decided to deny me fatherhood for the things I had done. Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. It wasn't meant to be, Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.

Come. There is a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said on the phone just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as an afterthought.

dreamed of Hassan running in the snow, the hem of his green chapan dragging behind him, snow crunching under his black rubber boots. He was yelling over his shoulder: For you, a thousand times over

I remembered Peshawar pretty well from the few months Baba and I had spent there in 1981

I thought about the last time I had seen Rahim Khan, in 1981. He had come to say good-­‐bye the night Baba and I had fled Kabul. I remember Baba and him embracing in the foyer, crying softly. When Baba and I arrived in the U.S., he and Rahim Khan kept in touch. They would speak four or five times a year and, sometimes, Baba would pass me the receiver

You practically needed a visa to go from one neighborhood to the other. So people just stayed put, prayed the next rocket wouldn't hit their home." He told me how people knocked holes in the walls of their homes so they could bypass the dangerous streets and would move down the block from hole to hole

Often, we wallow too much in ghamkhori and self-­‐pity. We give in to loss, to suffering, accept it as a fact of life, even see it as necessary. Zendagi migzara, we say, life goes on. But I am not surrendering to fate here, I am being pragmatic

The truth was no. The lie was yes. I settled for something in between. "I don't know."

Hassan did and the old woman wept. "You smiled coming out of me, did anyone ever tell you? And I wouldn't even hold you. Allah forgive me, I wouldn't even hold you."

I remember Sanaubar came out of the hut holding her grandson, had him wrapped in a wool blanket. She stood beaming under a dull gray sky tears streaming down her cheeks, the needle-­‐cold wind blowing her hair, and clutching that baby in her arms like she never wanted to let go.

In the wintertime, Hassan took his son kite running. There were not nearly as many kite tournaments as in the old days-­‐-­‐no one felt safe outside for too long-­‐-­‐but there were still a few scattered tournaments. Hassan would prop Sohrab on his shoulders and they would go trotting through the streets, running kites, climbing trees where kites had dropped

Mostly, it was in the way he smiled. Looking at the photo, one might have concluded that this was a man who thought the world had been good to him. Rahim Khan was right: I would have recognized him if I had bumped into him on the street. The little boy stood bare foot, one arm wrapped around the man's thigh, his shaved head resting against his father's hip. He too was grinning and squinting

every day I thank Allah that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan

And I dream that someday you will return to Kabul to revisit the land of our childhood. If you do, you will find an old faithful friend waiting for you

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."

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?

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

How had Baba brought himself to look Ali in the eye? How had Ali lived in that house, day in and day out, knowing he had been dishonored by his master in the single worst way an Afghan man can be dishonored? And how was I going to reconcile this new image of Baba with the one that had been imprinted on my mind for so long, that of him in his old brown suit, hobbling up the Taheris' driveway to ask for Soraya's hand?

I was afraid I'd change my mind. I was afraid I'd deliberate, ruminate, agonize, rationalize, and talk myself into not going

He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. "That's the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That's the Afghanistan I know. You? You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know it."

I follow the barrel on its upward arc. I see the face behind the plume of smoke swirling from the muzzle. I am the man in the herringbone vest

I remembered Wahid's boys and... I realized something: I would not leave Afghanistan without finding Sohrab. "Tell me where he is," I said

I don't want to forget anymore," I said. "Give me ten minutes

The slingshot made a thwiiiiit sound when Sohrab released the cup. Then Assef was screaming. He put his hand where his left eye had been just a moment ago. Blood oozed between his fingers. Blood and something else, something white and gel-­‐like.

The impact had cut your upper lip in two, he had said, clean down the middle. Clean down the middle. Like a harelip

You were right all those years to suspect that I knew. I did know. Hassan told me shortly after it happened. What you did was wrong, Amir jan, but do not forget that you were a boy when it happened. A troubled little boy.

But I hope you will heed this: A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer. I hope your suffering comes to an end with this journey to Afghanistan

He loved you both, but he could not love Hassan the way he longed to, openly, and as a father. So he took it out on you instead-­‐-­‐Amir, the socially legitimate half, the half that represented the riches he had inherited and the sin-­‐ with-­‐impunity privileges that came with them. When he saw you, he saw himself. And his guilt

Sometimes, I think everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.

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."

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

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."

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.