The Kite Runner (9 page)

HASSAN MILLED ABOUT the periphery of my life after that. I made sure our paths crossed as little as possible, planned my day
that way. Because when he was around, the oxygen seeped out of the room. My chest tightened and I couldn’t draw enough air;
I’d stand there, gasping in my own little airless bubble of atmosphere. But even when he wasn’t around, he was. He was there
in the hand-washed and ironed clothes on the cane-seat chair, in the warm slippers left outside my door, in the wood already
burning in the stove when I came down for breakfast. Everywhere I turned, I saw signs of his loyalty, his goddamn unwavering
loyalty.

Early that spring, a few days before the new school year started, Baba and I were planting tulips in the garden. Most of the
snow had melted and the hills in the north were already dotted with patches of green grass. It was a cool, gray morning, and
Baba was squatting next to me, digging the soil and planting the bulbs I handed to him. He was telling me how most people
thought it was better to plant tulips in the fall and how that wasn’t true, when I came right out and said it. “Baba, have
you ever thought about getting new servants?”

He dropped the tulip bulb and buried the trowel in the dirt. Took off his gardening gloves. I’d startled him. “
Chi?
What did you say?”

“I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“Why would I ever want to do that?” Baba said curtly.

“You wouldn’t, I guess. It was just a question,” I said, my voice fading to a murmur. I was already sorry I’d said it.

“Is this about you and Hassan? I know there’s something going on between you two, but whatever it is, you have to deal with
it, not me. I’m staying out of it.”

“I’m sorry, Baba.”

He put on his gloves again. “I grew up with Ali,” he said through clenched teeth. “My father took him in, he loved Ali like
his own son. Forty years Ali’s been with my family. Forty goddamn years. And you think I’m just going to throw him out?” He
turned to me now, his face as red as a tulip. “I’ve never laid a hand on you, Amir, but you ever say that again . . .” He
looked away, shaking his head. “You bring me shame. And Hassan . . . Hassan’s not going anywhere, do you understand?”

I looked down and picked up a fistful of cool soil. Let it pour between my fingers.

“I said, Do you understand?” Baba roared.

I flinched. “Yes, Baba.”

“Hassan’s not going anywhere,” Baba snapped. He dug a new hole with the trowel, striking the dirt harder than he had to. “He’s
staying right here with us, where he belongs. This is his home and we’re his family. Don’t you ever ask me that question again!”

“I won’t, Baba. I’m sorry.”

We planted the rest of the tulips in silence.

I was relieved when school started that next week. Students with new notebooks and sharpened pencils in hand ambled about
the courtyard, kicking up dust, chatting in groups, waiting for the class captains’ whistles. Baba drove down the dirt lane
that led to the entrance. The school was an old two-story building with broken windows and dim, cobblestone hallways, patches
of its original dull yellow paint still showing between sloughing chunks of plaster. Most of the boys walked to school, and
Baba’s black Mustang drew more than one envious look. I should have been beaming with pride when he dropped me off—the old
me would have—but all I could muster was a mild form of embarrassment. That and emptiness. Baba drove away without saying
good-bye.

I bypassed the customary comparing of kite-fighting scars and stood in line. The bell rang and we marched to our assigned
class, filed in in pairs. I sat in the back row. As the Farsi teacher handed out our textbooks, I prayed for a heavy load
of homework.

School gave me an excuse to stay in my room for long hours. And, for a while, it took my mind off what had happened that winter,
what I had
let
happen. For a few weeks, I preoccupied myself with gravity and momentum, atoms and cells, the Anglo-Afghan wars, instead of
thinking about Hassan and what had happened to him. But, always, my mind returned to the alley. To Hassan’s brown corduroy
pants lying on the bricks. To the droplets of blood staining the snow dark red, almost black.

One sluggish, hazy afternoon early that summer, I asked Hassan to go up the hill with me. Told him I wanted to read him a
new story I’d written. He was hanging clothes to dry in the yard and I saw his eagerness in the harried way he finished the
job.

We climbed the hill, making small talk. He asked about school, what I was learning, and I talked about my teachers, especially
the mean math teacher who punished talkative students by sticking a metal rod between their fingers and then squeezing them
together. Hassan winced at that, said he hoped I’d never have to experience it. I said I’d been lucky so far, knowing that
luck had nothing to do with it. I had done my share of talking in class too. But my father was rich and everyone knew him,
so I was spared the metal rod treatment.

We sat against the low cemetery wall under the shade thrown by the pomegranate tree. In another month or two, crops of scorched
yellow weeds would blanket the hillside, but that year the spring showers had lasted longer than usual, nudging their way
into early summer, and the grass was still green, peppered with tangles of wildflowers. Below us, Wazir Akbar Khan’s white-walled,
flat-topped houses gleamed in the sunshine, the laundry hanging on clotheslines in their yards stirred by the breeze to dance
like butterflies.

We had picked a dozen pomegranates from the tree. I unfolded the story I’d brought along, turned to the first page, then put
it down. I stood up and picked up an overripe pomegranate that had fallen to the ground.

“What would you do if I hit you with this?” I said, tossing the fruit up and down.

Hassan’s smile wilted. He looked older than I’d remembered. No, not older,
old.
Was that possible? Lines had etched into his tanned face and creases framed his eyes, his mouth. I might as well have taken
a knife and carved those lines myself.

“What would you do?” I repeated.

The color fell from his face. Next to him, the stapled pages of the story I’d promised to read him fluttered in the breeze.
I hurled the pomegranate at him. It struck him in the chest, exploded in a spray of red pulp. Hassan’s cry was pregnant with
surprise and pain.

“Hit me back!” I snapped. Hassan looked from the stain on his chest to me.

“Get up! Hit me!” I said. Hassan
did
get up, but he just stood there, looking dazed like a man dragged into the ocean by a riptide when, just a moment ago, he
was enjoying a nice stroll on the beach.

I hit him with another pomegranate, in the shoulder this time. The juice splattered his face. “Hit me back!” I spat. “Hit
me back, goddamn you!” I wished he would. I wished he’d give me the punishment I craved, so maybe I’d finally sleep at night.
Maybe then things could return to how they used to be between us. But Hassan did nothing as I pelted him again and again.
“You’re a coward!” I said. “Nothing but a goddamn coward!”

I don’t know how many times I hit him. All I know is that, when I finally stopped, exhausted and panting, Hassan was smeared
in red like he’d been shot by a firing squad. I fell to my knees, tired, spent, frustrated.

Then Hassan
did
pick up a pomegranate. He walked toward me. He opened it and crushed it against his own forehead. “There,” he croaked, red
dripping down his face like blood. “Are you satisfied? Do you feel better?” He turned around and started down the hill.

I let the tears break free, rocked back and forth on my knees. “What am I going to do with you, Hassan? What am I going to
do with you?” But by the time the tears dried up and I trudged down the hill, I knew the answer to that question.

I TURNED THIRTEEN that summer of 1976, Afghanistan’s next to last summer of peace and anonymity. Things between Baba and me
were already cooling off again. I think what started it was the stupid comment I’d made the day we were planting tulips, about
getting new servants. I regretted saying it—I really did—but I think even if I hadn’t, our happy little interlude would have
come to an end. Maybe not quite so soon, but it would have. By the end of the summer, the scraping of spoon and fork against
the plate had replaced dinner table chatter and Baba had resumed retreating to his study after supper. And closing the door.
I’d gone back to thumbing through Hãfez and Khayyám, gnawing my nails down to the cuticles, writing stories. I kept the stories
in a stack under my bed, keeping them just in case, though I doubted Baba would ever again ask me to read them to him. Baba’s
motto about throwing parties was this: Invite the whole world or it’s not a party. I remember scanning over the invitation
list a week before my birthday party and not recognizing at least three-quarters of the four hundred–plus Kakas and Khalas
who were going to bring me gifts and congratulate me for having lived to thirteen. Then I realized they weren’t really coming
for me. It was my birthday, but I knew who the real star of the show was.

For days, the house was teeming with Baba’s hired help. There was Salahuddin the butcher, who showed up with a calf and two
sheep in tow, refusing payment for any of the three. He slaughtered the animals himself in the yard by a poplar tree. “Blood
is good for the tree,” I remember him saying as the grass around the poplar soaked red. Men I didn’t know climbed the oak
trees with coils of small electric bulbs and meters of extension cords. Others set up dozens of tables in the yard, spread
a tablecloth on each. The night before the big party Baba’s friend Del-Muhammad, who owned a kabob house in Shar-e-Nau, came
to the house with his bags of spices. Like the butcher, Del-Muhammad—or Dello, as Baba called him—refused payment for his
services. He said Baba had done enough for his family already. It was Rahim Khan who whispered to me, as Dello marinated the
meat, that Baba had lent Dello the money to open his restaurant. Baba had refused repayment until Dello had shown up one day
in our driveway in a Benz and insisted he wouldn’t leave until Baba took his money.

I guess in most ways, or at least in the ways in which parties are judged, my birthday bash was a huge success. I’d never
seen the house so packed. Guests with drinks in hand were chatting in the hallways, smoking on the stairs, leaning against
doorways. They sat where they found space, on kitchen counters, in the foyer, even under the stairwell. In the backyard, they
mingled under the glow of blue, red, and green lights winking in the trees, their faces illuminated by the light of kerosene
torches propped everywhere. Baba had had a stage built on the balcony that overlooked the garden and planted speakers throughout
the yard. Ahmad Zahir was playing an accordion and singing on the stage over masses of dancing bodies.

I had to greet each of the guests personally—Baba made sure of that; no one was going to gossip the next day about how he’d
raised a son with no manners. I kissed hundreds of cheeks, hugged total strangers, thanked them for their gifts. My face ached
from the strain of my plastered smile.

I was standing with Baba in the yard near the bar when someone said, “Happy birthday, Amir.” It was Assef, with his parents.
Assef ’s father, Mahmood, was a short, lanky sort with dark skin and a narrow face. His mother, Tanya, was a small, nervous
woman who smiled and blinked a lot. Assef was standing between the two of them now, grinning, looming over both, his arms
resting on their shoulders. He led them toward us, like
he
had brought
them
here. Like he was the parent, and they his children. A wave of dizziness rushed through me. Baba thanked them for coming.

“I picked out your present myself,” Assef said. Tanya’s face twitched and her eyes flicked from Assef to me. She smiled, unconvincingly,
and blinked. I wondered if Baba had noticed.

“Still playing soccer, Assef jan?” Baba said. He’d always wanted me to be friends with Assef.

Assef smiled. It was creepy how genuinely sweet he made it look. “Of course, Kaka jan.”

“Right wing, as I recall?”

“Actually, I switched to center forward this year,” Assef said. “You get to score more that way. We’re playing the Mekro-Rayan
team next week. Should be a good match. They have some good players.”

Baba nodded. “You know, I played center forward too when I was young.”

“I’ll bet you still could if you wanted to,” Assef said. He favored Baba with a good-natured wink.

Baba returned the wink. “I see your father has taught you his world-famous flattering ways.” He elbowed Assef ’s father, almost
knocked the little fellow down. Mahmood’s laughter was about as convincing as Tanya’s smile, and suddenly I wondered if maybe,
on some level, their son frightened them. I tried to fake a smile, but all I could manage was a feeble upturning of the corners
of my mouth—my stomach was turning at the sight of my father bonding with Assef.

Assef shifted his eyes to me. “Wali and Kamal are here too. They wouldn’t miss your birthday for anything,” he said, laughter
lurking just beneath the surface. I nodded silently.

“We’re thinking about playing a little game of volleyball tomorrow at my house,” Assef said. “Maybe you’ll join us. Bring
Hassan if you want to.”

“That sounds fun,” Baba said, beaming. “What do you think, Amir?”

“I don’t really like volleyball,” I muttered. I saw the light wink out of Baba’s eyes and an uncomfortable silence followed.

“Sorry, Assef jan,” Baba said, shrugging. That stung, his apologizing for me.

“Nay, no harm done,” Assef said. “But you have an open invitation, Amir jan. Anyway, I heard you like to read so I brought
you a book. One of my favorites.” He extended a wrapped birthday gift to me. “Happy birthday.”

He was dressed in a cotton shirt and blue slacks, a red silk tie and shiny black loafers. He smelled of cologne and his blond
hair was neatly combed back. On the surface, he was the embodiment of every parent’s dream, a strong, tall, well-dressed and
well-mannered boy with talent and striking looks, not to mention the wit to joke with an adult. But to me, his eyes betrayed
him. When I looked into them, the facade faltered, revealed a glimpse of the madness hiding behind them.