Page 121 - The Kite Runner

TEN

March 1981

A young woman sat across from us. She was dressed in an olive
green dress with a black shawl wrapped tightly around her face
against the night chill. She burst into prayer every time the truck
jerked or stumbled into a pothole, her “Bismillah!” peaking with
each of the truck’s shudders and jolts. Her husband, a burly man
in baggy pants and sky blue turban, cradled an infant in one arm
and thumbed prayer beads with his free hand. His lips moved in
silent prayer. There were others, in all about a dozen, including
Baba and me, sitting with our suitcases between our legs,
cramped with these strangers in the tarpaulin-covered cab of an
old Russian truck.
My innards had been roiling since we’d left Kabul just after
two in the morning. Baba never said so, but I knew he saw my car
sickness as yet another of my array of weakness—I saw it on his
embarrassed face the couple of times my stomach had clenched
so badly I had moaned. When the burly guy with the beads—the