Page 136 - The Kite Runner

ELEVEN

Fremont, California. 1980s

Baba loved the idea of America.
It was living in America that gave him an ulcer.
I remember the two of us walking through Lake Elizabeth
Park in Fremont, a few streets down from our apartment, and
watching boys at batting practice, little girls giggling on the
swings in the playground. Baba would enlighten me with his poli-
tics during those walks with long-winded dissertations. “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.”
The bit about Israel used to draw the ire of Afghans in Fre-
mont who accused him of being pro-Jewish and, de facto, anti-
Islam. Baba would meet them for tea and rowt cake at the park,
drive them crazy with his politics. “What they don’t understand,”
he’d tell me later, “is that religion has nothing to do with it.” In
Baba’s view, Israel was an island of “real men” in a sea of Arabs