Page 158 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 147

By Afghan standards, my question had been bold. With it, I
had bared myself, and left little doubt as to my interest in her. But
I was a man, and all I had risked was a bruised ego. Bruises
healed. Reputations did not. Would she take my dare?
She turned the book so the cover faced me. Wuthering
Heights. “Have you read it?” she said.
I nodded. I could feel the pulsating beat of my heart behind
my eyes. “It’s a sad story.”
“Sad stories make good books,” she said.
“They do.”
“I heard you write.”
How did she know? I wondered if her father had told her,
maybe she had asked him. I immediately dismissed both scenarios
as absurd. Fathers and sons could talk freely about women. But no
Afghan girl—no decent and mohtaram Afghan girl, at least—
queried her father about a young man. And no father, especially a
Pashtun with nang and namoos, would discuss a mojarad with his
daughter, not unless the fellow in question was a khastegar, a
suitor, who had done the honorable thing and sent his father to
knock on the door.
Incredibly, I heard myself say, “Would you like to read one of
my stories?”
“I would like that,” she said. I sensed an unease in her now, saw
it in the way her eyes began to flick side to side. Maybe checking for
the general. I wondered what he would say if he found me speaking
for such an inappropriate length of time with his daughter.
“Maybe I’ll bring you one someday,” I said. I was about to say
more when the woman I’d seen on occasion with Soraya came
walking up the aisle. She was carrying a plastic bag full of fruit.
When she saw us, her eyes bounced from Soraya to me and back.
She smiled.