Page 159 - The Kite Runner

148 Khaled Hosseini

“Amir jan, good to see you,” she said, unloading the bag on the
tablecloth. Her brow glistened with a sheen of sweat. Her red
hair, coiffed like a helmet, glittered in the sunlight—I could see
bits of her scalp where the hair had thinned. She had small green
eyes buried in a cabbage-round face, capped teeth, and little fin-
gers like sausages. A golden Allah rested on her chest, the chain
burrowed under the skin tags and folds of her neck. “I am Jamila,
Soraya jan’s mother.”
“Salaam, Khala jan,” I said, embarrassed, as I often was
around Afghans, that she knew me and I had no idea who she was.
“How is your father?” she said.
“He’s well, thank you.”
“You know, your grandfather, Ghazi Sahib, the judge? Now, his
uncle and my grandfather were cousins,” she said. “So you see,
we’re related.” She smiled a cap-toothed smile, and I noticed the
right side of her mouth drooping a little. Her eyes moved between
Soraya and me again.
I’d asked Baba once why General Taheri’s daughter hadn’t
married yet. No suitors, Baba said. No suitable suitors, he
amended. But he wouldn’t say more—Baba knew how lethal idle
talk could prove to a young woman’s prospects of marrying well.
Afghan men, especially those from reputable families, were fickle
creatures. A whisper here, an insinuation there, and they fled like
startled birds. So weddings had come and gone and no one had
sung ahesta boro for Soraya, no one had painted her palms with
henna, no one had held a Koran over her headdress, and it had
been General Taheri who’d danced with her at every wedding.
And now, this woman, this mother, with her heartbreakingly
eager, crooked smile and the barely veiled hope in her eyes. I
cringed a little at the position of power I’d been granted, and all