Page 55 - The Kite Runner

44 Khaled Hosseini

of Ramadan, Kabulis dressed in their best and newest clothes and
visited their families. People hugged and kissed and greeted each
other with “Eid Mubarak.” Happy Eid. Children opened gifts and
played with dyed hard-boiled eggs.
Early that following winter of 1974, Hassan and I were play-
ing in the yard one day, building a snow fort, when Ali called him
in. “Hassan, Agha sahib wants to talk to you!” He was standing by
the front door, dressed in white, hands tucked under his armpits,
breath puffing from his mouth.
Hassan and I exchanged a smile. We’d been waiting for his call
all day: It was Hassan’s birthday. “What is it, Father, do you know?
Will you tell us?” Hassan said. His eyes were gleaming.
Ali shrugged. “Agha sahib hasn’t discussed it with me.”
“Come on, Ali, tell us,” I pressed. “Is it a drawing book? Maybe
a new pistol?”
Like Hassan, Ali was incapable of lying. Every year, he pre-
tended not to know what Baba had bought Hassan or me for our
birthdays. And every year, his eyes betrayed him and we coaxed
the goods out of him. This time, though, it seemed he was telling
the truth.
Baba never missed Hassan’s birthday. For a while, he used to
ask Hassan what he wanted, but he gave up doing that because
Hassan was always too modest to actually suggest a present. So
every winter Baba picked something out himself. He bought him a
Japanese toy truck one year, an electric locomotive and train track
set another year. The previous year, Baba had surprised Hassan
with a leather cowboy hat just like the one Clint Eastwood wore in
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—which had unseated The Mag-
nificent Seven as our favorite Western. That whole winter, Hassan
and I took turns wearing the hat, and belted out the film’s famous
music as we climbed mounds of snow and shot each other dead.