Page 80 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 69

bow their heads west in prayer. Hassan never missed any of the
five daily prayers. Even when we were out playing, he’d excuse
himself, draw water from the well in the yard, wash up, and dis-
appear into the hut. He’d come out a few minutes later, smiling,
find me sitting against the wall or perched on a tree. He was going
to miss prayer tonight, though, because of me.
The bazaar was emptying quickly, the merchants finishing up
their haggling for the day. I trotted in the mud between rows of
closely packed cubicles where you could buy a freshly slaughtered
pheasant in one stand and a calculator from the adjacent one. I
picked my way through the dwindling crowd, the lame beggars
dressed in layers of tattered rags, the vendors with rugs on their
shoulders, the cloth merchants and butchers closing shop for the
day. I found no sign of Hassan.
I stopped by a dried fruit stand, described Hassan to an old
merchant loading his mule with crates of pine seeds and raisins.
He wore a powder blue turban.
He paused to look at me for a long time before answering. “I
might have seen him.”
“Which way did he go?”
He eyed me up and down. “What is a boy like you doing here
at this time of the day looking for a Hazara?” His glance lingered
admiringly on my leather coat and my jeans—cowboy pants, we
used to call them. In Afghanistan, owning anything American,
especially if it wasn’t secondhand, was a sign of wealth.
“I need to find him, Agha.”
“What is he to you?” he said. I didn’t see the point of his ques-
tion, but I reminded myself that impatience wasn’t going to make
him tell me any faster.
“He’s our servant’s son,” I said.