Page 92 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 81

face. “Lately, it seems all he wants to do is sleep. He does his
chores—I see to that—but then he just wants to crawl under his
blanket. Can I ask you something?”
“If you have to.”
“After that kite tournament, he came home a little bloodied
and his shirt was torn. I asked him what had happened and he
said it was nothing, that he’d gotten into a little scuffle with some
kids over the kite.”
I didn’t say anything. Just kept pushing the egg around on my
plate.
“Did something happen to him, Amir agha? Something he’s
not telling me?”
I shrugged. “How should I know?”
“You would tell me, nay? Inshallah, you would tell me if some-
thing had happened?”
“Like I said, how should I know what’s wrong with him?” I
snapped. “Maybe he’s sick. People get sick all the time, Ali. Now,
am I going to freeze to death or are you planning on lighting the
stove today?”

That night I asked Baba if we could go to Jalalabad on Friday.
He was rocking on the leather swivel chair behind his desk, read-
ing a newspaper. He put it down, took off the reading glasses I dis-
liked so much—Baba wasn’t old, not at all, and he had lots of
years left to live, so why did he have to wear those stupid glasses?
“Why not!” he said. Lately, Baba agreed to everything I asked.
Not only that, just two nights before, he’d asked me if I wanted to
see El Cid with Charlton Heston at Cinema Aryana. “Do you want
to ask Hassan to come along to Jalalabad?”