Page 94 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 83

We filled three vans. I rode with Baba, Rahim Khan, Kaka
Homayoun—Baba had taught me at a young age to call any older
male Kaka, or Uncle, and any older female, Khala, or Aunt. Kaka
Homayoun’s two wives rode with us too—the pinch-faced older
one with the warts on her hands and the younger one who always
smelled of perfume and danced with her eyes close—as did Kaka
Homayoun’s twin girls. I sat in the back row, carsick and dizzy,
sandwiched between the seven-year-old twins who kept reaching
over my lap to slap at each other. The road to Jalalabad is a two-
hour trek through mountain roads winding along a steep drop,
and my stomach lurched with each hairpin turn. Everyone in the
van was talking, talking loudly and at the same time, nearly shriek-
ing, which is how Afghans talk. I asked one of the twins—Fazila or
Karima, I could never tell which was which—if she’d trade her
window seat with me so I could get fresh air on account of my car
sickness. She stuck her tongue out and said no. I told her that was
fine, but I couldn’t be held accountable for vomiting on her new
dress. A minute later, I was leaning out the window. I watched the
cratered road rise and fall, whirl its tail around the mountainside,
counted the multicolored trucks packed with squatting men lum-
bering past. I tried closing my eyes, letting the wind slap at my
cheeks, opened my mouth to swallow the clean air. I still didn’t
feel better. A finger poked me in the side. It was Fazila/Karima.
“What?” I said.
“I was just telling everyone about the tournament,” Baba said
from behind the wheel. Kaka Homayoun and his wives were smil-
ing at me from the middle row of seats.
“There must have been a hundred kites in the sky that day?”
Baba said. “Is that about right, Amir?”
“I guess so,” I mumbled.