Page 95 - The Kite Runner

84 Khaled Hosseini

“A hundred kites, Homayoun jan. No laaf. And the only one
still flying at the end of the day was Amir’s. He has the last kite at
home, a beautiful blue kite. Hassan and Amir ran it together.”
“Congratulations,” Kaka Homayoun said. His first wife, the
one with the warts, clapped her hands. “Wah wah, Amir jan, we’re
all so proud of you!” she said. The younger wife joined in. Then
they were all clapping, yelping their praises, telling me how proud
I’d made them all. Only Rahim Khan, sitting in the passenger seat
next to Baba, was silent. He was looking at me in an odd way.
“Please pull over, Baba,” I said.
“What?”
“Getting sick,” I muttered, leaning across the seat, pressing
against Kaka Homayoun’s daughters.
Fazila/Karima’s face twisted. “Pull over, Kaka! His face is yel-
low! I don’t want him throwing up on my new dress!” she
squealed.
Baba began to pull over, but I didn’t make it. A few minutes
later, I was sitting on a rock on the side of the road as they aired
out the van. Baba was smoking with Kaka Homayoun who was
telling Fazila/Karima to stop crying; he’d buy her another dress in
Jalalabad. I closed my eyes, turned my face to the sun. Little
shapes formed behind my eyelids, like hands playing shadows on
the wall. They twisted, merged, formed a single image: Hassan’s
brown corduroy pants discarded on a pile of old bricks in the alley.

Kaka Homayoun’s white, two-story house in Jalalabad
had a balcony overlooking a large, walled garden with apple and
persimmon trees. There were hedges that, in the summer, the gar-
dener shaped like animals, and a swimming pool with emerald-
colored tiles. I sat on the edge of the pool, empty save for a layer