Page 96 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 85

of slushy snow at the bottom, feet dangling in. Kaka Homayoun’s
kids were playing hide-and-seek at the other end of the yard. The
women were cooking and I could smell onions frying already,
could hear the phht-phht of a pressure cooker, music, laughter.
Baba, Rahim Khan, Kaka Homayoun, and Kaka Nader were sit-
ting on the balcony, smoking. Kaka Homayoun was telling them
he’d brought the projector along to show his slides of France. Ten
years since he’d returned from Paris and he was still showing
those stupid slides.
It shouldn’t have felt this way. Baba and I were finally friends.
We’d gone to the zoo a few days before, seen Marjan the lion, and
I had hurled a pebble at the bear when no one was watching. We’d
gone to Dadkhoda’s Kabob House afterward, across from Cinema
Park, had lamb kabob with freshly baked naan from the tandoor.
Baba told me stories of his travels to India and Russia, the people
he had met, like the armless, legless couple in Bombay who’d
been married forty-seven years and raised eleven children. That
should have been fun, spending a day like that with Baba, hearing
his stories. I finally had what I’d wanted all those years. Except
now that I had it, I felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dan-
gling my legs into.
The wives and daughters served dinner—rice, kofta, and
chicken qurma—at sundown. We dined the traditional way, sitting
on cushions around the room, tablecloth spread on the floor, eat-
ing with our hands in groups of four or five from common platters.
I wasn’t hungry but sat down to eat anyway with Baba, Kaka
Faruq, and Kaka Homayoun’s two boys. Baba, who’d had a few
scotches before dinner, was still ranting about the kite tourna-
ment, how I’d outlasted them all, how I’d come home with the last
kite. His booming voice dominated the room. People raised their
heads from their platters, called out their congratulations. Kaka