Page 98 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 87

granate tree and I knew I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come
up the hill. The words I’d carved on the tree trunk with Ali’s
kitchen knife, Amir and Hassan: The Sultans of Kabul ...I
couldn’t stand looking at them now.
He asked me to read to him from the Shahnamah and I told
him I’d changed my mind. Told him I just wanted to go back to my
room. He looked away and shrugged. We walked back down the
way we’d gone up: in silence. And for the first time in my life, I
couldn’t wait for spring.

My memory of the rest of that winter of 1975 is pretty
hazy. I remember I was fairly happy when Baba was home. We’d
eat together, go to see a film, visit Kaka Homayoun or Kaka Faruq.
Sometimes Rahim Khan came over and Baba let me sit in his
study and sip tea with them. He’d even have me read him some of
my stories. It was good and I even believed it would last. And Baba
believed it too, I think. We both should have known better. For at
least a few months after the kite tournament, Baba and I
immersed ourselves in a sweet illusion, saw each other in a way
that we never had before. We’d actually deceived ourselves into
thinking that a toy made of tissue paper, glue, and bamboo could
somehow close the chasm between us.
But when Baba was out—and he was out a lot—I closed
myself in my room. I read a book every couple of days, wrote sto-
ries, learned to draw horses. I’d hear Hassan shuffling around the
kitchen in the morning, hear the clinking of silverware, the whis-
tle of the teapot. I’d wait to hear the door shut and only then I
would walk down to eat. On my calendar, I circled the date of the
first day of school and began a countdown.
To my dismay, Hassan kept trying to rekindle things between