Page 185 - The Kite Runner

174 Khaled Hosseini

lines. Men filed into the room, leaving their shoes at the entrance,
and sat cross-legged on the mattresses. A mullah chanted surrahs
from the Koran into a microphone. I sat by the door, the custom-
ary position for the family of the deceased. General Taheri was
seated next to me.
Through the open door, I could see lines of cars pulling in,
sunlight winking in their windshields. They dropped off passen-
gers, men dressed in dark suits, women clad in black dresses, their
heads covered with traditional white hijabs.
As words from the Koran reverberated through the room, I
thought of the old story of Baba wrestling a black bear in
Baluchistan. Baba had wrestled bears his whole life. Losing his
young wife. Raising a son by himself. Leaving his beloved home-
land, his watan. Poverty. Indignity. In the end, a bear had come
that he couldn’t best. But even then, he had lost on his own terms.
After each round of prayers, groups of mourners lined up and
greeted me on their way out. Dutifully, I shook their hands. Many
of them I barely knew. I smiled politely, thanked them for their
wishes, listened to whatever they had to say about Baba.
“. . . helped me build the house in Taimani . . .”
“. . . bless him . . .”
“. . . no one else to turn to and he lent me . . .”
“. . . found me a job . . . barely knew me . . .”
“. . . like a brother to me . . .”
Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I
was, had been defined by Baba and the marks he had left on
people’s lives. My whole life, I had been “Baba’s son.” Now he was
gone. Baba couldn’t show me the way anymore; I’d have to find it
on my own.
The thought of it terrified me.