Page 187 - The Kite Runner

176 Khaled Hosseini

“Yes?”
“I’m going to miss him.”
She put her hand on my lap. Baba’s chila glinted on her ring
finger. Behind her, I could see Baba’s mourners driving away on
Mission Boulevard. Soon we’d leave too, and for the first time
ever, Baba would be all alone.
Soraya pulled me to her and the tears finally came.

Because Soraya and I never had an engagement period,
much of what I learned about the Taheris I learned after I married
into their family. For example, I learned that, once a month, the
general suffered from blinding migraines that lasted almost a
week. When the headaches struck, the general went to his room,
undressed, turned off the light, locked the door, and didn’t come
out until the pain subsided. No one was allowed to go in, no one
was allowed to knock. Eventually, he would emerge, dressed in his
gray suit once more, smelling of sleep and bedsheets, his eyes
puffy and bloodshot. I learned from Soraya that he and Khanum
Taheri had slept in separate rooms for as long as she could
remember. I learned that he could be petty, such as when he’d
take a bite of the qurma his wife placed before him, sigh, and push
it away. “I’ll make you something else,” Khanum Taheri would say,
but he’d ignore her, sulk, and eat bread and onion. This made
Soraya angry and her mother cry. Soraya told me he took antide-
pressants. I learned that he had kept his family on welfare and
had never held a job in the U.S., preferring to cash government-
issued checks than degrading himself with work unsuitable for a
man of his stature—he saw the flea market only as a hobby, a way
to socialize with his fellow Afghans. The general believed that,