Page 188 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 177

sooner or later, Afghanistan would be freed, the monarchy
restored, and his services would once again be called upon. So
every day, he donned his gray suit, wound his pocket watch, and
waited.
I learned that Khanum Taheri—whom I called Khala Jamila
now—had once been famous in Kabul for her enchanting singing
voice. Though she had never sung professionally, she had had the
talent to—I learned she could sing folk songs, ghazals, even raga,
which was usually a man’s domain. But as much as the general
appreciated listening to music—he owned, in fact, a considerable
collection of classical ghazal tapes by Afghan and Hindi singers—
he believed the performing of it best left to those with lesser repu-
tations. That she never sing in public had been one of the
general’s conditions when they had married. Soraya told me that
her mother had wanted to sing at our wedding, only one song, but
the general gave her one of his looks and the matter was buried.
Khala Jamila played the lotto once a week and watched Johnny
Carson every night. She spent her days in the garden, tending to
her roses, geraniums, potato vines, and orchids.
When I married Soraya, the flowers and Johnny Carson took a
backseat. I was the new delight in Khala Jamila’s life. Unlike the
general’s guarded and diplomatic manners—he didn’t correct me
when I continued to call him “General Sahib”—Khala Jamila
made no secret of how much she adored me. For one thing, I lis-
tened to her impressive list of maladies, something the general
had long turned a deaf ear to. Soraya told me that, ever since her
mother’s stroke, every flutter in her chest was a heart attack,
every aching joint the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, and every
twitch of the eye another stroke. I remember the first time Khala
Jamila mentioned a lump in her neck to me. “I’ll skip school