Page 189 - The Kite Runner

178 Khaled Hosseini

tomorrow and take you to the doctor,” I said, to which the general
smiled and said, “Then you might as well turn in your books for
good, bachem. Your khala’s medical charts are like the works of
Rumi: They come in volumes.”
But it wasn’t just that she’d found an audience for her mono-
logues of illness. I firmly believed that if I had picked up a rifle
and gone on a murdering rampage, I would have still had the ben-
efit of her unblinking love. Because I had rid her heart of its
gravest malady. I had relieved her of the greatest fear of every
Afghan mother: that no honorable khastegar would ask for her
daughter’s hand. That her daughter would age alone, husband-
less, childless. Every woman needed a husband. Even if he did
silence the song in her.
And, from Soraya, I learned the details of what had happened
in Virginia.
We were at a wedding. Soraya’s uncle, Sharif, the one who
worked for the INS, was marrying his son to an Afghan girl from
Newark. The wedding was at the same hall where, six months
prior, Soraya and I had had our awroussi. We were standing in a
crowd of guests, watching the bride accept rings from the groom’s
family, when we overheard two middle-aged women talking, their
backs to us.
“What a lovely bride,” one of them said, “Just look at her. So
maghbool, like the moon.”
“Yes,” the other said. “And pure too. Virtuous. No boyfriends.”
“I know. I tell you that boy did well not to marry his cousin.”
Soraya broke down on the way home. I pulled the Ford off to
the curb, parked under a streetlight on Fremont Boulevard.
“It’s all right,” I said, pushing back her hair. “Who cares?”
“It’s so fucking unfair,” she barked.
“Just forget it.”