Page 190 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 179

“Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and get
their girlfriends pregnant, they have kids out of wedlock and no
one says a goddamn thing. Oh, they’re just men having fun! I
make one mistake and suddenly everyone is talking nang and
namoos, and I have to have my face rubbed in it for the rest of my
life.”
I wiped a tear from her jawline, just above her birthmark, with
the pad of my thumb.
“I didn’t tell you,” Soraya said, dabbing at her eyes, “but my
father showed up with a gun that night. He told . . . him . . . that he
had two bullets in the chamber, one for him and one for himself if
I didn’t come home. I was screaming, calling my father all kinds of
names, saying he couldn’t keep me locked up forever, that I
wished he were dead.” Fresh tears squeezed out between her lids.
“I actually said that to him, that I wished he were dead.
“When he brought me home, my mother threw her arms
around me and she was crying too. She was saying things but I
couldn’t understand any of it because she was slurring her
words so badly. So my father took me up to my bedroom and sat
me in front of the dresser mirror. He handed me a pair of scis-
sors and calmly told me to cut off all my hair. He watched while
I did it.
“I didn’t step out of the house for weeks. And when I did, I
heard whispers or imagined them everywhere I went. That was
four years ago and three thousand miles away and I’m still hearing
them.”
“Fuck ’em,” I said.
She made a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “When I told
you about this on the phone the night of khastegari, I was sure
you’d change your mind.”
“No chance of that, Soraya.”