Page 197 - The Kite Runner

186 Khaled Hosseini

Then came the treatment phase. We tried a drug called Clomi-
phene, and hMG, a series of shots which Soraya gave to herself.
When these failed, Dr. Rosen advised in vitro fertilization. We
received a polite letter from our HMO, wishing us the best of
luck, regretting they couldn’t cover the cost.
We used the advance I had received for my novel to pay for
it. IVF proved lengthy, meticulous, frustrating, and ultimately
unsuccessful. After months of sitting in waiting rooms reading
magazines like Good Housekeeping and Reader’s Digest, after
endless paper gowns and cold, sterile exam rooms lit by fluores-
cent lights, the repeated humiliation of discussing every detail
of our sex life with a total stranger, the injections and probes
and specimen collections, we went back to Dr. Rosen and his
trains.
He sat across from us, tapped his desk with his fingers, and
used the word “adoption” for the first time. Soraya cried all the
way home.
Soraya broke the news to her parents the weekend after our
last visit with Dr. Rosen. We were sitting on picnic chairs in the
Taheris’ backyard, grilling trout and sipping yogurt dogh. It was an
early evening in March 1991. Khala Jamila had watered the roses
and her new honeysuckles, and their fragrance mixed with the
smell of cooking fish. Twice already, she had reached across her
chair to caress Soraya’s hair and say, “God knows best, bachem.
Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
Soraya kept looking down at her hands. She was tired, I knew,
tired of it all. “The doctor said we could adopt,” she murmured.
General Taheri’s head snapped up at this. He closed the bar-
becue lid. “He did?”
“He said it was an option,” Soraya said.
We’d talked at home about adoption. Soraya was ambivalent at