Page 198 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 187

best. “I know it’s silly and maybe vain,” she said to me on the way
to her parents’ house, “but I can’t help it. I’ve always dreamed that
I’d hold it in my arms and know my blood had fed it for nine
months, that I’d look in its eyes one day and be startled to see you
or me, that the baby would grow up and have your smile or mine.
Without that . . . Is that wrong?”
“No,” I had said.
“Am I being selfish?”
“No, Soraya.”
“Because if you really want to do it . . .”
“No,” I said. “If we’re going to do it, we shouldn’t have any
doubts at all about it, and we should both be in agreement. It
wouldn’t be fair to the baby otherwise.”
She rested her head on the window and said nothing else the
rest of the way.
Now the general sat beside her. “Bachem, this adoption . . .
thing, I’m not so sure it’s for us Afghans.” Soraya looked at me
tiredly and sighed.
“For one thing, they grow up and want to know who their nat-
ural parents are,” he said. “Nor can you blame them. Sometimes,
they leave the home in which you labored for years to provide for
them so they can find the people who gave them life. Blood is a
powerful thing, bachem, never forget that.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Soraya said.
“I’ll say one more thing,” he said. I could tell he was getting
revved up; we were about to get one of the general’s little
speeches. “Take Amir jan, here. We all knew his father, I know
who his grandfather was in Kabul and his great-grandfather
before him, I could sit here and trace generations of his ancestors
for you if you asked. That’s why when his father—God give him
peace—came khastegari, I didn’t hesitate. And believe me, his