Page 200 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 189

intended but overbearing sympathy was precisely what was driving
Soraya to move.

Sometimes, Soraya sleeping next to me, I lay in
bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with
the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost
feel the emptiness in Soraya’s womb, like it was a living, breathing
thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our
laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of
our room, I’d feel it rising from Soraya and settling between us.
Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child.