Page 201 - The Kite Runner

FOURTEEN

June 2001

I lowered the phone into the cradle and stared at it for a long time.
It wasn’t until Aflatoon startled me with a bark that I realized how
quiet the room had become. Soraya had muted the television.
“You look pale, Amir,” she said from the couch, the same one
her parents had given us as a housewarming gift for our first apart-
ment. She’d been lying on it with Aflatoon’s head nestled on her
chest, her legs buried under the worn pillows. She was half-
watching a PBS special on the plight of wolves in Minnesota,
half-correcting essays from her summer-school class—she’d been
teaching at the same school now for six years. She sat up, and
Aflatoon leapt down from the couch. It was the general who had
given our cocker spaniel his name, Farsi for “Plato,” because, he
said, if you looked hard enough and long enough into the dog’s
filmy black eyes, you’d swear he was thinking wise thoughts.
There was a sliver of fat, just a hint of it, beneath Soraya’s
chin now. The past ten years had padded the curves of her hips
some, and combed into her coal black hair a few streaks of cinder