Page 203 - The Kite Runner

192 Khaled Hosseini

dozens of miniature boats sailed, propelled by a crisp San Fran-
cisco breeze. I sat on a park bench, watched a man toss a football
to his son, telling him to not sidearm the ball, to throw over the
shoulder. I glanced up and saw a pair of kites, red with long blue
tails. They floated high above the trees on the west end of the
park, over the windmills.
I thought about a comment Rahim Khan had made just before
we hung up. Made it in passing, almost as an afterthought. I
closed my eyes and saw him at the other end of the scratchy long-
distance line, saw him with his lips slightly parted, head tilted to
one side. And again, something in his bottomless black eyes
hinted at an unspoken secret between us. Except now I knew he
knew. My suspicions had been right all those years. He knew
about Assef, the kite, the money, the watch with the lightning bolt
hands. He had always known.
Come. There is a way to be good again, Rahim Khan had said
on the phone just before hanging up. Said it in passing, almost as
an afterthought.
A way to be good again.

When I came home, Soraya was on the phone with her
mother. “Won’t be long, Madar jan. A week, maybe two ...Yes, you
and Padar can stay with me . . .”
Two years earlier, the general had broken his right hip. He’d
had one of his migraines again, and emerging from his room,
bleary-eyed and dazed, he had tripped on a loose carpet edge. His
scream had brought Khala Jamila running from the kitchen. “It
sounded like a jaroo, a broomstick, snapping in half,” she was
always fond of saying, though the doctor had said it was unlikely
she’d heard anything of the sort. The general’s shattered hip—and