Page 204 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 193

all of the ensuing complications, the pneumonia, blood poison-
ing, the protracted stay at the nursing home—ended Khala
Jamila’s long-running soliloquies about her own health. And
started new ones about the general’s. She’d tell anyone who would
listen that the doctors had told them his kidneys were failing. “But
then they had never seen Afghan kidneys, had they?” she’d say
proudly. What I remember most about the general’s hospital stay
is how Khala Jamila would wait until he fell asleep, and then sing
to him, songs I remembered from Kabul, playing on Baba’s
scratchy old transistor radio.
The general’s frailty—and time—had softened things between
him and Soraya too. They took walks together, went to lunch on
Saturdays, and, sometimes, the general sat in on some of her
classes. He’d sit in the back of the room, dressed in his shiny old
gray suit, wooden cane across his lap, smiling. Sometimes he even
took notes.

That night, Soraya and I lay in bed, her back pressed to my
chest, my face buried in her hair. I remembered when we used to
lay forehead to forehead, sharing afterglow kisses and whispering
until our eyes drifted closed, whispering about tiny, curled toes,
first smiles, first words, first steps. We still did sometimes, but the
whispers were about school, my new book, a giggle over someone’s
ridiculous dress at a party. Our lovemaking was still good, at times
better than good, but some nights all I’d feel was a relief to be
done with it, to be free to drift away and forget, at least for a
while, about the futility of what we’d just done. She never said so,
but I knew sometimes Soraya felt it too. On those nights, we’d
each roll to our side of the bed and let our own savior take us
away. Soraya’s was sleep. Mine, as always, was a book.