Page 214 - The Kite Runner

SIXTEEN

There were a lot of reasons why I went to Hazarajat to find Has-
san in 1986. The biggest one, Allah forgive me, was that I was
lonely. By then, most of my friends and relatives had either been
killed or had escaped the country to Pakistan or Iran. I barely
knew anyone in Kabul anymore, the city where I had lived my
entire life. Everybody had fled. I would take a walk in the Karteh-
Parwan section—where the melon vendors used to hang out in the
old days, you remember that spot?—and I wouldn’t recognize any-
one there. No one to greet, no one to sit down with for chai, no
one to share stories with, just Roussi soldiers patrolling the
streets. So eventually, I stopped going out to the city. I would
spend my days in your father’s house, up in the study, reading your
mother’s old books, listening to the news, watching the commu-
nist propaganda on television. Then I would pray namaz, cook
something, eat, read some more, pray again, and go to bed. I
would rise in the morning, pray, do it all over again.
And with my arthritis, it was getting harder for me to maintain