Page 216 - The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner 205

either side but sunbaked bushes, gnarled, spiny tree trunks, and
dried grass like pale straw. I passed a dead donkey rotting on the
side of the road. And then I turned a corner and, right in the mid-
dle of that barren land, I saw a cluster of mud houses, beyond
them nothing but broad sky and mountains like jagged teeth.
The people in Bamiyan had told me I would find him easily—
he lived in the only house in the village that had a walled garden.
The mud wall, short and pocked with holes, enclosed the tiny
house—which was really not much more than a glorified hut.
Barefoot children were playing on the street, kicking a ragged ten-
nis ball with a stick, and they stared when I pulled up and killed
the engine. I knocked on the wooden door and stepped through
into a yard that had very little in it save for a parched strawberry
patch and a bare lemon tree. There was a tandoor in the corner in
the shadow of an acacia tree and I saw a man squatting beside it.
He was placing dough on a large wooden spatula and slapping it
against the walls of the tandoor. He dropped the dough when he
saw me. I had to make him stop kissing my hands.
“Let me look at you,” I said. He stepped away. He was so tall
now—I stood on my toes and still just came up to his chin. The
Bamiyan sun had toughened his skin, and turned it several shades
darker than I remembered, and he had lost a few of his front
teeth. There were sparse strands of hair on his chin. Other than
that, he had those same narrow green eyes, that scar on his upper
lip, that round face, that affable smile. You would have recognized
him, Amir jan. I am sure of it.
We went inside. There was a young light-skinned Hazara
woman sewing a shawl in a corner of the room. She was visibly
expecting. “This is my wife, Rahim Khan,” Hassan said proudly.
“Her name is Farzana jan.” She was a shy woman, so courteous
she spoke in a voice barely higher than a whisper and she would