Page 217 - The Kite Runner

206 Khaled Hosseini

not raise her pretty hazel eyes to meet my gaze. But the way she
was looking at Hassan, he might as well have been sitting on the
throne at the Arg.
“When is the baby coming?” I said after we all settled around
the adobe room. There was nothing in the room, just a frayed rug,
a few dishes, a pair of mattresses, and a lantern.
“Inshallah, this winter,” Hassan said. “I am praying for a boy to
carry on my father’s name.”
“Speaking of Ali, where is he?”
Hassan dropped his gaze. He told me that Ali and his cousin—
who had owned the house—had been killed by a land mine two
years before, just outside of Bamiyan. A land mine. Is there a more
Afghan way of dying, Amir jan? And for some crazy reason, I
became absolutely certain that it had been Ali’s right leg—his
twisted polio leg—that had finally betrayed him and stepped on
that land mine. I was deeply saddened to hear Ali had died. Your
father and I grew up together, as you know, and Ali had been with
him as long as I could remember. I remember when we were all
little, the year Ali got polio and almost died. Your father would
walk around the house all day crying.
Farzana made us shorwa with beans, turnips, and potatoes.
We washed our hands and dipped fresh naan from the tandoor
into the shorwa—it was the best meal I had had in months. It was
then that I asked Hassan to move to Kabul with me. I told him
about the house, how I could not care for it by myself anymore. I
told him I would pay him well, that he and his khanum would be
comfortable. They looked to each other and did not say anything.
Later, after we had washed our hands and Farzana had served us
grapes, Hassan said the village was his home now; he and Farzana
had made a life for themselves there.