Page 221 - The Kite Runner

210 Khaled Hosseini

“I’m right here,” Hassan said. He took her hand and
squeezed it.
Her good eye rolled to him. “I have walked long and far to see
if you are as beautiful in the flesh as you are in my dreams. And
you are. Even more.” She pulled his hand to her scarred face.
“Smile for me. Please.”
Hassan did and the old woman wept. “You smiled coming out
of me, did anyone ever tell you? And I wouldn’t even hold you.
Allah forgive me, I wouldn’t even hold you.”
None of us had seen Sanaubar since she had eloped with a
band of singers and dancers in 1964, just after she had given birth
to Hassan. You never saw her, Amir, but in her youth, she was a
vision. She had a dimpled smile and a walk that drove men crazy.
No one who passed her on the street, be it a man or a woman,
could look at her only once. And now . . .
Hassan dropped her hand and bolted out of the house. I went
after him, but he was too fast. I saw him running up the hill
where you two used to play, his feet kicking up plumes of dust. I
let him go. I sat with Sanaubar all day as the sky went from bright
blue to purple. Hassan still had not come back when night fell
and moonlight bathed the clouds. Sanaubar cried that coming
back had been a mistake, maybe even a worse one than leaving.
But I made her stay. Hassan would return, I knew.
He came back the next morning, looking tired and weary, like
he had not slept all night. He took Sanaubar’s hand in both of his
and told her she could cry if she wanted to but she needn’t, she
was home now, he said, home with her family. He touched the
scars on her face, and ran his hand through her hair.
Hassan and Farzana nursed her back to health. They fed her
and washed her clothes. I gave her one of the guest rooms
upstairs. Sometimes, I would look out the window into the yard